Fire Bound (Sea Haven Sisters)(70)

He opened the door cautiously, inch by inch, listening for an alarm, a noise, anything that would tell him someone waited on the other side. In all the surveillance he’d done on the building, he hadn’t seen anyone else come or go other than Luigi. That meant whoever was inside with Arturo was a prisoner. That man would present a problem if he saw Casimir. He wore his older gentleman persona, but still, he didn’t want a witness. Arturo’s death needed to look natural.



He found himself in an entryway, a large rectangular room with low-slung couches and a couple of overstuffed chairs. An empty fish tank took up an entire corner and there were several paintings on the wall, nude couples in various sexual positions, all depicting various types of bondage.

His heart sank. He knew what this was. Luigi was reputed to run a very brisk prostitution business, providing a particular service to men or women with “unique” preferences. The women commanded high prices for their services because they catered to a very sick lot. Luigi made certain that the circle of very sick patrons returned often and that the circle kept expanding. The women had to be trained somewhere. He’d just discovered Luigi’s school.



The idea nauseated him. He’d been trained in the art of sex, every deviant and perverted act possible. Every type of seduction. The lessons had been brutal, and more than once a female partner had been killed for not performing up to the instructor’s standards. He knew the type of sadistic person it took to train a man or woman in the kinds of sexual technique Luigi wanted from his girls.

He checked for cameras, but there were none in the waiting room. The main working area had to be behind the closed door. He shut down all emotion. That kept him sane, it always had kept him sane. There was no room for Casimir Prakenskii. No room for fire or anger, or anything that resembled emotion. He couldn’t feel for the victims. He could only exact justice as dispassionately as possible.



He stepped through the door into his own personal nightmare. The body of a once-beautiful woman, broken and bloody, hung by her wrists from cuffs attached to chains dangling from the ceiling. Blood spatter was on the wall behind her as well as in a circle around the body on the floor. Casimir knew she was already dead, just from the way the body hung. She was nude and there were hundreds of whip marks, old and new, cut deep into her flesh.



“I don’t know what the hell happened, Luigi,” Arturo’s voice came from around the corner. “She just died. Her fuckin’ eyes rolled back in her head and the next thing I know, she was dead. I don’t know, maybe I took it too fast for her. She just died. I’m going to have to get rid of the body. I figured I’d take her back to her estate in a couple of hours and then throw her over the cliff after Cosmos. You know, widow jumps to her death after husband dies.”



In spite of his resolve not to feel anything, the fire in his belly began to burn through the ice he’d laid over top of it. This woman was Cosmos’s widow, Carlotta. Luigi and Arturo had taken her from her home and planned to force her into prostitution. There was no remorse in Arturo’s voice, only disgust.



“Now? You want me to get rid of her now? I suppose it’s dark enough. Yeah, I’ll take her out there now and I’ll be back in an hour or so. It won’t take long. Yeah. I’ll fucking weigh her body down so no one finds it. Don’t worry. This won’t be a problem.”



Casimir backed out of the room and slipped back outside. There was going to be another accident at the cliff. Arturo was going to die there. He waited in his car until Luigi’s bodyguard came out of the building with the body – wrapped in a blanket – over his shoulder. He dumped it in the trunk of his car, went back and locked the building before driving away.

Casimir didn’t have to follow directly behind. He already knew where Arturo was going. Every mile made the fire burning in his gut grow hotter. He had training. Discipline. Control. He had it all, but he let it go. Rolling down the window, he drew the night air as deep into his lungs as possible. Lissa was facing her nightmare of an uncle, he had to face his past. The sight of that broken body and hearing Arturo talking on his phone to Luigi, clearly uncaring that he’d killed a woman, brought every memory he’d buried flooding back.



He was a trained killer. An assassin. He had taken out so many targets he’d lost track, yet he had more regard for life than Arturo, Luigi or any of his instructors ever had. He had found, over the years, that perhaps the law was in place for a reason, but some of the biggest monsters fell through the cracks. Men like him were necessary. Not good, but necessary.