Day twenty-one…

“Nice of you to join us,” I say to Jasha as he hurries into the back of the warehouse.

He blinks in the blazing fluorescent lights. I’ve lit this room up like the sun; I don’t want to miss a thing. “Oh, good, you didn’t start without me,” he says, squinting.

“Are you kidding? After all these years? I would never.” I grin. “We’ve all just been enjoying the show while we waited for you.”

Vilyat has already pissed and shit himself with terror. I had him stripped naked and tied up, hanging from his hands in this private warehouse that I own, waiting for Jasha.

All my men are there, lined up, watching.

The air crackles with anticipation. We have waited for this moment for so long. We always knew it was possible that one of Vilyat’s enemies would get to him first. That was the risk we ran, with our long, drawn-out campaign of terror. But luck smiled on us, and we have him now.

I’m on a manic high. Willow is safe. There were six girls being held in the trailers; they’re all being cared for now, recovering, after my men dropped them off in the parking lot of a supermarket minutes from a hospital. Vilyat’s henchmen are all dead.

With all the heat on Vilyat right now, it was insane that he kidnapped those girls. College students partying at a night-club, waitresses, a girl stepping outside her apartment for a smoke…they babbled their stories to my men as they were driven to safety. Vilyat had his men roofie them, or grab them as they walked to their cars after work. He just couldn’t stop himself.

It’s a sickness with him, with all the Toporov men. They get high off torture, and the softer and sweeter their victims, the more exciting it is for them. They make my dark desires seem vanilla and sweet by comparison.

Well, now he’s going to get more than a taste of his own medicine.

I walk over to a table full of cruel instruments, and pick up a skinning knife. He sees it, and shrieks and bucks and kicks.

“I’ll pay you anything!” he pleads. “I’ll work for you for free. I’ll let my wife and kids go, forever, I’ll never pursue them again. I’ll let Willow go.”

I just look at him, stroking the blade of my knife like a lover.

“They’re already gone,” I tell him. “They’re my family now. They all hate you, did you know that? Not just your wife. Your children. They feel nothing but contempt and disgust for you. You’re a failure as a human being, and a failure as a father.”

I walk up to him and he tries to squirm away from me. I draw a thin, shallow line vertically down his stomach, the same way he does to his victims when he’s finished with them. Except I only cut the skin.

“Who is Cataha?” I demand, on a hunch. Cataha guts his victims the same way Vilyat does. Maybe the two of them worked together at some point.

“Satan?” His bloodshot eyes widen in bewilderment. “I’m…I’m a Christian…” he snivels. Riiiight. Yes, he has been known to go to church now and then. And he’s a Christian like I’m a fucking Martian.

I punch him in the stomach, and he whimpers in pain. “Cataha. The trafficker in Russia.” I jab his chest with the tip of the knife.

“I’ve never heard of him. I can find him for you! Do you want him?” So desperately eager to please me.

My men are crowded around me now. I slash another line across Vilyat’s belly, right next to the first one. “No, I’ve got what I want right here.”

“I can make you rich!” he screams, mindless with pain and terror.

“Really?” I say gently. “How? Maybe we could go into business together dealing in little boy whores?”

His eyes light up. He gasps with relief. Idiot.

“Yes! You like little boys? I can get you all the little boys you like, all day long! I’ve got a house full of them back in Russia; they’re all brand new! Most of them haven’t even been fucked yet! Sweet, innocent…” Then he sees the look on my face.

And he figures it out, finally.

“You…you were from the orphanage. I think I remember now. The way you looked at me. Those eyes…”

“Orphanage?” I punch him in the nose and it breaks with a satisfying crunch. “You mean the child sex-slave whorehouse?”

Vilyat wails in agony. “Oh fuck, oh fuck…I should have killed you then…for looking at me like that…”

“Yes, you should have.” I punch him again and break his jaw. No symphony could ever sound sweeter than the noises Vilyat is making right now.

“Your customers raped my little brother. His name was Pyotr. He’s the reason you’re going to die before the sun goes down.” A wave of wild euphoria floods through me. I’ve been rehearsing those words in my head for fourteen years. Fourteen. Fucking. Years.

Jasha approaches with a bullwhip. His eyes are black as sin and he’s shaking with the need for vengeance. “Let me,” he begs.

I step back.

“Go,” I say. Jasha slashes Vilyat with the whip so hard that blood pours out of him. Vilyat howls to the heavens – just like Jasha did when the men at Vilyat’s whorehouse tore into him.

Then Slavik takes a turn.

Then Maks.

The coppery reek of Vilyat’s blood coats our nostrils.

My men are sweating and grunting with effort, gasping with satisfaction. It’s everything we’ve dreamed of.

I push forward and shove the knife blade up against Vilyat’s crotch. “Tell me where you’re keeping the little boys, or I’ll cut your dick off,” I say.

“No, no, noooo….” For a man who likes to dish out pain, he sure can’t take it. I approach him with my knife. I start to saw away at the root of his limp, dangling cock, slowly, and he goes mad, screeching like a woman. Kicking his legs. What does he need his dick for? He’s going to be dead soon anyway. He’ll never get to use it again.

He vomits on himself.

Then he tells me.

Jasha hurries out of the room to make a phone call to one of our best connections – the Russian journalist, Akim. We work with Akim and the newspaper Reforma so much, they’re practically business partners. Reforma doesn’t know that we created Akim, and they’re puppets whose strings we jerk. That’s okay. They have their job to do, we have ours.

We’ll have the children freed within a few hours.

Of course, after what Vilyat and his men put them through, they’ll never really be free. I know that better than anyone.

While Jasha is on the phone, I slowly saw away at Vilyat.

I let each of my men have more turns with the bullwhip, with knives, with cattle prods inserted in places that make Vilyat scream and convulse until he passes out. Watching them at work is every bit as satisfying as doing it myself.

We manage to stretch it out for hours. I wish we could make it last longer.

Finally his last tortured breath whispers from his body, and he dangles, limp and lifeless, his toes trailing through a pool of his spilled fluids.

A good man would feel sick at what I just did. As we leave, I feel clean and light and free. I am not a good man.