Chapter 15
AZRAEL
My sanity had almost cracked because of her.
No, scratch that. It did. Spectacularly.
Choosing a face that resembled hers seemed like a solution, and that had helped exactly zero percent.
It took me days to figure out a plan that would actually make sense with her.
Every time I was sure about what I was supposed to do next, a little voice in the back of my head piped up to point out that I would need to go even harder on her. So, I had nothing.
I even gave up once or twice, telling myself she wasn’t worth the trouble. But then she decided to show up at my place, which only reminded me of things I’d rather forget we did together.
That’s when it hit me. Nobody would work—not a similar face or voice or height—except for Victoria.
So here I am now, driving the car back to The Place again.
Once she passed out, I messaged Vincent to make sure everything was in order before we got there.
Azrael: Make sure your men are ready. No safe word.
It’s Victoria’s own doing, she didn’t ask for limits, and now she’ll get to experience what that really means.
He replies with a thumbs-up and a devil emoji, entertained by the possibility of seeing me in action.
We arrive at the location, and I get out of the car to smoke, trying to temper my excitement and my thoughts.
Five minutes later, the sound of her voice creeps through the cracked window.
“Well,” she rasps, “that was quite unnecessary.”
The drug is fading, but it will still dull her for a while. This will not do it. I need her wide awake. I need to see the panic on her face, not a pair of glossy eyes that can barely discern reality.
“Control,” I say, flicking the ash from my cigarette, letting the time slowly pass by. “That’s what you still had. Now, I’ve removed it.”
After I make sure she can stand on her own two feet, we head inside, walking in silence down the narrow corridor. This time, however, I don’t stop in the main building. She deserves more—an entire spectacle.
At the end of the hallway, we turn into a secondary hall—an annex most clients don’t even know exists. There are no windows here, no red lights or themed decor, just a brushed steel door and what looks like an abandoned basement.
The room is decadent in the most grotesque way: concrete walls with discolored patches where blood had been cleaned up with bleach one too many times, a grated drain in the center of the floor, and a stale smell from the lack of ventilation.
Chains as thick as my wrist wrists hang from ceiling mounts, swaying slightly in a phantom breeze, creating a demonic chant, and the hooks are at shoulder height, promising dislocated joints.
And of course, the mirrors. Bolted glass, meant to reflect every angle, every desperate flinch of their last minute alive until the subject can only beg to be killed. In the corner of the room, an industrial chair, its leather straps dark from the endless splashes of blood that have coated them.
The table beside it is already laid out: ropes, slip-joint pliers, alligator clips. Scalpels. Gags. Blindfolds. Chains. Everything I may need, ready to destroy Victoria’s existence. And set apart from the tools, one pair of chemical-resistant gloves.
The camera is already recording in the corner.
After we enter, she takes a minute to walk around it and inspect every item. There is some sort of morbid curiosity in the way she is touching the torture instruments. Given the circumstances, this is normal.
I watch her walk around the room one more time, in silence, but I don’t have all the time in the world, and we need to get started. “You can still back out.”
She doesn’t make a sound. This, however, will soon change.
I go to the table and pull the gloves on. The snap echoes in the empty room, and this finally makes her pay attention.
“What kind of place is this?” she asks, looking straight in my eyes.
“One where we test theories,” I answer vaguely.
She smirks. “It’s about time you actually work on your promise, Professor” Then moves to stand right under the chains, way too excited about what’s to come. So pathetic, thinking this is a game.
I clasp the chain tightly around her wrists and pull it until her arms are stretched high above her head and she stands on her tiptoes, skin paling at the edges where the metal cuts into her flesh.
The pain would be enough to make a grown man flinch, but she just holds still and sighs, like she’s getting bored already.
Let’s see how bored she will be at the end of the night.
I crouch and place a metronome on the floor a few feet in front of her. Its wooden frame is scuffed, and the brass arm is dull. But it will do its job. I wind it once, and the rhythmic sound echoes around the room.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
I take from the table a short nail and step behind her, pressing the tip right into the ridge of her shoulder blade.
This move is not meant to severely hurt her but should be enough to numb her arms and leave her helpless.
I fully expect her reaction to shatter the silence of the room, but—again—no sound leaves her mouth.
Why isn’t she crying? She should cry. She should beg me to stop. But she just looks forward, like she was fully expecting this to happen.
My jaw clenches so hard it hurts. I want to strip down the chains and push her to the ground, make her say something, anything. Break her. This silent defiance is grating, twisting my plans into a mess of unfulfilled expectations.
A deep, unsettling heat stirs in my gut; she is supposed to crumble. Instead, she just stands there, too excited about what’s coming next. Fuck.
The infuriating lack of tears, the unblinking stare—it does something to me, something both aggravating and strangely, dangerously alluring. I crave a reaction, any sign that my actions are hitting their mark, but this… this is something else entirely.
I inhale deeply, calming my unraveling nerves, refusing to show her what she does to me. I’m the one controlling her, not the other way around.
I move on to the clips, applying one to each fingertip evenly. This creates a numbing pain that destroys someone slowly. It lingers, increasing in intensity just from staying in place for too long, until the subject would rather die than experience it another second.
Once all ten clips are placed, I step back and sit on the chair, admiring my creation. The chained arms, the nail in the back, alongside the silky black dress and the high heels. This is an image I could get used to. I let time pass, one minute at a time.
Five minutes. Then ten. I want her to feel the time, to make her wonder when, not if.
“Are you…you know?” She gestures with her fingers, urging me to continue.
But I remain silent.
With each minute passing, her body becomes visibly more tense. It could be because of the pain being inflicted on her body. Or maybe her brain is finally catching up to the situation she’s in. She’s helpless, a delicious feeling to see in a subject.
But if she thought this was all, she’s in for a surprise.
Closing the distance, I move behind her, my body a hair’s breadth away from hers. Even with the heels she has on and her arms being pulled to the point of extending her height, I still need to lean down to whisper in her ear.
“How long do you think you will last?”
She turns around and looks me straight in the eyes, with all the enthusiasm of someone having a mundane conversation about the price of toilet paper. Still nothing, still no fucking reaction.
“Not long enough, my little ember,” I inform her. “That’s the right answer.”
In the next second, a sound fills the room. Just a static, fluctuating hum playing through the speaker above the mirrors, like a cracked vinyl record on a broken gramophone.
Her eyes flick upward, looking for the source of the sudden sound.
While she does that, I bend down and gently remove both of her shoes, placing one foot at a time on the grated drain.
The new height difference makes it even more difficult to stand, and she’s barely touching the ground now.
The grate below her feet buzzes faintly, electrical shock waves running through it slowly, then rising incrementally.
Enough to make muscles tense, seize, and twitch.
When the first wave hits her toes, her arms jerk against the metal strips.
But there was still no scream, just the low static noise and the metronome that hadn’t stopped for a second.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
“You’re doing so well,” I can’t help but admit, “but we’re only getting started.”
In reality, she’d do even better by showing a little bit of pain, but I’m a patient person.
I walk to the table and select three empty syringes. I just want her to see the needles and wonder what’s next, before I then push them into her body like sadistic acupuncture tools.
She flinches when the first needle penetrates her upper arm. My grip tightens, a subtle possessiveness in the pressure, feeling the softness of her flesh give in beneath my fingers. I savor the slight tremble that follows, is proof that her body, at least, is betraying her composure.
The second needle follows on the opposite arm, while the third one replaces the nail in her back, letting the blood flow from her skin and down the dress. The puncture wounds are not supposed to be fatal, they’re just to inflict enough pain that she cannot overlook it.
“This was the worst possible time to wear this,” I mutter, more to myself. “This dress won’t survive the night.”