Mircea spent the next day and half on extreme painkillers and rohypnol. When he came to, his jaw no longer ached, and it felt like the world has a crystal clean edge to it. Things seemed more in focus, somehow. He felt energised, despite having taken a whole chemical cornucopia of things to knock him out. With a determined smile, Mircea got out of bed and pulled on a fresh suit, but didn’t bother with a necktie. It felt strange, like he was half-dressed, and suddenly he had a glimmer of understanding in why Piotr and Ivan insisted on wearing sport clothes. He had some business to take care of, and some of it might come off on to his clothes.
As he needed muscle, he called in a bouncer from the club and Oleg, the sceptical young waiter. Oleg was a muscular, threatening-looking guy, but that’s not why Mircea chose him. He needed a message to get through to Oleg, and anyone else who was thinking of doubting him. Two birds with one stone, he thought as they pulled up to the laundry.
The stupid cow of a clerk paled as she saw Mircea come in. She scrambled for the ledgers, but Mircea held up a hand. “I don’t need the books,” he said calmly and evenly, giving her a friendly smile. Her eyes widened in incomprehension. “Is the one they call Milla in?” Mircea asked. Wordlessly, she nodded. Mircea gestured to the back room, and again, she nodded. Mircea nodded at the bouncer, who went to empty the back room of witnesses. The people leaving the room were complaining, but fell silent when they saw Mircea. He nodded pleasantly at them. “We’re going to close early today,” he told the clerk, and signalled Oleg to escort everyone out the front door. He waited until the laundry was empty, and Oleg had locked the front door.
“Shall we?” Mircea asked. He let Oleg go into the back room first.
The bouncer had Milla pinned to the table, her smock askew and her nose bleeding. Briefly, Mircea wondered what else the bouncer had done to her, but then he realised he didn’t care. He didn’t like the defiant look in her eyes, and she squirmed despite being in the bouncer’s grip. The big hulk of a man grabbed her hair to steady her, but she still glared at Mircea. She reminded him of the missionary Michael, and he didn’t like the way she was still managing to look down on him, despite being ever so much under his control. “Help Dmitri,” Mircea ordered Oleg, hoping he’d gotten the bouncer’s name right.
Oleg took a hold of Milla’s right arm, and he and Dmitri brought her over to face Mircea. Taking calm, even breaths, Mircea spat in Milla’s face. She flinched, and lost some of her defiant look. “The Church?” Mircea sneered. She struggled to keep her chin up, but her eyes were darting around, like some trapped wild animal’s. “You went crying to the priests and their lackeys?” He grabbed the front of her smock. “Those rich bastards who take money off the poor and do nothing for the common man…you thought they could help you?”
“They don’t make me whore for them!”
Mircea gave her a resounding slap, getting blood from her nose on his hand. “No one makes you whore, you stupid little bitch,” Mircea said, wiping his hand on her smock. “You do that all yourself, and you did it gladly until that German pansy told you otherwise.” Mircea tore her smock open, exposing her scrawny chest in a thin vest. Oleg leered, but Mircea didn’t want that. Raping Milla would humiliate her, but it wouldn’t shut her up. He spied a hook hanging on the wall behind her, a long rod they used to hoist wet laundry out of the large cauldron-like industrial washing machines. He tutted pityingly at her, and went to bring the hook down.
Milla fought to get free of Oleg and Dmitri’s grasp, wrenching herself back and forth, but to no avail. They were much bigger than she was, and they outnumbered her. “You can do what you like to me,” she bawled. “You already have done, and it didn’t stop me. You can’t use people to bring you money, like dirty playing cards. What makes you think you’re better than us?”
Mircea brought the hook down on her shoulder sharply. There was a loud snapping sound, and she went limp on that side. The hook was a bit long and unwieldy, but its power when you brought it down on human flesh from a height was undeniable. Milla’s collarbone was clearly broken.
“I think they have a baseball bat under the bash register,” Dmitri said excitedly. “I’ll go get it!” He shoved Milla into Oleg’s arms and went out of the back room.
Oleg was holding Milla, who could barely stand, and watched Mircea. Mircea liked the feel of the metal hook in his hands. He jabbed Milla in stomach with it, and she moaned.
“What makes me better than you is I’m not a stupid slut whose sole talent is between her legs,” he told Milla. To make a point, he prodded Milla’s abdomen sharply with the hook. “I don’t have dumb dreams of a fairy godmother magically making all my dreams come true in Western Europe somewhere.” He used the hook as a claw to rip the smock off her, scraping skin off her torso as he did. Dmitri came in with the baseball bat, eyeing Milla’s goosepimpled skin as she slumped in Oleg’s arms in her underwear.
“There is a God in heaven who’s watching everything you do,” Milla told Mircea in a weak voice.
Mircea took the baseball bat from Dmitry, letting the hook fall to the ground with an ominous clatter. “A God who watches, but does nothing,” he retorted. “Hold her steady, out in front of you,” he told Oleg. Bewildered, Oleg shoved Milla in front of him.
Mircea touched her face with the end of the bat, caressing it almost. “Do you know what your friends did to me?” he asked her. Milla swallowed hard, but said nothing. Her shoulder was turning a bright bluesish purple, and her arms hung limply by her side. “They used sorcery to give me pain.” Mircea tried to imagine the pain she was currently in form her broken collarbone, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy him. Dmitri picked up the hook from the floor in anticipation of being called on to use it.
“They used their powers to give me pain, but they couldn’t kill me. So you have to ask yourself, Milla, how these people can help you?” Mircea let the bat drop off her face. “What did you have to do to get them to hurt me, Milla?” He bumped her chin with the bat lightly.
“Nothing!” Milla hissed. Mircea chuckled.
“No kopek for the alms box? No little favour for the priest?”
“They’re not dirty, like you!” Milla cried. Dmitri moved forward, menacingly, but Mircea waved him away.
“I’m dirty” Mircea echoed mockingly. He dropped the bat from Milla’s face. “I can keep my hands off little kids. I don’t swear chastity to everyone and keep my own little harem of altar boys! Are you sure you want to go to these people, Milla?”
“They’re not like that!” Milla insisted. “They’re good men.”
“Good men who use black magic,” Mircea countered.
“That’s God punishing you!”
Mircea laughed at her. “Well, I’m the one who’s going to punish you, my little tattle tale!” He grabbed the baseball bat with both hands, the idea being fully formed in his head now. “Hold her out at arms’ length,” he advised Oleg. Oleg complied immediately, pushing Milla forward as he cowered behind her, eyes tightly closed. “I’ll teach you to go crying to the Church!” Mircea thundered.
With a small tight swing, Mircea brought the bat against Milla’s jawline. There was a horrible crunching sound, and teeth spurted from her mouth in a bloody arc. Not sure if he had done the kind of damage he wanted to do, Mircea swung the bat again, coming down lower on Milla’s head. The jolt from the impact rocketed up Mircea’s arm, and Milla collapsed, screaming. Her whole face was misshapen, her bloody jaw hanging loose. Mircea nodded to himself, recognising the pain he’d felt two days ago in her wailing. Dmitri swore, turning his face away from her in disgust, and behind Milla, still holding her up, Oleg was crying.
“That’s what your little friends did to me, Milla,” Mircea told her, keeping his eyes on the blood running down her vest. “I don’t have supernatural powers, so I had to do it to you the old-fashioned way, but you get the point.” He leaned in as close as he dared to her sobbing mess of a face, wrinkling his nose in the horrible smell of the fresh wound. “No one messes with my business. No one!”
He threw the bat to the ground and turned away. He was going to instruct Oleg to take her to the nearest hospital, but he had a better idea. “Dump her on the front steps of that Church she likes so much,” he told Oleg. “Let them take care of her, if they are so concerned!” He noticed how the mess had gotten on to his clean shirt, but missed his jacket entirely.
“Call me a taxi,” he ordered Dmitri, taking off his jacket so he could remove his filthy shirt. He stepped aside to let Oleg drag the moaning Milla out. It was hard to tell who was crying more, the wounded Milla or the snivelling Oleg. “Pull yourself together if you don’t want to end up like that!” Mircea snapped at the departing Oleg. Dmitri looked from Oleg to Mircea, grinning widely. It was easy to impress these people, Mircea realised.
Going to the machines at the back of the room, Mircea dropped his shirt into a hamper of soiled sheets, thinking he might as well toss it into the rubbish bin. He wouldn’t come back to claim it. “Give me your shirt,” he said to Dmitri, knowing it would be miles too big, but he couldn’t be seen shirtless, like some rent boy. He had a reputation to keep up.