The man was thrown against the wall, landing hard and sinking to the floor. He turned to see his assailant entering the small room with him, a man in a dark coat and hat, with piercing, menacing green eyes. Matthias walked over, closing the door and grabbed the man by his collar, and pulled him up against the wall. “Where are you meeting him?” he whispered angrily into his ear.

The man simply glared back at his assailant, and spat in his face. Matthias threw the man down on the floor face down and stomped on his head, drawing blood from the man’s nose and staining his face and the floor beneath.

“I have your friend next door saying you arranged a deal with a very important client,” Matthias said, pushing down harder on his boot. “I want to know who your client is, and where you’re meeting.”

“Go to hell!” the man grunted.

             Matthias turned the man over and pulled him back on his feet. “Is it really worth going through all this? Is it really worth letting your friends suffer the same?”

“I’m not talking to you, you son of a whore!”

Matthias punched the man in his already busted nose, leaving the man in terrible pain as he curls up on the floor, holding back the torrent of blood from his nose.

Matthias knelt down next to the man, a knife in his hands, placing it right on the back of the man’s neck and moving it back and forth ever so slightly. “If you think I can’t kill you, you’re very wrong. I haven’t done it yet because you can be useful to me. If you don’t talk, you’re useless to me. And three guesses what will happen then. If you do talk, however, you get to keep your life, such as it is. You leave this place, and if you’re lucky, you’ll never see me again.”

The man was obviously in a lot of pain, and could feel the knife edge against his neck. He could tell from Matthias’ voice that there was no way he would survive the way things carried on. The thief did the only thing he could do in that situation.

“All right, all right, I’ll talk,” he said, “