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My fists itch to hit him again, maybe catch a rib this time. But if I expect any information, I can’t assuage my lust for revenge.
Interrogations have a rhythm. I have to be methodical. “Who do you work for?”
“We work for ourselves,” he mumbles.
I want the truth, but right now I’ll take the lie.
“Is that so?” Without a second’s hesitation, I send my fist into his face, and the blood spurts from his nose, spattering my white shirt.
“You couldn’t plan your way out of a fucking paper bag, and your ugly-ass shoes don’t belong to someone who sells flesh. How much do you get for every woman you bring them?”
He doesn’t utter a peep until I unsheathe my knife, and the whimpering begins. They all whimper when the knife comes out to play. Sometimes it’s a silent cry that you see only in their eyes. Other times it’s a wailed plea.
This bastard is afraid. But not as afraid as he’s going to be. The rage surges as I think about the unsuspecting women he’s ushered into a life of hell, and how frightened they must be. Women like Lexie. Francesca. And my mother.
My worst fear is not that they killed my mother immediately, but that they turned her over to monsters who were worse than them. I have no evidence of that, just nightmares that dog me. This isn’t the time to ruminate about a past you can’t change. You have these fuckers to question.
“I doubt you’re the mastermind behind anything,” I say with all the calm I can muster, while sliding the knifepoint over the thin fabric covering his balls.
“When’s the last time this knife was sharpened?” I ask Zé, who is off to my right.
“It’s been a few months,” he replies. “You use it a lot. If you expect to make a clean cut, it should be done.”
I flick my wrist so he can appreciate the knifepoint a bit better. “If you tell me what I want to know, I’ll sharpen my knife before I slice off your balls. Otherwise, there’s no telling how long it’s going to take to saw through them.”
“Do you think we know anything?” he snarls.
“I thought you were the big guy? Worked for yourself.”
“Kill me,” he grunts. “Go ahead.”
I’d love nothing more than to watch you take your final breath, at my hand.
He’s goading me, although in my state of mind, it’s a fool’s game.
The bottom line is that we can’t rough him up too much more than he already is before we turn him over—and he knows it. But this bastard is not leaving here scot-free. I turn and walk away, as though I’m done. When I’m behind him, several feet away, I swivel and fling my knife into his calf.
I flick my wrist several times as I retrieve the weapon embedded in the muscle. The screeching is so loud it hurts my ears.
“It’s lucky my knife skills are so sharp,” I say to Zé. “Otherwise, he’d have gotten away from us.”
Zé snickers and mutters something about how we should dig a hole and bury them alive. Be done with it. It’s the best idea I’ve heard in a long time, and as tempting as it is, I won’t do it. Not when there’s a chance that we could save even one woman.
We approach the second prisoner, who’s strung up far enough away from his friend that he didn’t see my knife trick. But he heard it—especially the screams.
“Your buddy’s an idiot. Didn’t get him too far,” I explain, wiping my bloody knife on his shirt. He doesn’t flinch, and I know this is going to be a wasted effort.
Successful interrogations can take days, especially in cases where the scariest motherfuckers are not us, or the authorities, but the guy the prisoner works for. We don’t have that kind of time.
In the end, I’m right. He doesn’t have anything to say that’s particularly useful. Although he did confirm one thing. They hadn’t planned to come to Sirena tonight.
“What made you change your mind?” I ask, gauging every move, every breath the asshole takes.
“Stupid British bitch.”
He’s talking about Lexie. I take a step back so I don’t cut out his tongue.
“She insisted on it, and we couldn’t get the Russo girl away from her.”
