ROMAN
Ipress play.
‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye’ rolls through the speakers. The opening bars spill into the room like sunlight forced into a grave. It is warm, cheerful and so violently out of place against the concrete and steel that it settles something inside of me immediately.
The dungeon is cold tonight.
Not the theatrical kind of cold, the real kind.
The kind that creeps through fabric and settles into bone.
The concrete walls hold the temperature like they hold sound, swallowing both until everything feels muted and heavy.
Shadows stretch long across the open space, clinging to the corners where the lighting doesn’t quite reach.
Cobwebs gather high in the beams above, silver threads catching faint reflections from the industrial strip lights.
I haven’t bothered removing them this time; since Fae’s gone there’s no need.
It echoes differently in here. Footsteps travel too far, breath sounds too loud, even silence feels amplified.
This room was designed for confession, for collapse, for the precise moment someone understands they are not leaving.
And over it all, Marvin Gaye sings about devotion.
But the song isn’t for them, it’s for me.
Behind me, there’s a heavy exhale.
“For fuck’s sake,” Riggs mutters, pushing off the wall. “Not again with this fucking song.”
“It gives me the creeps,” Victor says flatly from where he stands near the steel counter.
“So you keep saying,” I mutter.
“Who tortures people to a love song?” Victor questions.
I don’t turn around, nor do I respond to his question. The answer is obvious to someone who understands contrast. I breathe in once before moving toward the body tied to the chair.
Quinn is still slumped forward. Her wrists and ankles are bound in leather restraints and her blonde hair falls over her face.
The sedative I prepared was precise. Enough to transport her without a scene but not enough to cause harm.
Felix stands to my right; his arms are folded across his chest and his jaw is locked so tight I can see the muscle feathering beneath his skin.
Riggs leans against the far wall like he’s watching a football match instead of an interrogation.
Victor’s gaze is clinical. Atlas watches everything with his laptop in front of him.
We are all here.
Because she is the reason Fae is gone.
Quinn stirs.
Her head lifts slowly and confusion clouds her features.
I see disorientation flash through her eyes, then calculation as she takes in the concrete walls, the restraints, the five men standing in front of her.
Then the fear follows and my eyes light up with glee.
It flickers across her face like a shadow passing over sunlight.
Then, astonishingly, it transforms. Her spine straightens as much as the restraints allow as her lips curve.
“You won’t hurt me,” she says with a steady but hoarse voice as her eyes find mine immediately. “You’ve never purposely hurt a woman in your life.”
My nostril flares as the room stills. Is this why she did it? Did she think there would be no repercussions? Behind me, I can sense the boys reacting in their own ways but I don’t take my eyes off her.
Riggs lets out a quiet whistle, “bold strategy to poke the bear, don’t you think?”
Victor chuckles as Quinn throws a spiteful glare in Riggs’ direction.
Rage flares in my chest at her indignation.
Like somehow, she is still above all this.
I don’t plan the movement. I just step forward and backhand her across the face.
It’s not at full force but enough to make it sting.
The crack of skin-on-skin slices through Marvin’s chorus like a gunshot.
Her head snaps to the side and the confidence fractures.
A thin line of blood appears where her lip splits against her teeth.
“Jesus, Roman,” Atlas barks as he pushes off the wall.
“She’s the reason Fae is missing,” Felix says coldly. “She’s lucky that’s all he did.”
Quinn turns her face back toward me slowly. The smile is gone now.
“You’re making a mistake,” she says. “My father will hear about this. You’ll be in trouble.”
An inappropriate laugh bubbles out of me before I can stop it. The sound doesn’t belong in my chest but it pushes through anyway.
Trouble, she said, like she’s not in the gravest amount of trouble there is.
All of them turn to look at me as my laughter echoes off the chamber.
The only person who has ever heard my laugh and not flinched is Fae.
The thought slices clean through the amusement and whatever twisted humour had surfaced dies.
I inhale slowly, forcing the laugh back down as I look at Quinn again, properly this time…
not as a woman or a socialite or even as someone’s daughter hiding behind her father’s name.
I look at her as a variable. She made a deliberate choice that resulted in Fae being taken from me.
I know it deep in my bones. I’m still not sure why but at least I now know who is involved.
The slap still tingles faintly across my palm but there’s no regret inside me, no moral recoil even when I search for it.
It didn’t feel wrong, it felt necessary.
I have never hurt a woman like this before.
Not because I couldn’t… but because I never needed to.
I make my way towards the tray holding all our instruments before a hand presses against my shoulder and I cut a look at who is touching me.
Atlas gives me a sheepish smile as he nods towards Quinn.
“Roman,” he says carefully. “We can try talking first. You know, old-fashioned interrogation not new-fashioned torture.”
“We just need information; it doesn’t need to be messy,” Victor states.
I sigh and my body slumps as Victor folds his arms across his chest out the corner of my eye. They’re right, of course. This could go one of two ways and the longer she refuses to give us information, the longer Fae isn’t home. Turning, I angle my body to look at Quinn.
“Who took Fae?” Felix demands and I cut him another look to see he is still grinding his teeth. If he continues, he will be walking out of here needing a dentist appointment before the rescue mission.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Quinn lifts her chin and I see the stubbornness returning as she realises she’s relatively safe for now.
“Who contacted you?” I demand but she stares blankly at me.
“You lured her out,” Atlas says from behind me. “We have the CCTV of you meeting her.”
Quinn barks out a laugh and cuts a look at me, “prove it.”
She smiles again; this time it is full of arrogance as I cut a glare towards Atlas.
Why would he lie? Anyone with a fraction of sense knows CCTV isn’t readily available here.
That’s half the reason The Company chose Coggeshall in the first place.
No cameras. Just old stone streets and blind corners.
Quinn may not be the sharpest tool in the box but even she knows there isn’t footage of anything.
All we have is a text exchange and timing.
I exhale slowly and drag my hand down my face, the skull inked across my skin distorts with the movement before I glance back at her and hold her gaze.
This isn’t going to work.
Quinn thinks I won’t cross the line; she thinks the concept of hurting her will restrain me.
And the guys… they’re loyal, rational and irritatingly moral right now.
They aren’t exactly encouraging me to harm her.
I turn away without another word and walk to the silver box mounted against the wall.
It’s my favourite thing in this dump; with its stainless steel and biometric lock I installed myself recently.
“Ah. Not the juice,” Victor groans quietly and Riggs giggles.
Felix doesn’t speak as I press my thumb to the scanner.
A soft mechanical click echoes through the room and the stainless-steel door releases.
Inside, the vials sit in perfect alignment.
I brought more of them here over the last month.
Each one is carefully labelled in my handwriting.
I scan them, not because I need to, but because this matters.
I want her unsettled; I want her to see what I see.
Then I select the one I want.
When I turn back toward Quinn, her body shifts in the chair.
It’s subtle. A tightening of her shoulders, a shallow inhale but it’s the confidence that has thinned that makes me smile.
The bravado doesn’t sit as comfortably now that she’s watching me.
I slide the needle through the vial’s seal and pull back a measured dose, calculating her weight and height automatically.
“What is that?” she demands as her voice cracks at the edge.
I don’t look away from the syringe as I tap out the air bubble.
“Efficiency,” I murmur back.
She pulls against the restraints as I approach and I see the panic I desperately wanted to see earlier to begin to claw its way up her spine.
“You can’t—"
I cut her off as I grab her jaw, forcing her head to the side.
My fingers dig into her cheeks just enough to keep her still.
She tries to twist away but I don’t allow it.
The needle slides into the vein at her neck in one smooth motion.
The plunger depresses beneath my thumb and I withdraw just as cleanly before stepping back as the reaction hits.
It’s almost immediate. Her body jerks violently against the restraints, the leather creaking as her spine arches off the chair.
A strangled gasp rips from her throat as her hands spasm and her fingers claw at nothing whilst the first wave crashes through her system.
Atlas goes quiet.
Felix doesn’t move.