Gavriil (Stepanov Mafia)

I pressed back against the wall and used my legs to slide myself into a standing position. “Wake him up.”

Ivan found a ten-gallon bucket in the back of the warehouse, and they filled it up in the bathroom across the hall. Then, they held it over Devin’s face and slowly poured water across his mouth and nose. Devin just laid there for a few seconds, making me wonder whether we’d accidentally drown him before he woke up, but then he suddenly lurched forward.

His mouth was wide open, spluttering out bloody water. He looked around, dazed, not sure where he was, and when his eyes landed on me, he tried to spin around and push himself into a standing position. Yuri kicked him in the chest and waved his gun. Devin sat back down and turned to me. The machismo and haughtiness from before were gone. He was terrified, looking up at me like I was the angel of death. And in a way, I guess I was.

“Tell me where your sister is,” I said.

He shook his head, then tried to talk around his swollen tongue. It sounded like he had a combination of every speech impediment in existence. “You are going to kill me anyway.”

“I won’t. I swear it. If you tell me where she is, I’ll let you go. I’ll let you carry on leading your miserable life. You will watch me from afar, see me being happy with your sister and making her happy. It will be torture for you. And your misery will be so much more satisfying for me than any physical pain I could cause you. Because you will have to reckon with what a piece of shit person you are. And if you don’t end up killing yourself, you’ll spend most days wishing you had the guts to.”

Devin’s eyes widened. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat, which was slick with a mixture of water and blood. He looked a lot like Sam. The same blonde hair and high cheekbones, but his eyes were brown instead of green. The resemblance wasn’t enough to stir sympathy in me, and it certainly wasn’t enough for me to alter my decision about his fate.

“Tell me,” I repeated. “Either way, you lose. If I kill you now, those low-class idiots you hired will crawl back to whatever holes they climbed out of, and I’ll find Sam eventually. They’ll let her go, or she’ll escape. It doesn’t matter how, but I will be with her again, and you’ll be dead. Or, you can tell me where she is, and you can walk away.”

He hung his head, and I knew I was breaking him down. He was tired, just like I was. His plan had fallen apart, and now he had to decide whether he was committed enough to see it through until the end, or whether he was going to compromise.

“I want to go home, and so do you,” I said. “Tell me and end this.”

Devin sighed. “She’s at Fyodor’s.”

“She’s at his house?” I asked, my heart rate picking up noticeably.

I did my best to stay calm. The last thing I needed was more blood pumping through my body. I could already feel that the shirt strapped to my side was soaked with blood. I needed to see a doctor fast, but not before Devin spilled his guts.

He nodded. “We brought her here until Fyodor was ready and then he came and took her back to his house until the flight. It’s in an hour.”

“Why didn’t you go to his house too?”

“I had to get my mom ready,” he said, shaking his head. If I wasn’t mistaken, he looked ashamed. “While Sam was living with you, I told my mom she was on vacation. She thought Sam hurt her head and needed us to help her regain her memories and sort out what was real and fake. We were going to fly out tomorrow morning.”

“You told her that so Sam’s story about being kidnapped by you would sound insane?” I asked, clenching my fist at my side.

He nodded.

I had to hand it to him; it was a clever lie. It would have unraveled eventually, but it would have bought him time.

“

Why were you here when I walked in?” I asked.

“I left my phone,” he said, chuckling humorlessly to himself.

I understood that laugh. He was laughing at his bad luck. I laughed, too, except mine was about my good luck. If I had shown up a few minutes later, Devin could have been gone. I could have missed him and been too late. Sam would’ve been on a flight headed to God knows where, and I’d never see her again. It was a close call.

Yuri nudged Devin’s shoulder and asked for Fyodor’s address. Devin couldn’t remember it, so he pulled it up on the map app and handed his phone to Yuri.