“Guess what? You already did.”
Kittinger looked puzzled. Molenski nodded to Andre who went to the back of the room and picked up a container. It was a fancy hat box, white with a red ribbon tied into an extravagant bow on top. Ivan watched with a sinking feeling. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out what was in the round box.
“Show him.”
Kittinger understood without needing to see inside the box. He began to wail, not from physical pain, this time, but the raw emotion of a man who had lost everything. He turned his head away, refusing to look in the box.
“You have to look, Robert,” said Molenski, nodding at Ivan. “I’m sorry, but you must know the consequences of your actions before you die.”
Ivan felt ill but nevertheless came forward. He placed a hand on either side of Kittinger’s sweat soaked head and twisted his head around to face Andre. The man struggled to avert his head but Ivan was too strong.
Andre lifted the lid theatrically.
Kittinger’s mouth opened in a silent scream, before he closed his eyes to shut out the horror in the box. Ivan released him, and Kittinger turned his head away and doubling over and puking the contents of his stomach onto the concrete floor.
Some of the vomit spattered the shoes and pants of Molenski.
Andre’s eyes widened, and he quickly evacuated himself from the area. The rage in his boss’s eyes had been fleeting, but Andre knew that the next few minutes would be… confronting, to say the least.
“Hold Mr. Kittinger’s legs apart for me, would you?” asked Molenski, calmly.
Andre nodded sharply to the new guy, Marco, who rushed forward, eager to please, and grabbed one of Kittinger’s feet. Ivan also stepped forward to grip the other foot. They pried the legs of the broken man open with no resistance. They both looked away, the younger man because the man’s private parts were exposed and rested against the wooden seat, Ivan because he knew what was coming.
And what followed was brutal and bloody, and it didn’t end until the tortured man had passed out.
Molenski wasn’t done yet though.
“Wake him up; I want to see his eyes when he leaves us.”
Ivan let go and moved away, and Marco followed his lead, his blood-spattered face pale with shock at what he had just witnessed.
Andre threw a bucket of water over Kittinger’s head, and the poor bastard spluttered awake.
“Knife!”
Andre pulled out his flick knife and opened it before handing it to the boss.
Molenski stepped forward and gripped Kittinger’s hair before pulling his head back sharply and resting the blade against the right side of his neck. He looked into his victim’s eyes.
“Time to die Mr. Kittinger.”
True to his word, after nicking his carotid artery, Molenski looked into the man’s eyes as his heart emptied his body of arterial blood, in bright, spectacular spurts. When the gouts had finally diminished to a trickle, he let the man’s head drop.
“Get this mess cleaned up,” he said to Andre and headed for the door.
Ivan rushed to make it through the door first, relieved he wouldn’t have to stay in the slaughterhouse any longer than necessary. He paused to allow his boss to take the lead as they walked back across the basement to the stairs.
Molenski would head upstairs to shower and change. As he had learned to do so many times, Ivan put the horror he had just witnessed out of his mind, determined more than ever that within a year, he would be gone from the Russian’s poisonous proximity.
4
While he waited for Molenski to finish showering, Ivan began to think about the delivery. He was curious to find out what it was. No matter how clever his boss was at hiding his emotions, Ivan had known the Russian long enough to realize that whatever it was, he was more excited at the news of its arrival than he had been about anything in a long time.
After he was dressed again, Molenski and Ivan went down to the ground floor. This was what Ivan considered the main level of the huge home. It contained entertaining and dining areas, offices, servant’s bedrooms and a galley style kitchen. It also housed a receiving dock, located behind the kitchen.
Ostensibly the dock was for deliveries of fresh produce and groceries, but unsurprisingly given its owner, it was also used for the discreet delivery of contraband, both large and small shipments.
Even before they reached the bottom of the stairs, the delicious aroma of freshly baked pumpkin pie wafted up to meet them. For the first time since he had awoken that morning, Dimitri Molenski thought of his wife.
The night before, he had ordered Isabella, his cook, to bake Tatiana a pumpkin pie as a welcome home from her trip to New York.
Tatiana, twenty years younger than Molenski and only freshly arrived from Russia, had certainly embraced her new American lifestyle. Strangely, pumpkin pie was her American dish of choice, although, being the fickle woman she was, it was more than possible she might have decided she hates it while she was away visiting her cousins.
“Good morning,” said the pretty Hispanic woman behind the countertop as they entered the gleaming kitchen.
Ivan smiled and nodded at Isabella, but Molenski ignored her as he looked at his TAG Heuer. 11:23 am, Tatiana was flying in at 2:30 that afternoon.
That would give him plenty of time to check out his new toy, but he would probably have to wait until later tonight before he played with it. It crossed his mind that perhaps Tatiana, who was much more open to his more sinister pastimes than his previous wife, would be interested in playing with it too. No another toy perhaps. This one was something personal to him, something no one would understand, and he intended to enjoy it all by himself.
“Pumpkin pie, dah?” asked Ivan, who had a liking for the cook. “Perhaps save me a slice?”
“Perhaps,” she said, noncommittally but smiling.
“Come, Ivan,” Molenski said, over his shoulder as he headed into the dining room and towards the balcony.
Ivan smiled at Isabella and shrugged before hurrying to catch up with his boss.
Through the floor to ceiling glass, Ivan could see Marina, Molenski’s personal assistant, enjoying a cup of coffee on the balcony that overlooked the rear of the estate and the city beyond its walls. The attractive brunette held a small tablet in her hands.
“What do you have there, Marina?” asked Molenski, sitting down at the table next to her.
Marina was dressed immaculately in a gray business skirt and crisp white shirt. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight bun.
“It’s the control tablet for…”
She stopped, looking over Molenski’s shoulder at Ivan.
“It’s fine. He’ll see soon enough.”
“Okay. Well, it’s the control tablet for your order.”
The item looked more like a small sheet of glass with words printed in on it than any tablet Ivan had ever seen.
She held it out, and Molenski accepted the wafer-thin object. He read the text on the screen then turned it over, watching as the print on the screen moved and then flipped over to be right side up again.
“Clever. But not practical. What happens if I drop it?”
“Genitix guarantees the control tablet for two years, sir, the same as the machine itself. The tablet, like the machine, is supposed to be invulnerable to all but the heaviest abuse.”
His eyes narrowed at the emphasis. She looked at him levelly.
Without breaking her gaze, he suddenly raised the tablet and smacked it against the table they were seated at. Marina flinched and involuntarily clapped her hand over her mouth.
Her boss held the tablet up and inspected it. It was undamaged.
He put it on the table as if bored.