Page 16 of Pistols and Plush Toys

His whole body shook, the adrenaline a sickening punch after having just recently woken. He wanted to throw up or collapse, anything to break the tension coiled like an unsprung trap inside him.

They came to a stop.

“Sit,” Nikolai said firmly. “There is chair.”

The hands guided him down carefully, but Elliot still practically dropped into the seat. It was a hard chair, the warm metal seeping immediately through his clothes. It was exactly the kind of chair that people got tortured in.

When Nikolai let him go and stepped away, it was almost worse. Without knowing where Nikolai was, Elliot’s mind ran wild with what he could be doing. Elliot could hear his steps, and then things being moved about nearby, as if on a table. What were they? Knives? Chains?

He was trying to hold it together, really trying, but when the footsteps came back toward him and the rough texture ofrope began to wind itself around him, tying him to the chair, Elliot couldn’t stop the sob that spilled out.

Chapter 4: Nikolai

Nikolai’s heart twinged when his captive cried out, and he almost stopped coiling the rope around him before he gritted his teeth and kept at it. He couldn’tbesoft here, not with so much at stake.

Nikolai wasn’t hurting Brooks, he knew he wasn’t. The rope was being tied well, the way Nikolai had been taught, but it wasn’t too tight, not biting into Brooks's pale skin. And Nikolai had clearly said he wasn’t going to hurt the kid as long as he cooperated. Brooks shouldn’t be acting like these were his final moments on Earth.

He held in a belabored sigh. There was some balance he needed to maintain between making sure this man didn’t actually hyperventilate out of fear, and not proving himself to be just as weak as his father had always said he was.

Nikolai settled on explaining what he was doing. “I’m will tie you up, make a nice picture for Vitale. And you’re will say to the camera that you want to go home. Then I’m say Vitale must be keeping the Vitale and Tkachenko agreement.” His eyes drifted over the black bag. “I’m will not hurt you if you’re cooperate.”

His hands worked automatically with the ropes, winding them carefully around Brooks's torso, making sure his arms were properly restrained. He did it without even thinking, the muscle memory on full display. He’d spent so, so much time learning about knots and handcuffs and zip ties in his father’s basement growing up. His father had wanted Nikolai to know how to not only restrain others, but how to escape if he ever had to.

Those had been grueling, terrible lessons. In the early days, when Nikolai had been still a child, his father had left him in the basement tied up for hours and hours to “practice.” It had at least been sufficient motivation to learn quickly. In under a year he’d been escaping rope in just minutes and had moved onto handcuffs.

To this day he still carried some form of lock pick on his person at all times. His favorites were the pair that hid neatly in a set of cufflinks Gerard had gifted him years ago. The most thoughtful gift Nikolai ever been given, safety and security and relief done up in elegant metal.

But Brooks didn’t need handcuffs. Rope would do nicely for the picture Nikolai wanted him to make for Vitale. And a square knot was nothing fancy, but it didn’t need to be. Brooks was a waif of a thing, and Nikolai doubted he had anything resembling the kind of escape training Nikolai had gotten.

Brooks’s slim chest rose and fell quickly, and though it was clear he was trying to keep his crying quiet, Nikolai was close enough to hear every hitched, wet breath. Each sound dug into Nikolai in a way that compounded his burgeoning headache. This was exactly why he didn’t reallydothis sort of thing, exactly why he’d spent so much of his professional career keeping his father’s branch of work at an arm’s length. Looking around this dank space, it was all too easy to feel like he’d fallen right into his father’s footsteps.

Fuck it, tonight he was going to make himself a drink.

His hands finished with the knot, and he stepped back. This was a show, he reminded himself. It wasn’t real. Even if Brooks was shaken up by his treatment, he wasn’tactually being hurt.They were just going to make this video and then Brooks would be taken back and left in the room again.

Nikolai stepped over to where the tripod was waiting and stuck his phone in the slot, checking the picture through hisphone's camera. The lighting was poor coming in through the half boarded up windows, but Brooks was still plenty visible, and anyway, the lighting added to the atmosphere. The point of all this was to inspire Vitale to quit playing games. If Vitale didn’t care about Brooks, he wouldn’t have guarded him so possessively.

This would work.

Once Nikolai was satisfied with the framing of the shot, he walked back toward the chair, reached out, and pinched the fabric over Brooks's head, lifting it up and off.

Brooks gasped, jolting against the ropes. Immediately Nikolai's eyes went to where the rope was laying on the bare skin of his arms. He hadn’t even thought about the fact that Brooks was likely to pick up some rope burn just from existing near them, like he had with zip ties.

His gaze traveled down to Brooks’s wrists. They were still red, still uncared for because Nikolai had peeked back into the room yesterday and Brooks had already been asleep. That was another fucking thing he needed to do today. The last thing he needed was for Brooks to get some sort of infection.

Resentment built just behind his ribcage. As grand a plan as this had been, he was really starting to hate having to actually interact with Brooks. He probably should have offloaded the task to one of his employees, but at the same time, he knew why he hadn’t. He knew why he felt like the responsibility had to be his.

Even if he hated it.

Those big, glossy eyes blinked open and looked up at him, and Nikolai felt another pinch in his chest. Brooks really was a sight with those long eyelashes clumped with tears, the red rim of his eyes accenting the bright hazel color.

Vitale could say anything he wanted, but no one who cared about looks as much as Vitale would let someone like Brooksslip out of his grasp so easily. Nikolai just needed things to seem serious enough that the weasel crawled back to his family to tell them what Nikolai had done.

There’d be no misunderstanding then. Nikolai had already texted his demands, laid it all out in plain English. A Tkachenko wasn’t to step on Vitale toes, and the reverse was expected to be upheld.

Mattia Vitale had come in and proverbially shot him in the foot and then spat on him for good measure. Nikolai hated the disrespect, but he hated the audacity more. Their city was a good place to live, a clean place for the most part.

He didn’t care for the new lines of business Vitale was trying to bring in.

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