Chapter 9 Dante #3
Getting the truth out of people is never pretty.
After trying softer methods and watching cunning men fold while others dug in their heels, I decided on something simpler.
The cage isn’t theatrical—it’s practical.
It leaves them with one thing they can’t bargain away: time alone with their conscience.
Torture is messy, and people in this line are trained to take pain. But nothing breaks them like the mind does. Isolation, time, the steady erosion of certainty—those are the real weapons. Days and weeks in this glass box chew through the toughest people until they crack.
“Jesus Christ, what is this!” Scott screams, palm slapping the glass so hard the sound ricochets through the space. He tries to stand, pressing against the wall, fingers splayed flat, eyes wide with a kind of animal panic. “You fucking sadist!”
He stomps like a child, his fury quick and ridiculous, then launches a boot at the glass with everything he has. For a moment, the impact hangs in the air before Scott groans, pulling back quickly as if he’s afraid the wall might strike him in return.
“Keep trying,” I say, my voice unemotional. “It won’t work. If you want out, it’s best for you to cooperate.”
He laughs, the sound hollow, devoid of humor. “Do you think I’m fucking stupid?” he spits.
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
His shoulders collapse before the fight drains out of him.
He drags himself back until his spine hits the wall, then slides down slowly.
“I won’t tell you shit,” he says, forcing the words out even as the performance slips away.
He buries his face in his hands and mutters the same broken syllables over and over, his body jerking in a rhythm that looks like crying without making a sound.
I let my eyes fall shut for a moment, just long enough for a different world to surface.
A hotel room blooms behind my eyelids—clean sheets pulled tight, a steaming bath waiting, a glass of good whiskey sweating on the nightstand.
I hold that image like a talisman, letting its warmth spill through the cracks in my mind while, on the other side of the glass, Scott thrashes in his rising panic.
I give him the moment. Let him flail. Let the hopelessness thicken in the air, settling heavy on his lungs. Let the isolation wrap its hands around him, slow and inevitable.
It always works.
I could hand this off to Jason—give him the script, the questions, the pressure, the final cut. But I don’t trust him to close it out. I can’t give it to Lucia either; this place gives her the creeps, as she always liked to say.
The endgame has always been mine. Not because I’m a nutjob who gets off on killing people, but because I prefer the burden. I’d rather carry the worst part alone. It doesn’t make me noble; it makes the logistics easier for everyone else. It keeps their hands cleaner. It keeps the team moving.
I let him stew longer, watching the way his chest rises and falls, the way his eyes lose focus and then sharpen on nothing. Psychological collapse isn’t immediate—it creeps and crawls. And it’s that crawling that makes people trade secrets for the smallest scrap of comfort.
“Where is Ezra Thompson?” I ask, doing my best to keep my voice steady. The white lamp above the cage drills into my skull, its merciless glare pounding in rhythm with my heartbeat.
Scott’s eyes lift to mine. His face is drained of color, skin pulled tight over sharp bones, as if fear itself has hollowed him out.
Something flickers in his gaze—a flash of defiance, a tremor of fear, the instinctive spark a trapped animal gives just before the fight leaves its body.
I try to read it, pin it down, but my vision wavers.
The world tilts at the edges, blurring into a smear of glass and light.
Exhaustion rolls through me in slow, punishing waves, crashing hard, slipping back, then crashing even harder.
Each impact drains something vital, stripping away another layer of focus, composure, and patience.
It feels like standing knee-deep in a tide that keeps pulling, dragging, demanding something I no longer have the energy to give.
And still, I hold his stare, waiting for the wave to recede enough for me to breathe again.
I try to redirect my thoughts, to reach for something steady—anything that might anchor me before the exhaustion drags me under. The reward, I remind myself.
I rebuild it in my mind piece by piece: a bath steaming in a dim hotel bathroom, porcelain glowing under soft light; a bed with sheets that swallow you whole; a vinyl record spinning slowly in the background, its crackle soft as breath; one of Estella’s trip-hop tracks filling the room in pulses; her voice slipping through the air like smoke, threading under my skin, wrapping around places in me that haven’t known warmth in years…
My eyes snap open. A chill splits down my spine, sharp as a needle, and goosebumps rise in its wake like a second skin. My breath stutters and quickens. The fatigue that was dragging me under a moment ago vanishes instantly, burned away like mist under a sudden sun.
What the fuck was that?
Why did my mind drag her into this place, into this moment?
I slap my cheek lightly, more to jolt myself back into reality than to feel pain, and shake my head hard.
It’s nothing, I tell myself. Stress. Too much work. Too little sleep.
But her soft, lethal voice won’t let go. It slips beneath my skin, deeper and deeper, blooming through my veins like a drug meant to ruin. And for a moment, I hear her in the basement’s corners, her whisper weaving through the lamp’s electric hum.
Thin. Ghostlike.
Impossible to silence.
What would she do if she were here?
Maybe she’d drive a blade just deep enough to make him scream but not die. Maybe she’d put on one of her masks and turn the moment into theater. Or maybe she’d take his hand, give him that unreadable smile, and lead him straight into the fog of her own making.
“Did you fucking hear what I said?!” Scott’s voice tears through the haze, and I blink, attempting to focus. He’s as close as he can get now, with the glass between us gleaming like ice. His breath fogs the barrier, his eyes gleaming with a wide, furious, desperate glimmer.
“Yes,” I answer, nodding slowly. “I heard you, Scott. But do you know what I believe in?”
He frowns—not in defiance, but confusion. My calm tone catches him off guard.
“I believe you’re just a man caught in the crossfire,” I say evenly. “All I need is information about Ezra. You tell me where he is, and you walk out of here.” I tilt my head slightly, studying him. “You’re twenty-two, right? A kid trying to keep his family afloat.”
He freezes. A lock of hair falls into his eyes, but he doesn’t even flinch to move it away. I’ve memorized his file, but it’s better when the truth sounds a bit like intuition.
“So young,” I murmur, softening my voice, lacing it with feigned sympathy. “So desperate. You didn’t mean to get yourself tangled in this kind of shit, did you? You were just trying to help.”
He snorts. “Oh, so now you know how I feel? Spare me the fucking bullshit.”
“I do know,” I press, letting the words hang for a moment. “How do you think I ended up here, Scott? Sick mother, just like yours. Drowning in debt. No way out, not enough money, and no one giving a single fuck.”
Something sparks in his eyes—this time, a fragile glint of soft emotion cutting through the panic. His gaze wavers, lashes quivering like delicate wings.
Pain lingers there. Recognition. A thin, trembling thread of connection, the one I’ve been waiting for, weaving its way through the chaos of fear.
The reflection. We’re the same.
He blinks hard, trying to fight it, but his lips tremble.
He turns away, scanning the walls, the floor—anywhere but my face.
The adrenaline that once fueled his anger drains out, leaving only the cold, which seeps into him fast. I can see it in the way his shoulders curl, in how his breath keeps fogging the glass.
Usually, I crank the heat up before I come down here to give them a false sense of safety, of comfort. But not this time—not with Scott. He’s already cracked; he just doesn’t know it yet.
“Look, man, I’m not privileged enough to know everything,” he stammers, his voice shaking with the kind of desperation that comes when the last bit of bravado burns out. “All they told me was that I’d need to make a delivery to one of their people.”
“Who are they?” I ask, though the answer is already forming in the back of my mind.
“They didn’t give me names,” he says quickly. “I don’t think it’s even possible to find that out. They’ve been contacting me through a man, and a man, and another man—it’s like a fucking cobweb, dude. You pull one thread, and it leads to a hundred others. You never see the real spider.”
His words hang in the cold air, reverberating against the glass walls like a whispered verdict. It doesn’t take long before a final, brutal realization washes over me.
That motherfucker.
He’s been working for The Order.
A double agent in our ranks. A rat buried deep in the roots of what we’ve built.
My jaw tightens, heat flooding my face as my nails dig into my bandaged palm. A sting of pain slices through the skin, blood whispering beneath the surface. I glance down at my hand, and something in my chest twists.
Estella.
Is she behind this? Has she found out?
I’ve been waiting for her or Cane to reach out with a new target, but what if this is their play? What if they’ve already taken Ezra? What if, right now, he’s strapped to a chair somewhere, spilling everything we’ve fought for?
My pulse leaps, hammering in my ears. A bead of sweat snakes down my temple, hot and slow, as the thought coils tighter around my throat. Fear shoots up my spine, jagged and electric, feeding off my frayed nerves, twisting and growing stronger with every heartbeat.
“The card,” Scott mutters suddenly, snapping me back to reality. “It said something about Mount McKinley. I think that’s where whoever you’re looking for is hiding.”
I clamp down on my lower lip with all the force I can muster.
The sharp sting slices through my thoughts, anchoring me to reality, while the metallic tang of blood floods my mouth.
The sudden, biting sensation drags me back from the spiral consuming my mind, pulling me inch by inch toward the present.
“What about the woman you delivered to? What does she know?” I ask.
“I don’t fucking know, man!” he blurts, the words tumbling out between shaky breaths. “I swear, that’s all I know! They told me to make a delivery, and I did—and I’ve regretted it every fucking second since!”
Disgust coils in my chest as he crumbles. Tears streak his face, and his palms slam against the glass in frantic, useless bursts of panic. The sharp, jarring sound echoes through the room, mingling with his choked, desperate pleas and filling the space with raw tension.
“So you’re saying you’re useless,” I mutter, more stating than questioning.
He freezes, his lips trembling, eyes darting frantically around the cage. Terror blooms across his face, spreading like a dark infection just beneath the skin, insidious and unstoppable.
“No, no, please!” he screams, dropping to his knees. His hands scrape across the wooden floor, searching blindly for a loose panel, a latch, a miracle. Anything. Each frantic motion he makes grates against my nerves like static.
Maybe he hopes I’ll hesitate. That I’ll see myself in him—a man trapped in a system too big to escape, bleeding regret and begging for mercy.
But he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know my mother’s been long dead because of men like him. Because of the same chain he chose to be a link in. And that, since that day, I’ve been searching for something to fill the fucking void she left behind.
I slip the key from my pocket, its cold metal edge biting into my fingers, anchoring me to the moment. Static hums in my ears as I move on autopilot, muscles coiling with deliberate precision. One step, then another, until I reach the door. I swing it open and step inside.
Scott’s body shrinks into the far corner, shaking, eyes wide and frantic with the dawning realization that there is nowhere left to run. He presses himself tighter against the wall, hands flying to cover his face as if that fragile shield could somehow protect him from what’s coming.
And then, with the clarity of inevitability, I do exactly what I need to do.