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I'm ready to turn it.
I despise the Golubev Bratva and their allies. For what they did to me as a kid, but also because they make most of their money from human trafficking.
"Hey, brother. We've already done introductions. They know my name but aren't ready to return the favor." Though I have not told them I am the bratva killer their brethren in California refer to aspalach. "I'm calling them Larry, Curly and Mo."
"You and your old movie references. Do they even know who the Three Stooges are?"
"Does it matter?" Sure, the psychological advantage of them knowing I am insulting them every time I use the names would be welcome.
But there's a psychological benefit to me calling them by names other than their own in and of itself. It implies they aren't real people to me. That they don't matter.
Zeus shakes his head at me. He approaches the dangling men.
"You are hellishly unlucky, aren't you?" he asks in Russian. "To walk into the club where yourpalachis hanging out with his girlfriend."
"He is not our executioner," the one I dubbed Mo says with misplaced bravado, completely missing my brother's inference to theirpalach.
"You are allies to the Golubev Brava." I throw my knife up high, letting it flip three times before catching it again. "I am death to you."
"What do you have against our Golubev brothers? They have no enemies in this state." This is Curly and he accompanies his words with a globule of spit landing on the floor a few inches from my boot.
Pig.
"Wrong." I punch him in the nuts with my knuckle duster while stabbing into the flesh of his thigh with my knife. "They are trying to establish territory in the same city as their greatest enemies."
Curly screams and jerks in his bonds, his toes losing their hold on the floor. He screams again when the weight of his body pulls against his strained shoulder joints.
Huh. Might have pulled one or both out of their sockets with that move.
"I was going to let you watch me play with your friends." I wipe the blood off my knife on his shirt. "But then you had to spit."
Curly moans.
"What no warmup?" Zeus asks.
"I have places to be." Almost as lethal as I am, I trust Michael to watch over Lucia.
That doesn't soothe the itch to get back to the club, so I can protect her myself.
Mo and Larry look at Zeus and me with dawning understanding. "You are Hades Brotherhood," Larry says.
He's been silent until now. He didn't react when we hoisted him up. No empty threats like his fellow soldiers when we ripped the duct tape from their mouths. No curses or insults.
"Curly's not the boss of your crew," I say. "It's you."
The man stares back at me with dead eyes. Eyes that before I met Lucia would be a mirror of my own. I don't know what Larry sees there now. His death? Yes. But a dead soul? Not so much.
She's fanned the dark ember of my soul into a flame. Though I'm pretty sure the fire is from hell, and it only burns for her.
"You arepalach." He eyes me up and down. "You have killed many of our Golubev brethren."
"They started the war." And I will finish it.
"When they kidnapped a child from the Hades Brotherhood."
"You know your history."
He inclines his head, showing no discomfort in his situation, but his shoulders have to be burning. With normal interrogation techniques, he might crack in a week, or two. If we can keep him alive long enough to torture him effectively. My eyes scan the other two men.
