Page 146 of Shutter and Sin
Stanislav shifts his panicked gaze to me. I raise an eyebrow to challenge him.
"No," Stanislav whispers into the microphone. "I didn't say a word."
"You'd better keep your mouth shut. If I find out you talked, I'll gut you myself. Do you hear me? I don't care if we share the same blood. You should have died before you let them capture you. A real man would take his own life. You are just sitting there pissing your pants while waiting for a rescue."
Silent tears spill down Stanislav’s bruised cheeks.
"You're a massive embarrassment to me. You shame our entire family, and you shame Levan. You have always been soft and useless. I should let Romanov keep you in his basement. I'd have one less mouth to feed and one less weakness to protect."
I reach over and end the call. The concrete room falls silent. The only sound left is Stanislav’s ragged, wet breathing.
"Well," I say, sliding the phone back into my pocket. "That was quite a touching family reunion, don’t you think?"
Stanislav starts shaking. His entire body convulses with deep sobs, and I’m certain as fuck that he isn’t shivering from the cold air. "He's just scared," Stanislav weeps. "He didn't mean those awful things…"
"He meant every single word, and you know it," I say, leaning forward to crowd his space. "But his insults don't interest me right now. I'm much more interested in what you just told your brother over the phone."
His red eyes widen in panic.
"You told him you didn't give us any information," I offer, producing a dark smile. "That means you're still trying to protect his operation. You lied for a man who just called you weak and useless. You covered for a brother who wished you were dead."
"I was only trying to…"
"If you're still protecting him, then some of the details you gave me were false." I push my chair back, getting on my feet. "Let's figure out which parts."
I walk over to a small metal table resting against the far wall. Viktor left a silver tray there for me. It holds a short blade, a ceramic bowl filled with coarse rock salt, and a clean white towel. Stanislav stares at the tray, his breath hitching in his throat.
"Was the Maryino warehouse code real?" I ask with a false calm.
"Yes, I swear that one was real!"
"What about the weapons cache hidden in Lyublino? Unit two-fourteen. Is that real?"
"Yes, I promise."
"The restaurant in Taganka," I continue. "Suliko. You claimed the guns were stashed in the wine cellar."
He hesitates for a fraction of a second. I pick up the knife from the tray. The short blade holds an edge sharp enough to shave skin.
"Stanislav," I warn.
"There are weapons hidden in that building," he blurts out, the words spilling from his mouth in a frantic rush. "They aren't in the wine cellar. There's a cold storage room located behind the main kitchen. The false wall is in there. I gave you the wrong room to make your men waste their time searching. It would give Dato a chance to…"
He pauses.
"It would give him a chance to do what?" I press. "Move the weapons out the back door? Warn his guards about the raid?"
He gives a miserable nod.
"Tell me what else you lied about."
"The money courier," Stanislav confesses. "Zurab. I told you his route begins at Maryino at seven in the morning. He actually starts at the Butovo apartment complex. He doesn't ride a motorcycle. He drives a plain white van."
"Keep going."
"Levan’s private compound. I said he kept twenty guards on the property. The real number is closer to forty."
I set the sharp knife back onto the silver tray, drumming my fingers against the metal edge. "You lied about the security count at Levan’s compound. If I sent a strike team based on your bad information, my men would walk straight into an ambush. Half of my soldiers would end up dead in the dirt."
