little scary for the pup, once Kolya really got going on the passed-out Albanian tied to the chair in the middle of the room.
Kolya figured it would take a couple of times for the dog to get the point when they had to do something like this, but he was hoping for the best tonight.
“Your spot. Be good; behave, yes?”
Another ear flick from Sumerki.
Good enough.
He stood and turned back to Konstantin with a nod. “He’s learning—don’t touch him.”
“Learn—”
“That’s what I said,” Kolya interjected gruffly. “Stop asking questions and let me get to the killing portion of my evening. Spasibo.”
He didn’t miss the way Konstantin rolled his eyes but Kolya’s attention was laser focused on something else, now. Or rather, someone else. He tugged the leather driving gloves out of his back pocket and slipped them on as he came closer to the unconscious man tied to a chair. Undoing the buttons on his dress shirt—he thought it might get in the way or bloodstained—Kolya discarded the item as he came to stand in front of the man.
A bucket of cold water rested at Tomor’s feet. Kolya picked the bucket up and dumped it over the man’s head. Tomor woke up with a gagged shout—thank you, Zhatka—and wide, angry eyes.
Oh, good.
He wasn’t broken yet.
Kolya liked them better when he was the one who got to break them.
Tomor took a minute to adjust but as soon as his gaze landed on Kolya, his rage became all the more apparent. He pulled and jerked in the chair, spitting words at Kolya in a language he wouldn’t have understood even if the gag wasn’t tight around his mouth.
“You look angry,” Kolya said. “Shame, no?”
Tomor jerked in the chair again, his teeth baring over the gag.
“Oh, scary.”
“Don’t play with your prey,” Konstantin grumbled. “You always do this.”
Kolya waved a hand over his shoulder, saying, “I don’t remember asking you.”
To be honest, Kolya was a little bored. Maybe it was because all of his baser urges had been thoroughly satisfied earlier by Maya … but it was hard to say. He was still raging fucking pissed that this man had thought to put his hands on what didn’t belong to him. He was going to hurt for that.
Kolya snatched up the live jumper cables from the floor and checked to make sure they would snap loudly when he touched the two clamps together. Sure enough, they crackled and sparked with all the pretty colors of live electricity.
Lowering the cables, he smiled at the wide-eyed Albanian who suddenly couldn’t stop looking away from the items in Kolya’s hands.
“I love a good electrocution,” Kolya said.
Tomor’s gaze skipped to him. A lot of his fire and fight was draining right before Kolya’s eyes.
“Here’s how this is going to go,” Kolya said, taking a step forward.
Even as Tomor fought to move away from Kolya, he still managed to clamp one of the cables to the side of the man’s neck. The cables had been wired into a two-forty plug putting out forty amps, and would certainly kill a man within seconds.
A little touch of the other cable to the man’s stomach though, and—Tomor snapped back, went stiff, his eyes rolled back, and a gagged garble of unintelligible noise slipped from his mouth before Kolya pulled the cable back fast. It took Tomor a few seconds to regain his senses, and then another minute more before Kolya felt comfortable pulling the man’s gag down.
Tomor’s speech was slurred.
Slowed.
Confused.
Kolya reached out and smacked the man on his forehead. “Look at me, no?”
The Albanian did.
“I don’t want information from you,” Kolya said. “I know why you did what you did. I am just here to make you hurt for what you did to her. And because you enjoy putting your hands on other people, without their permission, once I am done hurting you, I will cut yours off, put them in a box, and mail them to your closest relative. A parting gift, we’ll say. Your boss will get the rest of you—my boss’s order. A message, if you will.”
Tomor’s eyes darkened with rage again. “He’s going to keep coming for her, Russian. Until he gets ger.”
Kolya nodded. “He can try.”
• • •
Kolya kneeled down beside a stiff Sumerki as the noise from the other side of the room picked up. He’d quickly gotten tired of the Albanian. The Reaper was there to step in and finish business when Kolya asked.
Sumerki’s big, yellow eyes watched Kolya, but quickly darted back to where the sounds