Page 113 of Ruin
Still warm. Black, the way he drinks it, not like the way I take mine. I drink it anyway.
It tastes like him and I hate that it helps.
Peter calls a few minutes after two. They found someone.
His name is Alexei.
Low-level. Twenty-three years old, born in Odessa, recruited by Zhukov's organization at nineteen with the promise of money and belonging and all the things that young men without fathers will sell their souls for.
Cassius' men picked him up outside a bar in Brighton Beach a couple of hours ago.
He'd been drinking alone, which meant either he was off-rotation or he'd fallen out of favor.
Either way, he was vulnerable.
They brought him to Hell.
To the chair at the end of the east corridor, the same chair I've seen in photographs, the same chair where men have sat and bled and given up their secrets under the kind of pressure that leaves marks you carry for the rest of your life.
Alexei is zip-tied to the arms. He's young enough that the fear hasn't hardened into defiance yet.
His eyes are darting around the room, looking for exits, calculating odds, doing the math of a man who knows he's in trouble but hasn't figured out how deep.
Cassius walks me to the door.
His hand brushes the small of my back—brief, barely there, the kind of touch that could be accidental if it came from anyone else.
From him, nothing is accidental.
"You don't have to do this," he says. Low enough that only I hear it. "Lionel can handle an interrogation."
"Lionel would use pliers and a blowtorch. I'm going to use his sister."
Cassius looks at me.
Something moves behind his eyes, and I'd give a lot to know whether it's pride or concern or the particular vertigo of watching someone become the thing you designed them to be and realizing you can't control it anymore.
"His sister?" he asks.
"Anya. Nineteen. Still in Odessa. I found her on Alexei's social media before they confiscated his phone." I hold up a printout of an Instagram profile. A dark-haired girl in a university sweatshirt, smiling at the camera with the kind of unguarded warmth that people only have when they don't know someone's watching. "She's studying to be a nurse. Posts about her cat. Comments on Alexei's photos with heart emojis."
"And?"
"And Zhukov's organization has a documented pattern of retaliating against the families of anyone who cooperates with rivals. If Alexei talks and Zhukov finds out, Anya doesn't finish nursing school. She disappears." I fold the printout and slip it into my back pocket. "I'm not going to threaten her. I'm going to make Alexei believe that talking to us is the only way to keep her safe."
Cassius stares at me for a beat too long, then he steps aside and holds the door open. "I'll be watching."
"I know you will."
I walk into the room, close the door behind me, and pull out the metal chair across from Alexei and sit down.
He looks at me and some of the fear in his face shifts to confusion.
He was expecting Lionel. He was expecting pain.
He wasn't expecting a woman in a silk blouse with a diamond collar at her throat and a manila folder in her hands.
"Alexei," I say. His name, spoken calmly, in a voice that carries no threat. "Twenty-three. Born in Odessa, Ukraine. Cameto the States at nineteen. No criminal record in the US, which tells me you've been careful, or lucky, or maybe a bit of both."
