There’s no monologue and no bargaining as I descend on him in seconds.
There’s just pure violence.
Grabbing him by the throat, I slam him into the wall hard enough to crack the drywall and probably his spine along with it. His feet dangle as he kicks and whimpers, but I ignore the weak display.
Pathetic.
“I want locations,” I hiss. “Every safehouse, every contact, every shadow the Reaper has crawled into.”
“I can’t,” he chokes. “She’ll kill me.”
“You say that as if I won’t do the same if you don’t talk.”
I drop him and slam a fist into his ribs. He crumples, red splatters flying from his mouth when he coughs.
“You think you know fear?” I sneer, crouching beside him. “I was raised by it. Forged in it. I do not flinch, and I so not blink. You are not dealing with a man. You are dealing with a fucking monster. I suggest you not piss me off any more than you have or you will learn why everyone whispers my name.”
His eyes widen when I pull the blade from the holster at my hip.
We’re notorious, me and my knife made from the femur of a traitor. One edge of the blade is sharp and smooth, the other serrated and deadly. It’s the kind of knife meant for slicingandgutting.
I drag the smooth side across his cheek. A caress just gentle enough to make him scream.
My nose crinkles in disgust when he pisses himself instead.
“You have sixty seconds before I stop being patient.”
“I . . . I can give you something,” he wheezes. “There’s a house in Philly. She meets someone there. I don’t know who, some kind of broker. Information. Drugs. Forbidden shit. It’s big, man. She’s building something—”
“Keep talking.”
“She said you wouldn’t find her. That she’s the endgame. That she’s evolved past you. That soon she’ll be the one everyone fears.”
Then he laughs.
“That was a mistake,” I whisper, driving the blade through his thigh and twist.
His screams create such a beautiful symphony of agony as they echo through the building.
“You think you are part of that endgame?” I whisper, leaning close. “You are a pawn to her. And pawns do not get endings. They are the ones knocked from the board first.”
He’s sobbing now, babbling anything he believes will save his life. Another name. A location. A drop point.
When he finally falls quiet, I wrap my fingers around his throat.
“Konstantin,” he whimpers. “Wait . . . wait . . .”
“The Bogeyman does not wait on anyone. Tell the devil I say hello,” I say.
A surge of energy flashes through me, an unnatural amount of strength rushing to my fingertips, allowing me to snap his neck with barely a twitch. Like a puppet with his strings cut, Kron drops to the grimy floor in a heap.
No more pathetic sniveling from a soldier in a war that he was never going to win.
I wipe the blade on his shirt, pocket the burner phone from his table, and turn to leave.
But just before I step through the broken doorway, I pause. There, on the wall in front of me, is a crude and almost childlike drawing of a reaper.
A calling card left for me to find.
