Read The Flesh Cartel #3: Choices for Free Online

something more logical . . . and simultaneously much, much worse in mind.”
The fear in Mathias’s eyes eased, but the man would learn to distrust his own sense of relief soon enough.
For now, Nikolai let him keep his illusions, and they left the front hall and the wicked plug behind. The ground-level portion of the house was its public face, not that Nikolai entertained many guests: only the occasional client or fellow trainer. But keeping up the appearance of normality was necessary just in case. He hated the necessity of walking untrained animals through these halls, filthy and likely to piss on the rug as they were, but oh how he looked forward to the day when he could bring them back up again as proper pets.
Never Mathias, he reminded himself. Mathias would go to the basement now, and would return to the ground floor only on his way out again. Never to be trusted, or loved, or brought pampered to his bed upstairs. The upstairs—Nikolai’s private rooms, his sanctuary—was locked to everyone but him and a trusted few.
Poor bastard.
The basement. His workspace. Accessible by all manner of hidden doors and stairwells— today’s choice a secret panel set into the wall of a small storeroom—most of them known only to him, whatever dead man had been the architect of this place, and the man he’d inherited it from. Windowless. Soundproof.
As they descended the narrow, twisting stair, he wondered if these secret ways and rooms had always been used for the purpose he put them to now, or if it had a different pedigree. Illegal gambling? Smuggling? They were so far from everything here, he couldn’t imagine a drug trade or import/export or the pale, disgusting shadow of his own work with unsuspecting women trafficked in from the Third World and sent to work for cheap pimps. Why had he never asked his mentor when he’d had the chance?
Other things on my mind then, I suppose. They’d had so little time together, all things considered.
And really, did the place’s past matter, when its present work was so important? No more than it mattered that his fighter’s brother was supposed to become a doctor. Irrelevant.
Burn the past .
Says the sentimental fool who buys up his old charges.
Nikolai smiled to himself. Well, one could spare oneself the odd hypocritical indulgence.
Downstairs, he passed by the more traditional dungeon cell and had the guards place Mathias in a basic bedroom. Bending a will as strong as his without breaking it meant walking a line as fine as spider-silk; the man would need some comforts to stay on the right side of that line. Besides, as with those fortunate souls transformed at Nikolai’s hand, carrot would come into play in Mathias’s training as well as stick. Let him have a bed.
Even if, for the next several hours at least, he’d be chained to it.
“On the bed, gentlemen, if you would. Just chain one ankle, no need to pin him. A little slack is fine.”
Mathias fought like the animal he was, clearly thinking he was about to be used, and badly. A fine opportunity to test how desperate he was to protect his brother. Nikolai stepped into the fray, and sure enough, the thrashing limbs instantly stilled. Mathias looked on, face stamped with panic, horror , and said all in a rush, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you please I didn’t—”
“No,” Nikolai said, silencing him with a gentle hand to one twitching cheek. He was so pleased he almost considered forgoing the punishment, but that wouldn’t do, wouldn’t do at all. “You didn’t hit me. That was very good, Mathias. You’ve pleased me.”
Panic morphed into relief, and then, a moment later, disgust. Sheer contempt , as if the thought of having done something that pleased Nikolai was fundamentally offensive to his sensibilities.
“If I were training you as I train the others, I might just now have offered reprieve from the consequences you earned with your earlier disobedience. Unfortunately . . .” He shrugged— orders are