Cruel Paradise - A Mafia Romance Chapter 138

When I get to the location—which lives up to Kirill’s description as a desolate shithole miles away from civilization—Vadim is standing outside one of the SUVs with my second-in-command lounging at his side and murmuring rapid-fire into a walkie-talkie.

“Decided to join the party?” Vadim asks with a toothy smile.

“Congratulations, Uncle. I heard that you’re the man to thank for this find. You’ll have to tell me how you did it.”

He seems jumpy as he gives me a distracted smile. “I don’t want to be accused of bragging. We should really move fast.”

“No need to worry. Adrik doesn’t have the balls to challenge me openly. It’s why he’s resorting to all these underhanded methods of attack. He knows he doesn’t stand a chance otherwise.”

Vadim’s gaze flickers across the property. “You’re that sure we’re dealing with Adrik here?”

“Who else could it be?”

He shrugs. “Not everyone loves the Bratva.”

“Okay,” Kirill says as he turns his attention up to us. “It looks like we’re dealing with a dozen men. Fourteen, at the most.”

Fourteen? The number feels low, considering what they’re protecting. What the hell is Adrik up to?

Vadim seems to be thinking the same thing I am. “Adrik’s clearly got the Venera formula duplicated by now. Sergey has served his purpose. Losing him now won’t be a huge loss.”

“Maybe not,” I snarl, reaching a sudden decision point. “But he’s still my man and I’m not going to leave him to rot in there.” I raise my fist in the air and bring it down hard, giving my men the signal to move in from the surrounding territory. “We don’t need prisoners. Kill them all.”

Vadim’s eyes flit to me. “Your father would advise mercy.”

“And what would you advise?”

He flinches before sighing. “Kill them all.”

Nodding, I pull out my gun and follow my men into the house. The first gunshot breaks the silence. After that, it’s a no-holds-barred free-for-all. The air comes alive with the smell of blood and the groans of our dying enemies.

It’s over far faster than I’d hoped for. Mere minutes after the violence begins, silence resumes. My men clear a path for me to the back of the house where Sergey is being held. I have to kick the door down to enter it. Debris flies as the old wood cracks and splinters beneath my heel.

We sweep through, guns at the ready, but there’s no need. The room is empty but for one person.

Sergey is chained to a chair in one dusty, cobwebbed corner. He’s slumped over, his neck bent, his chin hanging down to his chest. He’s not conscious. In fact, it looks like he’s barely breathing.

Which means only one thing: he may have cracked, but it took extreme torture to do it.

“Kirill!” I roar.

A few more straggling gunshots sound—executing the last of Adrik’s rabble—and then everything goes quiet. Kirill rushes into the room a moment later.

“Is he dead?” he blurts as soon as he clocks the scene.

I check his pulse. “He’s still with us. But barely. We need to get him to a hospital immediately.”

“On it.”

After Sergey has been stretchered out to the caravan of SUVs, I step over one of the enemy bodies strewn in the hallway and turn to Andrey, a lieutenant waiting at attention for my next batch of orders. Lucky for him, the next step is simple.

“Burn the whole fucking place down.”

Then I get into the same SUV that’s transporting Sergey to the hospital. As we pull away, plumes of smoke start to spiral out from the inside of the dilapidated building. It should take only a few minutes for the fire to consume and destroy the whole structure.

I’m coming for you, asshole, I whisper silently to Adrik, wherever the hell he might be. And when I’m done, a little fire will be the least of your concerns.

It takes hours in the hospital before Sergey opens his eyes. Well, one eye. It appears that his left eye is going to stay closed for a while.

He blinks and sighs with the reluctant hesitation of a man who’d rather just close it and succumb to the darkness.

They put him through hell. He has half a dozen broken ribs, a shattered nose, a fractured leg, chemical burns across his right arm and patches of skin missing from his left. The scans show the inside of his body is as much of a wreck as the outside. Lung collapsed, organs bruised and bleeding.

I think about writing it all down so I can make sure to repeat the exact same pattern with Adrik.

“Sergey.”

He starts quivering in place. The monitors he’s attached to start beeping with alarm. A nurse rushes to his side. “Sir, he can go into cardiac arrest if he panics like that.”

“Sergey,” I try again, softer this time. “You have nothing to fear anymore. You’re safe now.”

His lone working eye flickers to the nurse and then back to me. “I-I… t-told them… the formula… I t-t-told them…”

I give the nurse a dismissive grunt. “Could we have a moment?”

As soon as she leaves, I sit down on the chair next to Sergey’s bed. “I know.”

He gulps. Apparently even that hurts because he flinches and groans softly. “A-are you going to k-k-kill me?”

“No.”

His eye goes as wide as it can. “W-why?”

“Because you endured all of this—” My hand sweeps to gesture down toward his broken body. “—before you cracked. And for that, you have my respect and my gratitude.”

He stares at me with his mouth hanging open. “Am I d-dreaming?”

I stand up and he flinches back again. “I misjudged you. I assumed that it wouldn’t take much to make you talk. But I was wrong. You have nothing to fear. You won’t have anything to fear ever again. You’re safe now, Sergey. You have my word.”

Tears start slipping down his cheeks in tiny rivulets. But the fear still hasn’t left his gaze. “I-I’m not safe. I will never b-be safe…”

“Yes,” I repeat, “you will. Because I am going to find the man who did this to you and I’m going to make sure he receives the exact same treatment.”

Sergey flinches. “S-sir… if it’s all the same to you… I’d rather just… live in peace.” More stray tears run down his face. “I’m done with this life…” He says it hesitantly, glancing at me and away and back again the entire time, waiting to see what form my wrath will take.