Just how far could he push?
When would Pav break?
It had all been a game to him.
Now, Pav didn’t know how to be anything but the man that he was—this thing that Vadim had molded him into. Somedays, he wasn’t sure that he felt human. Other days, he felt embarrassingly human and weak.
“So, you’re saying you don’t feel bitterness for me?” Vadim asked.
“I feel very little for you, Vadim.”
The man did look up at that, and his gaze locked on Pav. “Shame, you would have died on those streets had I not taken you in.”
“Maybe death would have been better—did you ever consider that?”
“Not even once. Ask your father how death suited him, boy. If he could talk, I doubt he would tell you that was the better option.”
Pav’s jaw tightened as he clenched his teeth in an effort to keep the sudden surge of anger at bay. He had no doubt that Vadim knew exactly what he was doing. Purposely poking at Pav and all his weaknesses. Things that he kept tight to his chest—things no one else knew and that he told no one. Oh, he was sure some knew that his father had been killed by Vadim, and that was how he’d come to the Boykov Compound, but he doubted they really understood all the details. Or what came for years afterward, either.
“Well, I don’t know what my father would say, do I?” Pav smiled just as coldly as Vadim had moments earlier. “You never gave me the chance to hear him speak when it would have mattered to me the most.”
Vadim scoffed. “Boys. Boys and their fathers. Fathers in this life forget all too often that the boys they bring into the world are nothing but little soldiers who need to be taught how to behave. They’re not meant to be spoiled hellions running wild. That will do them no good when their time comes for the Bratva.”
“I didn’t know anything about the Bratva back then.”
“Another error on your father’s part.”
Pav swallowed hard. “What did you do to him, anyway? Where did you bury him?”
If they even did …
Vadim shrugged as he slathered cream cheese on a bagel like they weren’t having a conversation about the murder of Pav’s father fourteen years earlier. He might have been bothered by that on another day, but frankly, he was accustomed to this. He found comfort in death more than anything else.
Something else caused by Vadim.
“Amusing,” Vadim said under his breath.
“What is?”
“That you assume he was immediately killed that night.”
Pav stiffened in the chair, all of his muscles and bones turning into ice at the simple suggestion Vadim had just made. “Excuse me?”
“Your father stole from me. Just a bit off the top, yes, but I couldn’t let it go. He was a good soldier, and brought in decent money, but if I allowed him to take a bit off the top without some type of punishment, then every man working under me would assume they could do the same.”
Pav refused to speak.
He knew how this worked.
Vadim didn’t actually want a response; he wanted Pav to sit there, shut the fuck up, and listen to him as he laid every dirty, horrible detail on the table. And when it was all said and done, he wanted Pav to walk away because he knew there was nothing the man could do about the misdeeds he’d committed.
“What would I make you do with a thief when one was brought down?” Vadim asked. “If, of course, you were lucky enough to know I had brought you a thief to keep in the chambers for a while.”
Pav didn’t want to answer.
He knew.
Wasn’t that bad enough?
“Well?” Vadim demanded, glancing up. “Speak, I know you can.”
“He’d be kept alive, but throughout the weeks, he would lose pieces of himself—tips of fingers, then down to the knuckles. Strips of skin. His ears. Toes. Nose. Lips …” Pav swallowed the thickness in his throat, refusing to show how hard his heart was beating or the fact that it ached with each and every one. “Anything we could take without him dying, that’s what we would do. And only once that was done would he die.”
“And about how long would this process take, Pav?”
Fuck you.
Fuck you to hell.
“A month, give or take a week,” Pav murmured.
Vadim nodded and smiled again as he peered up at him from his bagel. “Was he a good father to you?”
“Yes.”
“Did he smack you around or shout a lot?”
“Never.”
Not even once.
Vadim shrugged one shoulder, before biting his bagel. He chewed, swallowed, and then muttered, “Sometimes, I would have them record you in the chambers as you cried … when you were alone in the dark, asking for him … and we would let him watch it over and over before we took something else from—”
Pav was fast to get up from the table then, his hands already reaching out to grab Vadim and choke the fucking life right out of him. He would kill this man right there, with that bite of bagel still slipping down his fat throat, and he wouldn’t regret even one second of it. To his credit, Vadim didn’t look at all surprised when Pav came at him. If anything, the man looked amused.
The thing that stopped him?
The sound of a door slamming.
Pav looked over his shoulder in just enough time to see Viktoria crossing the grass. She wore a flimsy dress that danced around her legs with every step she took. She’d let her icy-blonde hair down, and it flowed over her shoulders and back. In her arms, it looked like she was carrying a blanket.
“She does this a lot,” Vadim said. “Never sleeps at night, and then
