Page 94 of Brutal Unionn
He’s shirtless—if you can even call the scraps hanging off him clothing. His once-proud chest, the same chest I remember standing tall in Bratva meetings, is now marked in violent calligraphy. Deep lacerations cross his abdomen in deliberate, clean patterns—slashes that aren’t meant to kill butkeep him alive longer.Some still ooze, others have crusted black, outlined in angry infection.
One of his ears is missing.
Gone.
Just a mess of scar tissue and blood-soaked gauze where it used to be.
His face is a ruin—unrecognizable, bloated in some places and sunken in others. A mass of bruises and split flesh. One eye is swollen shut, the other bloodshot and glassy. The proud aquiline nose that passed on to Alex? Flattened. His lips are split so badly the bottom one hangs lower, and a trail of thick spit—pink with blood—dribbles down his chin.
And thesmell.
Dear God.
He reeks of rot and sweat and infection anddespair.The metallic sting of blood mixes with the sour tang of pus and the musk of a man who hasn’t been allowed to die. Who’s been keptjustalive enough to suffer more.
He’s gagged, barely, a frayed cloth shoved into his mouth, held there with thin wire twisted around the back of his head. Sho didn’t want him to scream.
“Fucking hell,” I rasp, each step I take is smaller than the last but I can’t stop my slowed movement toward him.
Sho strides ahead with effortless calm, bare feet silent against the warped wood of the floor, as he grabs a rusted bucket from the shadowed corner of the room, his fingers wrapping around the dented metal like it’s nothing more than a kettle.
He turns slightly, the faintest trace of amusement curling at the edge of his mouth. “He would have been more presentable, but your father has a mouth on him.”
My gaze drops—instinctively, involuntarily—and my stomach flips violently. On the floor, scattered like dropped candy, lie teeth. Six. No—seven. Some are yellowed, one chipped, a few streaked with dried blood. One molar still has a thin shred of pink gum clinging to its base. They glisten faintly in the low light, grotesque in their stillness.
I nearly gag. My mouth parts in disbelief, in horror, in awe. This is a man I once feared more than death. Now pieces of him litter the floor. Again, what the fuck did Sho do to him?
Sho chuckles to himself and grabs a rag from a wooden peg by the wall. The fabric is stiff with old blood, its edges frayed like it’s been used a hundred times before for the same unholy purpose.
“He said somefucked upshit about you, about your mother,” Sho continues, his tone light and conversational. He doesn’t even look at Boris as he speaks, like the man no longer warrants eye contact. “Shit I won’t repeat, but fucking hell, Hime. I am surprised you didn’t kill him yourself years ago.”
I take another shaky step forward and whisper, “I wanted to.”
Sho tilts his head toward me, his eyes locking with mine across the room. For a moment, neither of us moves. Neither of us breathes.
And then Boris twitches. Just barely. A tremor of recognition, as his eyes lock with mine across the room.
His body, or what’s left of it, shakes. The chains rattle softly as he attempts to shift his weight, but there’s nowhere for it to go. He’s suspended in purgatory, forced to exist somewhere between standing and hanging, his knees quivering from the strain, ankles rubbed raw and bloody. His face is barely human now—a mass of swollen, discolored tissue, one eye fused shut, the other a sunken, cloudy orb that darts between us with confusion and dread.
When Sho finally turns to look at him directly, there’s a dangerous calm in his posture. He steps forward, barefoot and fluid, and leans just enough to let his voice slide in like a scalpel.
“Konban wa, otosan,”Good evening, father,he says softly, almost reverently.
Boris lets out a sound. A wet, strangled groan that bubbles in his throat like he’s drowning on dry land. His jaw trembles beneath the frayed gag that’s cinched so tightly his lips have cracked beneath it. There’s no fight left in him, only the twitch of primal fear, the flinch of a cornered animal.
Sho watches him for a long moment before crouching next to his violently shaking body, picking up a cloth and dipping it into the bucket. The water runs pink, swirling with blood and grime, and when he wrings it out, the sound is thick, meaty—like something being slowly torn apart.
“You should’ve heard him before,” Sho says, wiping Boris’s chin with surprising gentleness. “Real colorful language. I can see where you get your mouth from.”
“Sho-” I snap.
“Kidding,” he smiles, flashing those pearly white teeth at me.
The rag slides across Boris’s cheek, smearing more than it cleans. Sho glances up at me again, his expression unreadable, as he wipes some of the grime from my father’s face. “I didn’t do too much damage though. I wanted him to be coherent when you got here.”
He stands then, wiping his hands on the cloth before tossing it back into the bucket with a wet slap. The sound echoes in the stillness, and Boris shudders visibly.
Sho’s voice is quieter now, but darker. More intimate. “He’s not much of a talker these days, so don’t be surprised if he doesn’t respond to your threats.”
