Page 62 of The Lies Between Lovers

Except now.

Now he couldn’t wait to get back upstairs.

Vaslav stepped out of the elevator first, but Igor quickly followed. Another metal door—although this one wasn’t reflective and took two men to open after the code was correctly spun into the tiny dial of ten symbols consisting of Cyrillic letters and dots of various numbers.

Vaslav waited as Igor spun the code in—the only soul on the planet other than him that knew it. There was no ventilation in the room hidden by the ten-inch-thick steel door. No windows when it was deep in the basement. A person had about twenty-four hours, give or take a few, before they would run out of air in what was essentially a safe room.

Except he’d never used it to keep people safe.

Quite the opposite.

Once the two had pulled the door open using the bar that had been welded on to act as a handle, light spilled into the small space between the elevator and the room made of cement. The single light bulb inside flickered, but it was enough for Vaslav to see who waited for him inside.

“I see you made it back from Italy, pup,” he told the young man sitting in the corner.

The bound and gagged lump in the other corner wasn’t even conscious for him to give a shit about so he focused on the first issue at hand. Igor’s pet project that seemed to be showing up more and more. Kiril. “You’re going to have to be quicker with the girl, Kiril. Especially if you’re going to be trailing her on and off. A step ahead, you know?”

The young man using the wall to push his heels on while he precariously balanced a metal folding chair on two out of four legs barely glanced up over the cell phone in his hands that he tapped at with his thumbs.

“Yeah, but I don’t even like flying,” Kiril muttered, never looking away from the screen.

“Is that all he does?” Vas asked Igor.

To his benefit, Igor headed beyond Vaslav and snatched the phone out of the sixteen-year-old’s hand despite the shouted, indignant hey from Kiril that followed. The kid even had the nerve to look offended.

“That’s mine! I almost beat the damn level, and the battery is about fuckin’ dead, you prick!”

Igor’s hand swatted the kid hard enough on the back of the head that he actually let the chair fall to four legs. “Knock it off. What did I tell you, yeah?”

Rubbing at the back of his head and scowling, Kiril glowered at the heap starting to move in the corner. “Well, I was watching him. I did like you said. And then he wouldn’t shut up, even if he is gagged. I can only take so much of that, Igor. It’s four walls, a lightbulb, and a fuckin’ chair in here. What do you want me to do?”

“So?”

“So, I knocked his ass out,” Kiril returned. Then, he looked to Vaslav, shrugging. “Not a hard whack, or anything.”

“With what, pup?”

Kiril made a face. “Maybe the chair. Maybe not.”

Well, okay, then. He appreciated the semblance of honesty.

“Eh,” Vaslav grunted, watching the slow rise and fall of slumped shoulders from the man crumpled in a heap in the corner. “It’s alive. Best one can do.”

“Until you kill him.”

Vas glanced Kiril’s way again. “Who said I was going to do it?”

“Vas,” Igor warned quietly.

He didn’t pay the man any mind, and only tore his sharp gaze away from Kiril to put his attention back on the reason why they were all there this late at night. He could have been upstairs burying his dick into wet pussy that smelled like sex and sin while he made his broken ballerina make the prettiest music with all her sounds ...

Instead, he was here.

“Kiril, you’re cleaning up,” Vaslav said.

Kiril made a curious huh. “What?”

“Vas, I can handle—” Igor tried to interject.