There was rage, sure.
But there was hatred, too.
Hatred was a whole different kind of beast for Pav. He could subdue his rage—he could feed it with something other than violence to keep it in its cage until he was ready to act upon it. Hatred, though?
He couldn’t control that at all.
Right then, it’s all he felt, too.
At some point during their time with Vadim, Kolya had pulled a chair across the room, and forced Pav to sit in it whether he wanted to or not. That was fine—he continued to sit right in front of Vadim, regardless of the man’s opinion of his proximity. He wanted a constant reminder on Vadim’s mind of what was coming for him soon.
Very fucking soon.
Like right now.
Pav jumped out of that chair like he was a bullet coming through a gun. He’d never been so focused on one thing before—never zoned in on just one thing that nothing else existed. Except for Viktoria, maybe.
It wasn’t the same thing.
He never wanted to kill her.
Pav greatly wanted to kill Vadim.
Those knives he’d been playing with all evening, another constant reminder for Vadim to see while the two sat only inches apart, were back in his grip and ready to be used again. He never felt more comfortable and more at peace than when he was holding a knife—or fucking Viktoria. Two entirely different things, sure, and yet they both brought him a calm like nothing else ever could.
Vadim couldn’t even prepare for the man coming at him. He leaned back a bit, but where the hell was he going to go? The high-back, leather chair stopped him from being able to get away, and given that Pav was already sitting so close to him, it wasn’t like the asshole could come forward without ramming right into him.
He was fucked.
Pav liked that.
The tip of one of his blades caught Vadim right on his lower, right eyelid. The other came to the right side of his mouth to catch him on the very corner of his mouth. He started with the eyelid first, pulling the blade down through the skin so that when it tried to heal, the scar would be horrible, and the pain would be made worse by the fact every blink would pull on the wound.
He kept the blade at the corner of Vadim’s mouth pulled taut to keep him in place while he worked on the other side of his face. Vadim let out a shout, and his hands came up in an attempt to fight back against Pav, but it was useless.
“Try me right now, and that knife is slicing through your fucking cheek,” Pav said. “The blade is so sharp … it won’t take very much at all for it to do the job. Never took you for a Glasgow kind of man, Vadim, but if you want one, keep it up.”
The grin.
A scarred grin.
Vadim knew exactly what Pav was talking about, and the man was quick to stop his fight. That didn’t mean it stopped hurting him, because it didn’t. At all. He could feel Vadim’s trembling, and the way the blood from his cut mouth pooled down his chin onto his shirt. The other side of his face? Even worse.
“This,” Pav said, his voice deathly dark and yet calm at the same time as he stared into Vadim’s eyes. “… this is a fucking taste of what will happen to you if I don’t get her back in the same perfect condition she was in before this happened. Do you understand me, Vadim? This is going to get so much worse for you … it doesn’t matter what happens in Chicago because you’re never leaving this house. Not with a heartbeat in your chest, anyway.”
Pav laughed, the sound surprising even himself with how cold it came out. He leaned in a little closer to Vadim, enough that the two of them were only a breath away from each other as his gaze locked on Vadim’s. He could smell the liquor on the man’s breath that he’d seen sipping on, but it didn’t bother him nearly as much as the deadness in Vadim’s gaze did. It was as though he couldn’t feel anything at all.
Funny.
Pav often felt the same way.
Just not right now.
He finally pulled the knife away from the man’s face, but he kept the one at his mouth just in case he needed a fucking reminder about who exactly was in charge here.
“And I will personally make sure that your heart is no longer beating.” Pav told the man, tapping the tip of his knife against Vadim’s chest all the while, “Because I will fucking cut this organ out of your chest and burn it.”
“Pavel.”
Kolya’s sharp warning echoed in the back of Pav’s senses, but it took the man calling his name another three times before he finally backed away from Vadim. And even then, he continued pointing that knife at Vadim like a silent warning.
He needed to know.
Pav liked it when people saw him coming.
“We’ve got a call,” Kolya said.
At that statement, Pav did glance over his shoulder. When had the phone rang? Because he hadn’t heard anything. Then again, he had just been two seconds away from slicing Vadim into the smallest of pieces that he could manage. He was still in that headspace, if he were being honest.
Instead of sitting in the chair like he’d been before, Kolya was now standing in the doorway to the room. Pav didn’t even know when the man had left—his attention
