Chapter 8 #2
“You could go to jail. End up locked up for the rest of your life, for what? These criminals?” He shook his head abruptly. “I’m a good attorney, I can take care of this, any charges, set you up and make sure you’re fine.”
Grace raised her brows.
As if seeing an opening, he leaned forward. “I am very wealthy. I have a lot more power than you can imagine and I can give you whatever you want.”
I took the heavy rope from Alphabet and tested the heft, and the knot he’d made at the end. I added a second one to it. I wanted it to have a really good swing.
“Anything I want?” The soft question had Sinclair pouncing. He didn’t see the trap.
He would.
“Yes,” Sinclair swore. “Anything. Just name it.”
“I want my sister, you son of a bitch. What did you do with her?”
His face blanched. That was the first honest reaction he’d had since waking up.
“I—I don’t know,” Sinclair stammered, throat bobbing hard. “Grace, I swear to you, I don’t—”
“Wrong answer,” she said.
Quiet. Flat. Deadly.
Bones exhaled like he’d been waiting for those exact two words.
I didn’t hesitate.
The rope cut through the air with a sound that always made men flinch—sharp, fast, inevitable.
I didn’t focus on where the knots landed, I didn’t have to. Sinclair’s whole body told the story.
His scream tore out of him raw, strangled, like it dragged pieces of his lungs with it. The chair rattled against the concrete from the force of his involuntary convulsion. He jerked so hard the zip-ties bit deeper into his skin—blood welling in thin, angry lines.
He gasped.
Once.
Twice.
Like he couldn’t figure out how to breathe around the pain.
I didn’t bother offering him time to recover. The rope was still warm in my hand.
Voodoo stepped closer, voice low and controlled. “Grace asked a question.”
Sinclair’s eyes were wide, terrified, already wet at the corners, not from emotion. From sheer, blinding pain.
“I don’t—” he choked again, frantic. “I don’t know where she is! I wasn’t—I wasn’t part of that! I wasn’t—she wasn’t—”
“Stop,” Voodoo said.
Sinclair stopped.
Grace’s expression didn’t change. No triumph. No relief. Just a cold, carved-out steadiness.
“Try again,” she told him.
“I don’t—Grace, please—”
I swung.
He shrieked, higher this time, the sound bouncing off the basement walls like something alive and desperate to escape. His legs shook. His hands clenched white around the arms of the chair. Sweat burst across his face in a sudden sheen.
“What did you do with her?” Grace repeated.
“I didn’t take her!” Sinclair gasped, voice hoarse and cracking. “I didn’t—I never—! I only delivered payments, I only—Jesus—God— please—”
Bones leaned down, voice a low rumble next to Sinclair’s ear. “You want to live? Stop talking about what you didn’t do. Start talking about what you did.”
Sinclair sobbed once—a pathetic, wet sound that scraped raw across my nerves.
“I was the middleman!” he blurted out sobbing. “I passed along cash, instructions— I don’t—I don’t choose targets, I don’t pick up, I never see them again— I don’t know where they go—”
Grace’s jaw flexed. Barely. But I saw it.
Then she started walking.
Slowly—deliberately—she moved forward. Sweatpants, hoodie, damp hair…
none of it mattered. Grace walked like she was wearing a runway, a camera, and an entire industry beneath her heels.
I’d seen her glide like this in commercials, in campaign shoots, in fashion shows where she was dressed in enough designer fabric to bankrupt a small country.
But this wasn’t that Grace.
This was the distilled version—stripped of gloss, stripped of safety nets, stripped of every performance anyone had ever demanded from her.
Raw.
Perfect.
Dangerous.
She stopped in front of Sinclair, and the bastard broke. Tears smeared down his face before she even bent toward him.
Grace didn’t touch him. Didn’t need to. She lowered herself just enough that her eyes lined up exactly with his.
Sinclair went sheet-white.
“You’re lying.”
He flinched. Hard. Like the word itself hit him with the same force as the rope.
Grace straightened, gaze cutting to me.
“Again?” I asked.
She nodded once.
I reached for her hand—not to comfort, not to lead, just to move her aside so she didn’t get clipped when I swung. She let me. Trusted me.
“N—!” Sinclair tried to scream.
The knot met flesh.
He jerked, strangled noise caught in his throat.
“Again,” Grace said, voice soft as a prayer and twice as lethal.
“Whatever the lady wants.”
I swung.
It landed.
He bucked.
I swung again.
And this time—
Sinclair shattered. His whole body seized and he vomited, helpless and heaving, the chair rattling under him. Pain didn’t just hit him; it hollowed him out. His sobs tore free—ugly, raw, animal sounds.
“She was getting in the way,” he choked. “She was going to ruin everything.”
No one moved. No one spoke.
“She wouldn’t listen to reason,” he sobbed. “Goddamn crusader. She didn’t understand how the world worked—we had too much money tied up in everything.”
Grace wasn’t breathing.
Sinclair finally forced his swollen eyes open, bloodshot and wild. “So I had them deal with her,” he whispered. “I didn’t care what they did or how. Just told them to make the problem go away.”
Grace didn’t explode. Didn’t break. Didn’t even blink.
She just stood there—so still the air felt afraid to move around her.
“Who are they?” she asked.
Her voice wasn’t raised or sharp. It was soft. Controlled. Polished to a razor so fine Sinclair didn’t realize he was bleeding on it.
Sinclair swallowed, throat convulsing. “I—I can’t tell you that.”
Grace’s stare didn’t waver.
“They’re dangerous people,” he rushed on, words spilling out too fast, too terrified. “You don’t understand. It doesn’t matter what you do to me—they’ll do worse. They don’t forgive. They don’t forget. They—”
“Well,” Grace said, cutting him off with the same tone she might use to remark on the weather, “I guess we can find out.”
Sinclair froze.
“What?” he whispered. “F-Find out what?”
Grace tilted her head, just slightly, gaze steady enough to pin him to the chair harder than the zip-ties ever could.
“Whether what you can imagine,” she said, “or what we can imagine… is worse.”
Sinclair’s breath hitched, just once, before another sob tore out of him.
For the first time since the interrogation began, he looked genuinely, viscerally afraid.
Not of the rope. Not of the pain. Not of any of us.
He was afraid of Grace, finally understanding far too damn late that he wasn’t dealing with a victim anymore.
He was dealing with the reckoning.