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Vince cries out in pain as all the weight of his body is put on his shoulders. “Please, I have learned my lesson,” he pleads.
“See, I may have taken it easy on you and made this quick and painless…” I thrum my fingers against the wall. “But then, your little stunt caused me to lose my best friend. So, I’m going to make this hurt as much as I can.”
I take a seat across from him and start a timer on my watch. I can’t let him hang like this for more than an hour or he will certainly die, and I have something else in mind for him.
His cries become quiet close to the twenty-minute mark and I fear I have lost him. I hit the release on the crank, allowing him to fall to the ground.
Grabbing him by one arm and one leg, I throw him across my shoulder and carry him across the room over to the table that has restraints attached. Laying him down on the stainless steel, I cut his binds loose to lift his arms above his head before I strap them down. Usually I wouldn’t cut him loose unless he was out cold due to safety reasons. However, since I dislocated his shoulders, I didn’t need to worry about him attempting to escape.
Once he is strapped in and I’m sure he’s not going anywhere, I begin to make tiny cuts along his body. He has stopped pleading and crying, accepting his fate. Which makes this far too boring for me now. I reach under the table and grab a bottle of alcohol. He eyes me as I remove the cap and begin to slowly pour it over each cut, starting at his neck and working my way down to his toes.
Finally, his body has taken too much and I can tell he is finished. I grab my knife from the table, flipping it in the air before catching it at the hilt.
"Well buddy," I sneer, walking back over to him. "It's been real, and it's been fun. But I'm sure, for you, it hasn't been real fun." My knife slides across his throat. I smile as the blood pools on the table and drips onto the floor.
Throwing my knife on the table, I exit the room and pass one of my dad's men on my way up the stairs.
"Get someone to clean that up." I tell him, gesturing to the room I just came out of.
Heading straight to the bathroom, I take a long, hot shower. When I come out of the room, my phone is laying on the bed. Grabbing it, I search for anything pertaining to Natalia. Her phone number, voicemails, any photos, or videos. All gone.
Clenching the phone tightly in my hand, I launch it across the room and it shatters against the wall.
Chapter five
Natalia
Eighteen Years Old
“I’m sorry, Nat. Eric tried everything he could. He’s gone.” The words out of my mother’s mouth cause my knees to give out, and I collapse into the chair behind me. Due to the nature of our family business, we tend to stay away from the hospital as much as possible. Which is why we have a whole ass operating room and recovery center in the left wing of our house. Eric is the doctor that my father pays to be at his beck and call whenever someone gets injured.
No. It’s not supposed to be like this. She’s lying. She has to be.
Looking up at my mother’s sorrowful face and the tears pouring from her blue eyes, I know she’s telling the truth. I avert my eyes to my bloodstained hands, feeling tears stream down my face.
My brother. My protector. My best friend. Gone. How did this happen?
“Dry your tears, Natalia,” my father snarls as he hands me a tissue. “They won’t bring him back.” His dark brown eyes were lacking any sort of compassion as he looked at me with disdain over my weakness. "I didn't raise you to be this soft."
“Easy for you to say,” I spit back at him. “Unlike you, some of us have hearts.” Not many people have the guts to go toe to toe with my father. Ivan Belov is one of the most cutthroat and unemotional human beings. Sometimes, I don’t even know if human is the right word for him.
Before I can say another word, I’m yanked to my feet by a hand on my upper arm. He towers over me, and I tilt my head to look up at him. “I’m going to let that slide because you’re grieving,” he warns, “but do your best to remember thatIam the head of this family, Natalia.”
Rolling my eyes, I tear my arm from his grip and push my way past him. Rushing to the bathroom, I try to scrub as much of Dmitri’s blood off me as I can. Exiting the bathroom, I walk down the halls of our home, intending to go to my room, but I find myself standing in Dmitri’s room. Not even twenty-four hours ago, we had been watching crappy reality television reruns and laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. I collapse onto his bed, face down, and pull the covers over me. His familiar scent lingers on the sheets, and I pull them tighter around my body.
Even though Dmitri was almost five years older than me, he treated me as an equal. While my dad pressured him to stay focused on his duties to the family business, Dmitri still made sure to remind me that I was important too. See, my father only focused on my brother. Since it was natural for the first-born son to take over as head of the family, I was always put on the back burner. Dmitri still came to all of my dance recitals, not caring that dad would grill his ass later about it. And even though he despised it, he was the one I told all my boy troubles to, which always resulted in him telling me no one was good enough for his baby sister.
As I wipe the tears from my eyes, my mind replays this morning's events.
I had just finished shopping with my friends. I pulled into the driveway and halfway up the pavement, right outside the security camera’s range, sat Dmitri’s Mercedes. With my eyebrow raised, I put my car in park. I got out and went over to his car, knocking on the window. When he didn’t roll it down, I pulled on the door handle and the sight inside made me drop to my knees.
“Nat…” Dmitri gasped. “Call Eric,” he managed to choke out, and I stood there frozen. He had been tortured. I had seen it enough times that I knew without a doubt. The wounds that littered his body ranged from cuts to stab wounds, and cigarette burns. His left ring finger was missing. “Nat…” he whispered again, snapping me out of my trance.
I grabbed my phone out of my back pocket and called Eric, then my father. Once they were both informed, I put my phone back in my pocket and looked back at Dmitri. He was so pale, and one of his wounds was bleeding profusely. “Dmitri, how did you drive like this? What happened? Who did this?” I asked, the questions just pouring out of me through sobs as I tried to apply pressure to his wound and stop the bleeding.
“Didn’t drive. Was dumped,” he grunted, before placing his hand over mine. “Look… look at me Nat,” he said, trying to appear as the hardass father wanted him to be. “I love you, Nat. Y-you are the biggest ray of sunshine. Promise me you won’t let him make you hard,” he said, and I could tell he was struggling to hold on.
“I’m not promising you shit, Dmitri, you aren’t leaving me,” I replied, trying to keep the sobs at bay.
