76

Anatoli
Xiou doesn’t look fazed by my threat. I didn’t think he would, and I already know he’s not going to talk for me. If he didn’t for anyone else, I won’t be the exception.
“Who are you working for?” That’s the best place to start and, like I guessed, I’m met with his silence. “Why do you have those pictures? Did you follow all of us? Me? My wife? My mother? The Butyrskayas?”
My question garners no response from Xiou. He’s little more than a stone statue with a heartbeat. Pretty soon, he won’t even have that. It’s time to up the game.
“Not gonna take that chance?” I try to clarify.
When he doesn’t answer, I cock the hammer on my gun and shoot him right in the top of his left leg. That gets a response from him.
He howls with pain and shakes against the chair. Blood spurts from his thigh and flows onto the floor, joining the blood already there.
“Have you changed your mind?”
Still no answer, so he gets another bullet in the same leg, then I shoot him again in his other leg.
Now he’s shaking, and sweat mixes with the blood that was already caked on his face.
“Anything yet?”
“Fuck you,” he growls. “You won’t get shit from me.”
I fire a bullet in his arm and he cries out like a wild animal trapped in a snare.
At this rate, I’ll kill him and end up with nothing. But I think that’s what he wants.
I’ve shot him in non-vital places, but he can still bleed out if he continues to lose this much blood.
That’s okay. I have other methods of torture up my sleeve, and I can keep this fucker alive all month if he’s willing to play like this.
While he’s panting, I throw a punch in his face, cracking his nose. I keep going until his front teeth fall into his lap.
He’s a bloody mess, as are my knuckles, but I’m not tired.
What I am is fucking annoyed. I’ve been at him now for at least an hour, and the suspense of not knowing what the fuck is going on could well kill me.
“Fucking talk!” I sound like a ravenous beast unleashed from the darkest place in hell.
“Fuck… you.” Xiou coughs blood.
“Anatoli,” Zakh suddenly says, rushing up to us. He holds out his phone to Xiou, showing him a picture of a woman holding two small children at her sides and a baby in her arms. “Maybe this will make him talk.”
Xiou’s eyes go wide. He looks terrified. A sudden change to what he was before, as if he’s just swapped personalities.
“No. Please.” His voice takes on a higher pitch.
“I told you I just needed time.” Zakh throws a punch in Xiou’s face and kicks his shin. “Maybe you’ll tell us what we need to know in return for the lives of your wife and children.”
I don’t know what the fuck Zakh did to find this information, but I thank Odin for it, because I was about to kill this guy just for being annoying.
“Talk. Now!” I shout. “Tell me what I need to know.”
“Please don’t harm my family. Please. They are not a part of this. Please.”
“If you want them to live, you need to talk right the fuck now.”
He nods quickly and off balance. “Uther Galitze and I have been working together for over twenty years. I am his link to the Triad, but I don’t work for him.”
“Who are you working for then?”
“The Mark.”
“Who the fuck is that?” I’ve never even heard whispers of such a person or group, and I’m a man who makes it his duty to know his enemies. Those who are active, and those who could potentially become a threat.
“I’ve never seen their faces. All I do is take orders. I can find people no one else can. I track and kill if I need to.”
“Did you track my mother and me?” I need to get it off my chest.
“Yes.”
At his confirmation I want to kill him again, but I tamp down my rage. There’s something serious going on here, and I need the whole story.
“Tell me everything about the Mark.”
“They run a human and organ trafficking ring for which my people organize the sales. They sell everything from babies to young women, and when they can’t sell them, they harvest their organs. The business is a multi-million dollar one that has been running for decades.”
“Decades?”
“Yes, decades. At least twenty-five years.”
“Does my brother Mikhail have any involvement in this?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him or taken orders from him.”
His answer seems to rule Mikhail out. So does the timeframe and the presence of the pictures of my mother and the Butyrskayas. But I haven’t completely ruled him out yet. My gut tells me there’s some sort of link. I just have to find it.
“What about my father? Why was he poisoned?”
“Mikhail promised Uther more money to pour into the oil business once he took over from your father. Since your father had no plan to retire, the poison was to make that happen quicker. Your arrival turned everything upside down.”
His eyes flit back to the phone in Zakh’s hand, then he looks back to me.
“Keep going. The pictures of the people you have all share something in common. What is it?”
“You are all threats to the Mark’s plans. Everything we do is based on securing the funds we need to carry out the business.”
“What sort of threat was my mother?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. At that time, I was new. I didn’t know much. I’m still not told the details of various plans, but I have ways of finding out.”
“How about you tell me the rest of what you know?”
“Everything else was about securing the fortune from the oil field under the vineyard. It was important that Uther got it.”
I glance at Zakh, who looks just as stunned as me.
“What about the Butyrskayas?” Zakh asks.
“Yes, even them.”
“Where did they die?” I cut in.
“In this country, but that’s as much as I know about them. I tracked them to New York, then they fell off my radar. Uther can tell you the rest.”
I knew I was right about Uther’s connection to the Butyrskayas. That motherfucker also knew there was nothing to pin on him. He knew I would have to get that intel from an asshole like this.
“What connection did the Butyrskayas have to the vineyard?”
“It’s about his daughter. She’s worth more to him than an oil company masking as a vineyard. That’s why he’s trying to get her back. The secrets from the past lie with her. Secrets she mustn’t remember, or everything fails. The Mark doesn’t want that to happen.”
Instead of the rage and fury that were fueling me, a shiver of fear grips me. “What happened in the past?”
“She saw things she shouldn’t have seen. I don’t know what they are, only that those secrets must be kept buried deep in the earth.”
Fuck. Fucking Uther.
I truly believe now that Avrora’s nightmares are memories, and I think I know what she saw. I think she saw what happened to the Butyrskayas. If Uther killed them, that would have been enough for the Knights to kill him and his family, wiping out any plans he had with this Mark person.
Xiou coughs more blood. “I was to watch you and find opportunities to take her back. They want to kill you, and when she is of no use to them, not even Uther will be able to protect her. She knows too much, whether she can remember it or not.”
Damn it to hell. I can’t let that happen. I can’t. I can’t lose her.
“What else do you know?” I grit my teeth as panic takes over my mind.
“Nothing, nothing more. I swear. That’s everything.”
“Then it looks like you’re of no more use to me.” I cock the hammer on my gun again, the sound drawing terror to his eyes.
“More will come to replace me. It won’t end here. They’ll just keep coming until they get your wife.”
“Let. Them. Come.”
I shoot him in the head.