I just stared into his blue eyes.
“That’s right, Dr. Danvers. It won’t be long now. When your boyfriend shows up, you’re going to get a front row seat to his death. Then,” a perverse smile spread across his face, “we’re going to dispatch you.”
Again, I found myself fighting back the words that wanted to come crashing forth. There were so many things I wanted to say in protest, but I didn’t want to give him any ammunition against me.
“Do you want to know how we’re going to do it?” He sounded like a guilty child taking pleasure in whatever it was that he wasn’t supposed to be doing.
I didn’t answer, but the giant Russian still leaned forward to speak in my ear.
“I’m going to cut you free from this chair with the knife you gave me. Then, as you try to get free from me, I’m going to give the knife back to you. I’m going to stab you, Dr. Danvers. I’m going to stab you so, so many times.”
He sounded like the idea of stabbing me repeatedly was getting him off. My skin crawled at the creepy, erotic tone in his voice.
“You’re a sick man,” I hissed.
He took a shaky breath in my ear, and I felt my stomach heave. Then, he laughed at my revulsion.
“I never told you how much it meant to me that you would come down and talk to me by yourself, Dr. Danvers. Your personal interest in my captivity was touching,” he said. “I want to thank you.”
I tilted my head, unsure of what he really meant.
“You inspired me. I waited to see you. I knew that eventually the tables would turn, and I would be faced with the same decision you had to make, where to place my loyalty. In realizing that I would be faced with that choice, I had to evaluate my loyalty in the basement of Gage’s clubhouse,” he continued tormenting me.
“What did you decide?” I asked, though I knew the answer already. I could tell he wanted me to ask.
“I decided that, unlike you, my loyalty is unwavering. I am loyal to Ivan. Are you even loyal to yourself, Julia? I imagine if you were, you wouldn’t have even taken a job from someone like Gage in the first place. Or were you bored with your life? Were you searching for a way out? Is that why you took the job from an obvious thug like him? Were you trying to shake things up?” He flooded me with questions. He was good at filling my head with doubts.
They were all good questions that I needed to be asking myself, especially since I didn’t have any good answers for them. I’d been wondering why I had taken Gage’s job offer since that first day. So far, I couldn’t think of any good reasons beyond needing the money to help with my mother’s bills. At the same time, being stuck in this life, I hadn’t been able to take the time to address any of the important daily concerns of my normal life.
Oh, but if I made it out of this mess, I would have a great story to share. That thought brought a smile to my face. Dimitri didn’t seem too amused by my smile, though.
“Is something funny, Dr. Danvers? Is your betrayal of yourself and of your boyfriend funny to you? It’s not going to be funny to him when he sacrifices himself to try to rescue you,” he taunted me.
I didn’t respond. In fact, his reaction made me settle into that smile, allowing it to spread further across my face, ear to ear, just because it drove him crazy.
“Wait,” he said. “If we let him see you here, if he knows you’re alive, you might be in even more danger. He might decide to sacrifice you so he can escape with his life again. No, no, we can’t have that, Dr. Danvers. We’re going to have to kill you first, I guess.” A smile crossed his face now. “We may even kill you before he gets here so that he finds your body when he arrives.”
We were back to his little fantasy about murdering me. I was beginning to understand why he’d taken this line of work over many other things he could have done with his physique. He took far too much pleasure in the violence of it all.
“The possibilities are endless,” he continued, smiling like a schoolboy. “If you’ll excuse me, Dr. Danvers, I’m going to go work this out a little more. I need to decide exactly what I’m going to do, how I’m going to do it, and when it needs to happen.”
I rolled my eyes as he stepped out of the room again. I began to wonder if there was a practical reason for his restlessness. I wondered if he wasn’t talking so much shit to cover up the fact that he really was scared of Gage and his men. After all, they had defeated men who had presumably been trained to kill their targets with some measure of efficiency.