He paused. I wasn’t prepared to wait. I expected him to be more forthcoming with information now that I’d pissed him off. I could almost hear him thinking about which details he felt comfortable letting me know. I stared at his arms with the ropes strapping them down to the arms of the chair. I couldn’t help but wonder if he would have been more willing to talk if I could give him a little room to move around.
Then, I noticed he seemed dirty. I wondered how he would have gotten dirty sitting in this room. It was fairly clean, if a little dusty.
“All I know is there will be some shady government officials and members of law enforcement there,” he said reluctantly. He obviously wanted me to know he knew what he was talking about without having to provide any real information.
“I’m sorry, what? What government officials?” My eyes were bulging out of my head. This was not at all what I expected to hear from him.
He laughed slowly, dryly. “How do you think Ivan gets away with what he does without ever getting caught?” he asked me. “He pays off government officials and law enforcement so he gets to stay in business. You really are new to this, aren’t you?” he mocked me.
“I told you I am. Now, tell me who’s going to be there.” I couldn’t contain my excitement or my revulsion at his news.
He didn’t answer. I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel him smiling in the dark.
“Dammit, Dimitri.” I smacked the table. “Who is going to be there?” I stood up, leaning over the table towards him.
He laughed at me, a slow, menacing laugh. He was mocking my insistence. I felt foolish for pressuring a man I couldn’t even see. I needed to see him. I reached up for the light, but the fixture was too hot to touch, threatening to scorch my fingers from just the lightest touch. I hit it, knocking it side to side, shifting the light with it so I could see the Russian tied in front of me.
And what I saw sickened and enraged me. I finally saw why he wasn’t talking. I saw why he was so amused at my attempts to “help” him by getting information from him. I saw why he coughed and spit up when he tried to talk to me.
And, most importantly, I saw why Gage had tried to stall me for as long as he did.
As the light swayed back and forth between us, it revealed too many details to take in at once. What was happening to this man was nothing short of torture.
Dimitri’s left eye was swollen shut, and he had bruises already forming all over his face.
The light moved away from his face, shining towards me now and shrouding him in the darkness beyond its reach. When it swayed back, I could see that blood was dripping from his mouth, where his lips were split swollen, but I couldn’t tell if he was missing any teeth or anything like that.
The light swayed between us again, shrouding him and giving me a moment to recover from the sight of Dimitri’s face. When it returned to him, I saw his bloodied nose and the tired, humorless eyes of a defeated man. He wasn’t broken, though. If anything, he seemed amused by Gage’s attempt to torture him. I was certain he would prove to be able to take much more damage than his body had already sustained.
Then, the light moved again. When it moved back to him, I saw the blood stains on his shirt and on his arms. From where I stood, I could even see the blood he’d spat onto the floor.
The light continued to sway between us like a slow strobe partially revealing the horrible violence inflicted upon the man sitting in front of me. I grew angrier and angrier each time the light forced me to see what had been done to him.
“Who did this to you?” I asked, though it didn’t matter. I knew who had given the order, no matter who had actually carried it out.
“Two big guys,” Dimitri answered. “I don’t know their names, but they came in here with Gage. I’m guessing he ordered them to beat me before he left the room.”
I thought back to my meeting with him earlier. The only two big guys I’d seen come in upstairs were Juarez and Chase. In fact, it wasn’t until after they’d come up that Gage finally stopped fighting to keep me upstairs. They must have been the ones who had come down with him to check on Dimitri.
“I can’t believe that bastard.” I spat the words out of my mouth. “Dimitri, I am so sorry this happened to you. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Are you going to be okay?”
He gave me a bloody smile. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ve been through much worse than what those guys did to me.”
“Something told me you’d say that.” I turned and started to walk away from the table.