Page 39 of Sinner's Vows

“Damn, it’s effective. An oiled machine,” Luca says. “So neat. And clean. Not like yesterday’s shitshow of a party.”

With both men stretched out as stars, their arms and legs straining, barely balancing on their tippy toes, but with their necks still fine, I lean forward.

“What else did Franco Fiore offer you over and above the measly fifty K to get a shitty job done?”

Splitting that six ways doesn’t offer each man much, not for the bloody risk they were taking with their lives. But they weren’t aware of this when they stepped onto our turf, were they?

When neither man answers, I sigh. “Who do you lot work for when you’re not fucking around with the big boys, hmm?”

“We work for ourselves,” the fluent Boris chokes out.

“I don’t buy that,” Luca says as he stretches the fluent man’s arms a tad too much and he screams in pain.

“Do you talk, or do we torture you until you do? This can take the whole fucking day, or we can be quick about it,” I add, not really wanting to spend my afternoon listening to their torment. A gag would be nice, but counterproductive.

Silence stretches until Luca’s Boris starts to whine.

“Don’t you want to help your friend out, here?” I suggest to my Boris, playing the good cop. “Tell me what I need to know, and his suffering stops.”

“We work for us,” the man grunts.

Very helpful. “And who is your leader?”

The two Borises exchange glances and turn quiet again. For fuck’s sakes. I up the ante on my own controls, stretching my Boris to his full capacity. Then I go for the neck. Soon, he is on his toes, barely able to breathe. He wrestles in desperate breathsas his face turns blue. I release the tension a bit, and he sags, dragging in air like a starving man.

“Are you in bed with the Bratva?”

That’s the obvious choice here. And since they raised the question about our ports and who rules which territory, I’ve been drawing lines between the dots to get the picture. I don’t like what I see taking shape here. We rule the main ports north on the East Coast—everything south is Bratva. Once you hit the Carolinas, it gets messy and contested, a bloody situation we’ve avoided by having agreements in place with our neighbor in New York and New Jersey.

“Give a bit there,” I tell Luca. His Boris is bleeding in the armpits and is gasping in pain. “The idea is to hang them, not to quarter them.”

“Oh, fuck it, sorry.”

“The butcher might be pleased, though. Less work for him.”

Luca shoots me a glance. “Fuck, you’re a cold motherfucker, brother.”

I don’t bother to respond but watch how Luca alleviates the tension. The man starts crying, literally sobbing, and it makes me rub at my forehead with a thumb knuckle. Shit needs to get done already.

“Franco promised to help us take over the ports. First New Haven, and then Providence. Finally Boston. With money he would’ve gotten from the woman. Vincenzo’s sister.”

Fuck. I knew it. As soon as Matteo steered the Don into the afterlife, the hyenas started prowling, coming for the fucking carcass. Well, we’re still fighting fit and not letting go for a long while. There isn’t a single weak link inIl Consiglio’stop tier. There’s nothing to have here.

My Boris glares at the talkative Boris, and I bet if he could cut his throat right there and then, he would have. The man just overshared.

“Do you have anything to add, Boris?” I ask my man, and he turns to look at me, his one eye twitching in the corner as if he’s about to pop a vein.

He spews at me in Ukrainian, but it could be Russian for all I know. Not that it matters, because we’re done. With a final pressing of the neck button and the up button in unison, the man gets jerked up so fast, he hangs, swaying. I lower his arms and legs so he’s suffocating from his own bodyweight.

I sigh. I don’t care to watch this shit.

“Anything else you think we need to know?” I ask the other Boris. My Boris’s feet flay and his arms sway as his hands try to reach for the choke at his neck in an attempt to save himself.

Fluent Boris just stares at me as we listen at each ragged breath that becomes more and more strained. Then it grows eerily quiet in the room.

One Boris down. One to go.

“Well done and good luck to you,” Boris grunts from where he’s grappling for breath. “Boryslav didn’t deserve that. To think he only came to America four months ago. And—” He breaks off to breathe. “You just killed Igor Petrov’s long-lost nephew.”

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