CHAPTER 29 ROMAN
ROMAN
Ihave seen blood before. I’ve caused it, studied it, engineered the chemistry that keeps it moving when it should have stopped. But watching hers spill, watching the blade bite into her skin while she didn’t scream or beg, did something violent to my restraint.
She was like a goddess in that room and I know it took all of her strength, yet she didn’t falter. She lifted her chin and offered herself like it was nothing, like somehow I was worth bleeding for.
The Swallow carved on her wrist was clean and precise. I hated that I noticed that. I hated that a part of me catalogued the depth, the angle, and the way it would scar. And when her blood mixed with mine, I hated how much it turned me on.
‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye’ pushes through the concrete chamber, the sound slightly warped by the damp but still pronounced enough to keep me focused.
His voice pulls me back from the memory of crimson on pale skin to the present.
Back to the man tied to the chair in the centre of our dungeon.
His head lolls forward, blood dripping from his nose to the floor in slow, rhythmic drops. I let the song play. I like the contrast. Old soul music and screaming rarely sit well together. It unsettles people, and I love it even more because of that.
“For fuck’s sake,” Victor mutters from behind me, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. “Do you have to play that shit while we work?”
Case in point.
I don’t look at him as I adjust the cuff around our guest’s wrists instead, tightening until the prick hisses out a rotten breath.
“You can fuck off back home if it offends your delicate ears,” I drawl.
“They’re not delicate,” Victor scoffs. “I just don’t fancy torturing someone to a love song.”
“It’s motivational,” I glance at him slowly, unimpressed. Victor rolls his eyes but doesn’t move. “Are you leaving?” I ask flatly.
“No,” he grumbles under his breath, shuffling further into the dungeon.
I half want to call him a good boy just to piss him off and half want to keep ignoring him. The fat slob groans again though, so my focus shifts to him. He is a canvas of blood and bruises. We left him here to rot for nearly twenty-four hours and yet, I can tell he still has fight left.
He’s trained.
I realised that pretty quickly, but who he is trained by and why are questions I have yet to find the answer to. The sound of my palm meeting his cheek echoes in the room. The man whimpers as he tries to spit blood at me but doesn’t have the strength to hit true to his target.
“Tell us your name,” Victor demands, picking up something dull from the instrument tray.
The silence is deafening, it’s been deafening. No matter what we do, this prick won’t falter. I step closer, rolling my sleeves once again. The fabric sticks slightly to the dried blood left over from initiation.
Unlike Jack, this prick has been tied to our bolted chairs.
His arms are immobile behind his back, his legs tied to the chair legs, and his body is wrapped tightly in barbed wire.
Every time he moves, one of those nasty little barbs presses into his skin.
I grip the man’s jaw and tilt his head back, my lip curling in a sneer.
“The warehouse,” I spit out again, “who runs it?” as Victor finally stands shoulder to shoulder with me. The man’s eyes flick between us, probably calculating who is the good cop and bad cop in this scenario. More fool him, we are both monsters.
Victor puts the reinforced glove on his hand.
It has metal in the knuckles but is padded enough to protect the user.
I roll my eyes. This is so Victor-coded.
Me? I like to get up close and personal.
Victor drives his fist into the man’s ribs with a sharp, effective strike.
Something cracks and the man grunts in response.
I cringe internally, slightly impressed at the lack of response from our prisoner.
Metal on barbed wire has got to fucking hurt.
For the next twenty minutes, we work in rhythm.
Victor using blunt force, me using skill.
The hits of the glove on the man’s body, breaking bones and cracking cartilage, create a symphony with each hit.
Every time Victor drops off, I press a blade to skim his skin.
It’s not deep enough to kill, but enough to fucking hurt.
That is the real skill of using a knife, drawing out as much pain for as long as possible.
I thrive off it. The blood, the gore, the idea that just an inch too deep and he could bleed out.
Adrenaline pumps through my body, and every time I feel myself getting worked up, I step back and Victor takes over.
Our bodies move instinctively around one another like dance partners, as Marvin sings on repeat.
My chest is heaving by the time we are done, yet we still have no answers. I look over and Victor’s rage is rolling off him like steam. Stepping back, I take the hose we fed down here, nodding to Victor for him to move.
For another ten minutes, I force water down his throat, laughing manically at the choking and gasping for breath. Each time I pull away, one of us asks a question.
“Where are the girls taken from?”
“Who is in charge?”
“Who do you work for?”
“How many girls?”
“Where are the warehouses?”
Each time, we are left with nothing more than grunts, groans or screams. His body is shaking, his eyes roll back, his lips turn blue, yet his mouth stays shut. It is… irritating.
Blood coats my hands. The warmth is familiar, almost grounding, and there is a clarity that comes from it.
I’m bored. Bored because he’s not breaking.
Bored because we aren’t getting answers.
Bored because I left my little one asleep in our bed, warm and exhausted as she snuggled into the quilt.
I only left her for answers. I wanted to see her eyes light up in the morning when I told her.
Now it just feels like I’m wasting precious seconds with this piece of shit when I could be tangled with her.
My jaw tightens; I don’t have time for this. I wipe my hands on a cloth and cross to the steel cabinet on the wall. Victor raises an eyebrow at me as I pull out a vial and press a needle into the bottle.
“I don’t think his alertness is our problem,” he drawls, and I scowl.
“It’s not Vigilum, if that’s what you’re thinking,” I respond, walking over to the lump of flesh in the middle of the room.
“What is it?”
“Efficiency,” I reply.
I designed it two years ago. A neural compliance compound. It’s not quite a sedative, not quite a stimulant. But it does lower the resistance of our more challenging prisoners. It blocks the decision-making receptors in your frontal lobe, making your mouth open and your lips loose.
Truth serum is a dramatic term for it, but it keeps the body conscious whilst softening the barriers between thought and speech… and it works. It works so well that it takes the fun out of torture. That’s why I don’t use it very much.
I once had a prisoner at my family home for a month whilst this little beauty was available to me, just because I got a thrill from watching him wither away. My dad wasn’t that happy when he realised how much time I wasted, but it was good practice for my skills.
Of course, I now don’t have a month to spare. I barely have an hour. Being away from Fae makes me twitchy, like my body is rejecting the idea of being too far away. Plus, she just went through another traumatic day and I need to be there for her when she wakes up.
Wasting it on scum like this is more appealing now that my priorities have changed. Well, at least now that I have what I want. Walking up to the man bolted to the chair, he flinches when he sees what is in my hand. Victor grips his shoulders, holding him still as I slap his face.
“This will hurt less than what’s coming next,” I tell him flatly as I slide the needle into his neck.
The man jerks, his body convulsing as dribble slips from his open mouth.
His pupils blow wide, the black taking over the dark blue as his breathing becomes laboured.
Victor looks over his shoulder at me, frowning, as I relax in the seat opposite and wait.
Five minutes pass before his posture finally slackens and I crouch in front of him again.
“What’s your name?” I demand, going in for an easy question.
“Tyler Colon.”
Victor’s head snaps up and looks at me. His mouth opens and closes like a dying fish, I can’t help but smirk.
“What the fuck is that?”
“Eh,” I wave him away, “truth serum.”
“You have truth serum all the time and didn’t fucking tell us?”
“Are you trying to say it wasn’t fun beating the shit out of him?” Victor looks bashful at that, and I grin manically.
I love being right almost as much as I love being in bed with Fae. Turning back to who I now know as Tyler, I lean forward on my knees as his eyes dart left to right, looking for a way out. He won’t have one.
“The warehouse at Breakwater Way, who runs it?” I ask for what feels like the hundredth time.
“Don’t… don’t know, boss. Just… boss.” Tyler’s voice comes out husky and strained as Victor and I exchange a look.
“How many warehouses do you know exist?” Victor asks.
“Two,” his is answer is so instantaneous that I regret not doing this earlier.
“Locations?” I demand.
“Breakwater and Hythe Docks.”
Interesting, we know about Hythe already from Jack.
Maybe this little lackey is so low on the totem pole he’s not given all the information, or maybe Jack was fucking us and sending us on a wild goose chase.
I know I would. I’d make sure they got so overwhelmed with information that every time they reached a dead end, they felt like giving up.
“How many girls?” I press as Victor swears under his breath. His body is coiled tight with anger and I realise he is probably having memories of his damsel in one of those rooms.
“…six,” he says, gritting his teeth like he’s trying to stop from speaking but can’t.