Anya gathered her tools again, the soft click of compacts and the muted rustle of brushes sliding into her palm.
I left him there—bleeding, shaking—and crossed the warehouse to the chair they had set against the wall. It scraped faintly against the concrete as I sat.
The second man’s eyes never left . Not even when Anya tilted his head, her fingers gentle but firm. His gaze tracked like prey tracks a predator, knowing the distance doesn’t make him safe.
I leaned back, letting my hands rest loosely on the armrests, and watched.
For a fleeting second, I wondered what Isabella was doing right now. If she was at a café with Aria, teasing her about sothing trivial. If she was laughing, crying, stuffing her mouth with delicacies or simply humming along to a song with aria. I hope she isn’t thinking about what happened to her and she is able to live her day normally.
The second man, whose na I couldn’t recall, whimpered as Anya’s cold fingers brushed his broken cheekbone. His eyes, still wide with petrified fascination, never left . He flinched away from the cloth, then the antiseptic, a pathetic imitation of the first man’s agony, his body trembling violently.
Cam, anwhile, repositioned the cara, the whir of its machinery a low, predatory hum. The red light blinked on again, a silent, unblinking eye.
Before Cam could give the signal, the words rushed out of him—fast, choked, tumbling over each other in his hurry to get them out. "Miss Isabella—I’m sorry—I’m so sorry— I shouldn’t have touched you— I shouldn’t have been there— I swear—please—please—"
I didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
I just let him run himself empty, voice cracking, hands twitching against the restraints.
When his breathing finally stuttered into silence, I shifted in my chair—just enough for him to see—and gave Cam the smallest nod.
The red light went dark.
For a mont, there was only the sound of the second man’s ragged, watery breaths, echoing the whimpers of the first.
The one that brought the cara over began breaking down the equipnt with an efficiency that was almost dismissive. The tripod legs collapsed with a series of clean clicks. Anya, her work complete, wiped her hands on a fresh cloth and retreated to the shadows by the far wall, a silent, waiting specter.
"The video," I began, my voice a low murmur, "is for her. It’s so she can see remorse. So she can have the closure she was denied." I paused, letting the words sink in. "But we all know that isn’t punishnt. It’s theater."
Gray waited at the edge of my vision, still as stone. I t his eyes. Whatever he saw there made him straighten almost imperceptibly.
"Understood," he said.
The air was thick with the stench of blood and fear, the kind that seeps into your clothes and clings to your skin long after you leave. It was one in the afternoon, the heat pressing in through the thin walls, and yet the air still felt colder with what was coming.
The n were still strapped to the chairs, arms wrenched tight against the armrests, legs lashed to the chair legs until the wood groaned under the strain. Their wrists bled where the rope bit into skin, shallow crimson pooling in the creases.
Gray crouched beside the first one, a syringe in hand. The other man mirrored him on the second. The plungers went down in unison, pushing that sa heat-inducing liquid into their veins—the sa poison that had burned through Isabella’s body.
It started subtle. Their eyes darted faster, nostrils flaring, chests rising and falling as the drug took hold. Then ca the twitching. Sweat streaked down their temples, their mouths curling into panicked grimaces.
I leaned back, watching them with the sa detachnt one might reserve for a faulty piece of machinery. My gaze tracked the trembling in their shoulders, the way their eyes darted toward the table where the tools lay.
Gray moved again.
No words. Just a pair of pliers in his hand and a slow, deliberate step toward the first man. The steel jaws clamped around his little finger.
A beat of silence—
Then the crunch.
The man’s scream tore through the air, raw and unrestrained, bouncing off the walls and back into him. His legs kicked uselessly against the restraints, the chair groaning under the violent tremors.
Across from him, the second man’s breath turned to quick, shallow gasps. He twisted in place as if the movent could keep the pain away. It couldn’t. The second enforcer—one of Gray’s n—was already mirroring the action, lining up the pliers with his ring finger.
Snap. Another scream, higher-pitched, almost breaking.
These n were still talking, still cursing under their breath, muttering between choked gasps and forced groans.
Their lips moved, their voices defiant. One of them, the larger of the two, started to squirm, pulling against his restraints. He cursed us out. He cursed , Caron, Gray—every one of us. His voice spit hatred, and his words were laced with disbelief, as if he couldn’t comprehend why he was being punished.
"You fucking bastards—let us go! What is this shit? You should’ve let us go already, we apologized. What the hell do you want, huh?"
He had the nerve to spit blood on the floor, lifting his head just enough to glare at .
"You got your little bitch back," he spat, voice cracked but mocking. "You made your damn point. Let us go, you sick fu—"
The words barely landed before sothing in twisted—hot, sharp, blinding.
And suddenly, I wasn’t in this room anymore.
I was back there.
Isabella—half-naked, clothes torn from her body.
Her wrists—red, raw, rope fibers still embedded in the skin.
Her eyes glazed, pupils blown wide from whatever they’d given her.
The bruises on her face that she thought I didn’t notice.
Her voice breaking on my na—"Adrien"—like she didn’t know if I was real.
The heat in my chest beca sothing else—darker, sharper.
I didn’t rember standing. My legs carried forward before the thought could catch up. My hand reached for the hamr on the table. Heavy. Solid. Warm from the heat of the room.
The man who had been cursing—spitting vile words like a rat cornered and desperate—his words stopped when he saw the hamr coming down. His eyes widened.
I didn’t hesitate.
The sound of impact was bone-shattering. The hamr sank into his thigh with a wet crack, the force rattling his entire body against the chair. He scread high and sharp.
Her bare shoulder flashing in the room, skin pale against the rope.
Crack.
Her gasp when the rope around her ankles ca loose.
Crack.
Her hands giving out when I carry her against .
Crack.
Her mouth open in a soundless gasp when I touched her face.
I swung again, and his femur snapped. He scread, jerking against the ropes until they burned his skin raw.
Crack.
The way she shook in the helicopter, even with my coat around her.
I drove the hamr into his knee, and it caved in, joint turning to pulp. Blood sprayed in a fan across the floor.
Crack.
Her hair sticking to her cheeks, damp with sweat and tears.
Sowhere past six, I wasn’t hitting his leg anymore—I was hitting him.
The hamr found ribs, side, hip, anything within reach.
He was screaming and sobbing and choking all at once, but it barely registered.
Sowhere past ten, I wasn’t swinging at him anymore. I was swinging at the mory. At the ropes on her wrists. Her exposed dignity. At the bruises. At my own failure.
Her voice, faint and slurred saying how hot she felt.
I swung again.
And again.
A hard grip caught my arm mid-swing.
"Adrien." Caron’s voice cut through the noise, low but edged in warning.
I pulled, but his hold only locked tighter as he stepped into my space.
For a breath, I wanted to take him down too.
My muscles scread, hot with adrenaline, wanting to tear free, to continue the destructive frenzy. But Caron’s grip was unyielding, a band of iron around my forearm. Not aggressive, but firm, a tether pulling back from the brink.
"Enough," he said. "You kill him now, he won’t feel the rest of what’s coming."
For a long, agonizing mont, the only sounds were my own ragged, heaving breaths, the guttural whimpers of the man I’d just brutalized, and the distant, rapid gasps of the second captive.
Caron’s grip remained, a cool anchor against the inferno of my rage. My vision slowly cleared, the red haze dissipating to reveal the shattered reality of the room.
The man slumped in the chair, his head lolling. His thigh was a mangled ruin, an unnatural lump distorting the fabric of his trousers where bone should have been. Blood pulsed sluggishly from the deep wounds, pooling on the floor beneath him. He wasn’t cursing now. He was making choked, wet noises, like an animal caught in a trap, too broken to even scream properly.
Caron didn’t let go until he felt the tension drain slightly from my shoulders, until my muscles, still screaming for release, stopped their automatic clenching.
Then the hamr slipped from my grip, clattering to the floor. The noise felt far too loud in the sudden quiet. I didn’t look back as I stepped away, and started for the door. The begging followed , thin and desperate.
Cam fell into step beside , the warehouse air clinging to us like smoke as we left them to their fate.
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