Page 29 of The Celtic Resolution
13
BRUNO
Golden sunlight trickles through the limp plastic sheeting hanging over the broken windows of the abandoned warehouse we chose to set up in. Its beams stretch across the stone floor, creating an array of multicolored lights and shapes from the shards of glass and other debris that litter the floor, until it reaches the far wall where the years-old graffiti takes on a new lease of life under the morning sun.
Squinting, it almost looks beautiful. Not as beautiful as watching Saoirse work over the Triad though. All night long she’s been busy in the middle of the room taking our captive to new heights of pain and confirming that I never want to get on her bad side. It’s quite the change to go from frantic, hot sex in the back of her car to watching her skin someone’s ribs on the fourth floor of an abandoned structure to the sounds of his pained whimpers and cries.
It’s almost impressive how long he holds out. I’ve never been one to stomach cruelty of any kind, but each time even a tinge of regret surfaces in my mind, it’s swiftly stamped out by the memory of those poor women. He did this. Or his men did. Regardless of how deep his fingers were in the pot, theresponsibility stains him and Saoirse is dragging every other detail out of him slowly and carefully.
She started without a word when we arrived. She stripped his clothes, shaved his head with scissors and secured him tightly to a chair without needing my help. Expected, really. She’s the Irish Underboss for a reason. Several of her men are stationed on the lower floors and outside just in case the Triad have a way of tracking their men, but it’s been hours and the threat lessens with every passing minute. She took one break just before sunrise for a cup of coffee and just quietly observed our captive as he sagged in a pool of his own blood and piss, gasping for air around a broken nose, a cracked jaw and God knows how many broken ribs. She stripped thin flaps of skin from his ribs, embedded splinters under his nails, broken fingers and toes, poured hot water all down his back and spent a good long while carefully shaving skin from his forearm.
He broke, a little under ten minutes ago and never have I heard a Triad so eager to give up information.
“Please,” he sobs through fat, bloodied lips while drooling down onto his bare lap. “N-No more. Please. No more.”
“Then tell me what I want to know,” Saoirse replies casually, as if they were just two friends stopping for a chat in a supermarket. She stands and pushes her hair away from her face with the back of her wrist, then places that hand on her cocked hip while a blooded knife dangles loosely from her other fingers.
I think I’m turned on. I shift against the crate I’m leaning against so my pants don’t tighten too much.
“Y–You haven’t ask—asked me anything,” he gasps.
Oh, shit. He’s right. Saoirse spoke to him quite a lot but she never actually asked him a question. That has to be part of her method, surely.
She chuckles softly and glances back at me over her shoulder. “Whoops.”
Definitely part of her method.
“Alright. There were some women I collected from an old house,” Saoirse says, reeling off the address. “Tracking ownership of that house was pretty tricky, but I managed it and it led me right to you. So tell me, what were you doing with those women?”
“I wasn’t— I wasn’t doing—hrrk!”
She grabs him by the throat and leans in close. “It’s a collectiveyou, dumbass, not individual. You, your fucking organization, the Triads. What were you doing?” Her change from soft and amused to cold and angry is as fast as a crack of thunder. Goosebumps race down my arms.
“I—” The man coughs roughly when she releases him. “It’s a holding house.”
“For?”
“Product,” he chokes.
“Tell me what you consider product.”
“Men, women. Whatever we get sent.”
“Who sends it to you?”
He shrugs and Saoirse punches him hard across the face. His head snaps to the side and blood sprays across the floor with a wet splat.
“Who?”
“I don’t know,” he chokes, gagging on the blood that surges up his throat and dribbles out his mouth. “Honest.”
“I don’t believe you.” She twirls the knife between her fingers and the blade glints dangerously in the light.
“Wait, wait—please, okay, okay.”
“Tell me.”
“I… the Russians used to work with us but that new bitch, she cut us all off but we still had clients. Still had demand to fill, so we did what we could. Just cause that bitch stopped supplying doesn’t mean people stopped buying.”
