Chapter 18 The Present
Turns out the hospital’s basement, aside from housing the power generator, makes a surprisingly good torture room. Talon’s and Cassian’s sentiments, not necessarily mine.
I did consider Nathaniel’s suggestion to strap Mark to a table in the morgue for the irony, but Cassian argued that disorientation and powerlessness in a dark, underground room inspire a sharper kind of fear.
Nathaniel rolled his eyes but didn’t argue. He was too busy prepping his instruments. Scalpels, knives, surgical scissors, syringes filled with questionable substances…
Each tool was arranged in neat, obsessive rows inside a leather binder before he snapped on his latex gloves.
Talon watched. He leaned against the wall with a crowbar balanced across his shoulders, whistling through his teeth like he’s abducted people a thousand times before. His grin widened every time Mark groaned against the tape, still half-conscious from Cassian’s perfectly measured knockout.
And Cassian… Cassian handled everything else.
He dragged Mark down the stairs himself, and when he dropped him into the bolted chair, he didn’t leave room for loose ties.
Mark’s wrists were bound to the armrests, ankles cinched with belts stolen from the psych ward upstairs.
Even his neck was secured with a leather strap, tight enough that if he tried to thrash, he’d only choke himself.
So here we are.
Mark’s head is slumped sideways like a broken marionette, a thin, pathetic groan leaking past his teeth.
It’s the best or the worst sight of my entire life.
I can’t decide which, because revenge is a dredge. It drags every old hurt back to the surface, dumps it in your lap, and forces you to face it.
Still… if someone pressed a gun to my temple right now and ordered me to pick? I’d choose best.
“If at any point you want us to take over,” Cassian says, wiping his hands on the thighs of his pants, “just say the word.”
Right. They have years of experience over me when it comes to breaking a man.
We agreed we’d go only as far as I want to go. The depths of my resentment are very much present, but I find myself wondering how that will translate into doing, not just wanting.
Mark stirs. A real flicker of awareness rolls through him, and his head lolls forward against the strap. He tries to lift it. The leather doesn’t give. Something in him registers the restraint, and his breathing changes.
“Hear that?” Talon says, eyes gleaming. “That’s the moment a man’s balls crawl up into his throat.”
Nathaniel doesn’t even look up from arranging his instruments. His gloves snap once as he smooths the syringe tray.
“That’s the vagus nerve engaging, Talon,” he says. “Parasympathetic shock. Perfectly predictable.”
“Parasympathetic my ass.” Talon grins. “That’s fear. That’s all.”
I stand between them, my pulse stumbling out of rhythm. Every scrape of leather, every rattle of the chair bolts, yanks me backward into that perfect suburban house where Mark decided I was not a wife, but a problem to be solved. My skin buzzes like it remembers the bruises before my mind does.
What am I going to do to him now that I have him?
Mark finally lifts his head enough that his bloodshot, dazed eyes catch mine.
Oh, the way recognition lands in them.
It’s even better than the first time. This time, when the visual registers in his head, there’s a staggered gasp. The denial cracked raw. He shakes his head once, hard, suddenly more a man who can’t sleep through a night without a nightmare than the tidy accountant he pretends to be.
“Housekeeping,” Talon chirps, and peels the tape off Mark’s mouth quick and cruel. Mark sucks air like he’s been kissed by a drain.
“You… you’re not— you cannot be—”
“Real?” I say. My voice is steady and not at the same time. “We’ve been there already, haven’t we, Mark?”
Cassian crosses his arms and leans against the generator casing behind me. Talon spins the crowbar. Nathaniel lifts a scalpel delicately, checking the light on its edge.
From the outside, if you could see them as strangers, not as mine, you’d think they were paid actors. Must be a theater rehearsal because ain’t no way there are guys who move like this in real life.
I drink it in, savoring how fear blooms in Mark’s eyes.
He pulls at the straps, uselessly. They don’t budge. His breath hitches.
“Jessica—she’ll—”
“She’ll what?” Talon interrupts, grinning sharp. “Call the cops? Sweetheart, she ran. All it took was some crows to get her to abandon you.”
“But don’t worry, she’ll call the cops and tell them about the embezzlements and the shell companies,” Nathaniel says. “I sent her an email. Screenshots, timestamps, the cute little LLC names you thought were clever.”
“You know what else we included?” Talon asks, smiling like the devil. “That one special account you had for the local mafia around…” He looks at me, lifts a hand, counts on his fingers. “...five years ago? I wonder what else happened around that time.”
Mark’s throat works. He looks from Nathaniel’s neat rows to Talon’s easy grin to Cassian’s winter-cold stare, then back to me. It dawns on him, finally, that I’m not the garnish here. I’m the plate.
“Who are you people?” he rasps. “Skye, tell them—”
There it is. Him, reaching for the life I used to wear, the one he burned out of me like it was nothing. It still tries to close around my throat.
“Don’t,” I tell him. “Don’t say my name. You don’t get the right to do that.”
I step closer until the toes of my shoes touch the chalk line Talon drew for vibe, as he put it. Mark’s gaze skitters to my feet like they’re a threat. I let him look. Let him think about how many times those same feet stood in his kitchen, or in his bedroom, or on his porch.
I watched him all this time.
“You had five years to apologize,” I say. “Five years to confess. Five years to walk into a police station and say my name to someone who would put ink to a record of it. Instead, you stole my house, married a stranger, let her gut my home and call it hers. And I watched you. Every step.”
He opens his mouth. I lift a hand. He shuts it.
“Huh.” A small smile ghosts my lips. “Look at you. Listening so well. So you could do that all along, couldn’t you?”
Power. Right now, I have power over him. Over my fucking demon. Something worse than the wraith. Maybe not for the world, but absolutely for me.
I step over Talon’s chalk line.
Power is a dangerous thing. If you’ve never had it, you can drown in the first taste.
“Let’s start easy,” I say mildly. “No heavy lifting yet. Unlock your phone.”
Talon is already pulling it from his pocket; he tosses it to me.
Mark licks his lips. “I—no—”
Talon laughs softly. “Buddy. We can do this the fun way—Face ID with a little eyelid assist—or the boring way where we go straight to torture.”
Nathaniel doesn’t even blink. “Passcode,” he says.
Mark’s eyes snap to me, hunting for mercy. Why would I give him any? These men… These absolute strangers who terrify him, are here for me. They want to settle my scores.
“Sk—”
“Give me the code,” I say.
“One… one-two… zero-four,” he croaks. “Jessica’s—”
“Birth month and day,” I finish. “I know. I’ve seen the date circled on the calendar.”
I’ve seen the three-course birthday parties too. Jessica’s parents would come over; some of her high-school friends who never left town. Once they had a whole fondue night: tiny toothpicks, perfect berries, Mark burning the chocolate. She smiled anyway.
Nathaniel is already moving.
“Airplane mode,” he says, and before Mark can frame a lie I tap 1-2-0-4. The screen blinks awake. Nathaniel flips the toggle, kills the radios, then pops the back of his leather binder to reveal a little black brick with a coiled cable.
“We’ll clone it locally,” he murmurs, mostly to himself. I don’t know the tech, but I don’t need to. As long as Mark understands his life is about to be ruined from the ground up, I’m fine.
I let Nathaniel take the phone. His thumbs dance.
“Banking. Messages. Cloud drive. Oh, notes app passwords. People always trust their brain dumps.” A small, pleased noise. “And there’s our shell cascade.”
Mark watches the screen like a statue. Only the tremor in his throat and the swallow remind me he’s still flesh.
“Great,” I say, suddenly empty. “Now say it out loud.”
He drags his eyes up. The leather at his throat creaks. “Say… what?”
“That you killed me. Say my name. Say what you did.”
He flinches. I can see him reach for the old handles of control and come up empty.
“We can help your memory,” Talon says.
I look at my redhead fox-face. He taps the crowbar lightly against the concrete, glances at me, winks. The emptiness shifts. It fills out a little. I turn back to Mark.
“Does the name Duvall ring a bell?”
The name lands like a punch under his ribs. His gaze cuts to me, then away, then back again, like he thinks he can swap his past if he picks the right version fast enough.
Yeah, no such luck.
Nathaniel doesn’t even look up from the phone as he reads, voice low, almost gentle: “Funds moved. Two LLCs. Third-party ‘security retainer.’ A closed-door ‘conversation.’ You left her with him.” He tilts the screen so the blue-white glow washes Mark’s face.
“And then Skye killed Duvall trying to save herself.”
The generator hums. My pulse roars, loud enough to drown it.
I step closer, until the metal edge of the chair hooks on the lace of my pants.
“You closed the door on me,” I say slowly. His eyes meet mine. “You walked away because you wanted him satisfied. You were fine with him using me in our kitchen. In my grandmother’s—”
My throat locks. It cinches shut so hard I can’t push breath through it, much less words.
Cassian peels off the generator housing and comes to stand behind me. He says nothing, just places one palm at the small of my back and leaves it there.
I drag a breath in, slow.
I look at him.
The emptiness fills another inch.
Then I turn back to Mark.