Roman #2
The man’s bladder betrays him before his mouth does. A wet stain blooms across his jeans, darkening the fabric as it drips onto the floor in slow humiliating rivulets.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. That’s going to stink,” Riggs recoils. Victor doesn’t move, but his eyes narrow as disgust flicks across his face.
“Answer the question,” Felix’s voice goes colder.
“Why?” The man squeezes his eyes shut and I growl.
I step forward and move to the metal tray.
My fingers hover before selecting the smallest scalpel.
The metal handle is cool against my skin as I lift it.
The man’s eyes flick to the tray, then back to me before I close the distance between us in five measured strides.
Felix and I are standing shoulder to shoulder, our bodies blocking his view of the rest of the room.
I grab his jacket and tear it open with a sharp rip before I shove the ruined material aside.
The scalpel catches the candlelight. It almost looks delicate in contrast to this dungeon.
I step into his space, close enough that he can smell the metal and fire clinging to my clothes.
I let the silence stretch, then I press the edge to his skin and draw a slow, controlled line from the inside of his elbow toward his shoulder.
The blade barely needs pressure. Skin parts cleanly beneath it and blood wells up in a dark red line.
His scream rips out of him violently and loud enough that the chains tremble.
“Ben,” he sobs out. “Ben Miller.”
“Good boy,” Felix sneers, patting his cheek before stepping up to the tray.
“What do you do, Ben?” I ask, holding his gaze as his body shakes
He ignores me.
I count slowly to ten before stepping forward again.
This time I take his other arm. The scalpel slides through his skin with more pressure than before.
Ben’s body jerks against the chains as he screams. The pitch drills straight into my skull.
It’s almost too much, the screaming, the chain rattling, the smell of iron in the air.
I make a quiet mental note to bring noise-cancelling headphones next time.
“We can make this easy for you, Ben. Just answer the questions.” I speak again, keeping any emotion out of my tone and he swallows hard.
“Security.”
“For who?” Felix demands even though we know.
“The Company,” Ben replies quickly, desperate for the relief of giving something.
“Family line?” Victor asks, his deep voice echoing through the room.
Ben hesitates. It’s only a second, barely long enough to register, but in this room hesitation is its own answer.
Felix moves before the pause even finishes and his hand shoots out, clamping around Ben’s wrist. The chains rattle again as he tries to jerk back, but Felix already has his grip locked in place.
It isn’t until I hear the unmistakable crunch of bone that I realise Felix has clamped the jaws of the pliers around the first joint of his little finger.
Nothing happens. Then Ben’s scream detonates, high and animalistic as the finger folds sideways in a way it was never meant to.
The bone collapses with a wet, splintering crack.
Skin splits and blood bursts across Felix’s knuckles.
Felix doesn’t let go. He twists the pliers whilst Ben thrashes helplessly in the chains.
Joints grind beneath the metal teeth as torn skin peels back around the crushed bone.
“YES,” Ben screams. “My dad, my dad did it, and his dad and his dad.”
Ben breaks into ragged sobbing, his body jerking violently as he tries to pull his hand free, but Felix just holds it there, letting the damage speak for itself.
“So you’re from a loyal family,” Riggs says with false cheer. “Cute. How’s that going for you?”
“Please—” Ben’s breath catches and I tilt my head slightly.
“You can keep saying that word if it makes you feel better. It won’t change the outcome.” I roll my eyes before making a small cut beneath his collarbone, readying myself to peel the skin from the bone. Ben’s eyes glaze with terror as he shakes his head.
“I didn’t hurt anyone,” he mutters, and Felix lets out a quiet huff.
“You were part of a system that did.”
“I’m going to ask you a question,” I say. “You can answer it, and we move on. Or you can refuse, and we still move on, just slower. Either way, Ben, we are moving.”
“Okay.” Ben’s lips tremble.
“Who is the boss?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he whispers.
I hold his gaze. It’s a lie. I can see it immediately in the twitch of his right eye and the slight lift of his eyebrow that follows half a second later.
The movement is small enough that most people would miss it entirely.
To anyone else he probably looks convincing.
I’ll give him credit. He has a good poker face.
Unfortunately for him, I am not anyone else.
“Liar,” I say calmly.
I flick a glance toward Felix. The grin that spreads across his face is immediate and deeply unpleasant. He shifts his grip on the pliers and slides them along Ben’s hand until the metal jaws settle around his ring finger.
“I swear,” Ben rushes out, his voice cracking. “I swear I don’t know. I just do security. I get shifts. I get told where to be and when—”
Felix moves before the sentence finishes. He grabs Ben’s jaw with enough force to snap his head upward. Ben flinches under the grip as panic flashes across his face. Felix leans in close enough that their foreheads almost touch.
“Where were you assigned recently?” Felix demands.
“Transport and warehouses,” he sobs, his nose dripping with snot.
The word warehouse pings around my skull as I keep my hand steady. I pinch the flap of skin at his collarbone before slowly peeling it away. The heat of his blood leaches onto my hand as the wet squelch echoes off the walls.
“What warehouse,” I bark over his cries and screams.
He doesn’t respond, so I continue slicing through skin and muscle, cutting away a six-by-six square. His nerve endings must be screaming at the exposure and when I finally get the last connecting tissue separated, I throw the discarded square onto the floor with a wet slap.
“Do not make me ask you again, what fucking warehouse…”
“I don’t—there are loads. We just get sent co-ordinates and told to shut up and do our job.”
“Benjamin Miller. Thirty-eight. Lives in Braintree. Married. Two children. Sophie and Emma,” Atlas cuts in without looking up.
Ben goes still, even his sobs stop completely, and the sound is as chilling as Atlas’s fingers that keep tapping in a calm and relentless pattern.
“Sophie’s nine. Emma’s six. Both are at home, according to your partner’s social media that she posted an hour ago. She thinks you’re on a night shift.”
Ben’s mouth opens, then closes. His throat works. His eyes fill, not with tears of pain, but with terror.
“Please, my children—”
“I don’t care about saving your children or your family, Ben. I care about saving mine,” I spit.
I mean, I’m not in the business of harming children, but I have no intention of telling him that. Let him sit with the fear. Let him imagine the worst possible version of what men like us might do. If the thought of his daughters is the thing that finally cracks him open, then I will use it.
Bargaining chips don’t have to be real to work.