Shadows in the Water Series: Books 1, 2 and 3 by Kory M. Shrum

Author:Kory M. Shrum
Language: eng
Format: epub

15

Nico entered the large warehouse, his bootsteps reverberating up to the high ceilings. His men, because who was left was his now, stood against the walls, out of the way of center floor.

Eight men sat on their knees with black sacks over their heads, their hands tied behind their backs sat center stage. Nico had learned this technique from his captors in Russia. In the work camp, they used all manner of intimidation to lord over the men kept there. They stripped them naked, whipped them, starved them, blocked out their vision with blindfolds. Restrained them with ropes or suspended them in the air. It might seem counter intuitive, but Nico understood there was something especially cruel about blindfolding. The darkness heightened the fear.

It was warfare of the mind. No one could torture a man like the mind itself could. And the blindfold was only the first step in unleashing that tethered mind. Without the outer world to distract it, the mind turned on itself.

So he was not surprised that two of the eight men were openly weeping as they sat on their knees, head hung.

Only three were perfectly still, listening and waiting as their training had instructed. The other three were near hyperventilation. The sacks over their faces compressed and expanded with each panicked breath. Nico wouldn’t let them suffer for long.

He crossed the large space to the man standing in its center. A camera tripod set up before him. This man, Jonathan, wasn’t one of the ones that Nico trusted implicitly. There were several such men, hanging around in the dark of this warehouse two kilometers outside of Florence, further down the bend in the Arno than Ponte Vecchio.

Nico had killed those who were openly loyal to Martinelli’s bastard. He’d put a bullet between every pair of eyes. But the silence was contagious. Quickly, they’d stopped fighting him and fell in line. That was how it should be. But Nico was certain that was for the sake of their own lives or families, and not out of any true loyalty to Nico.

If he was lucky, Konstantine was dead now. Bled to death in the arms of the bitch who tried to save him. Nico had pumped enough bullets in his guts to have done the job. And if not, that knife in the back should’ve done the job. But Nico had lived in the labor camps a long time. He understood that some men were simply harder to kill. And he was open to the possibility that Konstantine was such a man. And perhaps also the bitch.

If they lived, and if Konstantine intended to return with his dog to reclaim the Ravengers, he had a plan for that too.

“When are we going live?” Nico asked the cameraman. He repressed the urge to put his thumb to his mouth and chew on the meat of it. It was a habit from childhood and one that had always risen with his nervousness. But this was no time to show weakness.

All eyes followed him around the room, assessing him.

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