"It's disorienting, but it will also make him think I plan to release him alive. If he thinks there's a chance, he'll be much more likely to offer me valuable information in exchange for his life," Rafe murmured, pulling a hair tie from his pocket and securing my hair into a low ponytail at the back of my head. "But I don't expect him to have much of value to give me that I do not already know from my Russian contact."
He took my hand, guiding me into the shed as I swallowed back my fear of what I might see. Could I really watch him kill a man and accept that? My stomach churned with nausea, my breathing coming in ragged breaths that felt like they pulled from my soul rather than my lungs.
The shed door was open as we approached, Maxim hung from a hook in the ceiling in the center of the shed. With his arms extended up over his head, he was shirtless with only his pants hanging around his hips. I immediately had the distinct impression that he might have been nude if not for my presence, but Rafael wouldn't want me to look at another man's cock.
That was just fine for me. It would have been like seeing a four-year-old's stick figures after a Van Gogh. I'd already seen the pinnacle of beauty.
Nothing else could ever compare.
Racks hung from the walls, all sorts of tools I didn't recognize covering them and hanging along the edges. The hood had been pulled off Maxim's face before they strung him up, and his pale blue gaze landed on me as he struggled against the rope wrapped around his wrists. With a groan for the tension in his shoulders, he snarled at me and turned his attention to Rafael just as he released my hand and moved to the wall. He studied the various tools in thought as I watched.
"How nice of you to bring me a snack, Devil," Maxim said, his voice strained despite the bravado. His stare fell back on me, and I suddenly wished I had more clothes on. The yellow wrap dress felt too feminine to be in a shed filled with torture devices. It felt too revealing to have a murder victim leering at me.
Rafe chose a bat off the wall, turning suddenly and swinging it with all his might until it connected with Maxim's stomach with a loud crack of bone. Maxim groaned as he swung back and forth in the room, the chains clanking above his head. Rafe swung the bat again, striking the back of Maxim's shoulder. I watched as it dislocated, the arm slipping out of the shoulder joint as he screamed.
"That's my fucking snack," Rafael warned, his voice deeper and more menacing. The devil played at the surface of his face, his multicolored eyes gleaming joyfully as he tortured his enemy. I swallowed back the bile in my throat, trying to remind myself that I didn't know what the other man was capable of. He could have been a murderer for all I knew.
But so was Rafael.
The lines of right and wrong were so blurred for him that all I could do was imagine him being the one hanging from the rafters while an enemy tortured him. "I can't do this," I whispered, drawing Rafe's eyes to me.
He closed the distance between us, reaching up a hand to cup the back of my neck gently. He traced soothing circles against the skin there, working to calm me as his forehead touched mine and those glowing eyes danced right before my face. "You can," he said, reassuring me. "Do you want to be a pawn in the games of men?" He paused, his hand moving to wrap around the front of my throat. "Or do you want to be mi reina?"
Staring up at him, I swallowed as I bit my lip. Indecision warred within me. For all his pushing, this was the moment where Rafael gave me the choice. He let me decide this one thing about my future, and I was so tired of being a pawn in the games other people played.
I wanted to be a fucking Queen.
I shoved down the impulse to run, nodding against his face slightly. When he was certain I was stable enough, he tossed the bat to the table at the edge of the shed and grabbed a loop of barbed wire off the wall. My heart stuttered as he unwound it, wrapping the length around Maxim's stomach three times. "Grab the wire cutters," he ordered, drawing me into his game. I nodded, moving to the wall and grabbing them off the hook where they hung. I paused just before I reached him, hesitating for only a moment and then cutting the wire in the place Rafe indicated. He grabbed the tail of the wire in his hands, ignoring the way the barbs tore the skin of his palms open and pulled it tight until they dug into the skin of Maxim's stomach.
My hand involuntarily drifted down to the scar on my thigh, feeling more vulnerable with the reminder of the pain that had torn my leg open as a girl. Broken ribs and dislocated shoulder were a pain I didn't know. They were a pain I would hopefully never understand. The barbed wire was something I understood.
Rafael picked up the bat again, slamming it into the wire wrapped around Maxim’s stomach until the barbs sunk deep and his skin turned an angry red as blood trickled out from the wounds. His eyes met mine as I forced back my horror and then he disappeared around the back of Maxim's body. "Usually I don't like my victims
