Chapter 32
Break Her
Mira
Consciousness came back slowly and painfully.
At first, all I registered was cold.
Not the normal chill of Ironhand’s concrete walls or underground corridors.
This cold felt deliberate, sharpened by metal beneath my skin and recycled air that blew too aggressively through overhead vents.
My entire body ached with the heavy, disconnected sensation that came after being drugged too hard.
Thoughts dragged sluggishly through my head while nausea rolled unpleasantly in my stomach.
I kept my eyes closed anyway.
Rule one: wake up before they know you’re awake.
My breathing stayed slow and even while I forced myself to sort through sensation piece by piece.
Wrists restrained behind the chair. Ankles secured separately.
Tight enough to limit leverage but not circulation.
Good restraints. Professional ones. My shoulder still throbbed from the struggle in the archive room.
Sharp pain flared every time I shifted too much against the metal bindings.
The air smelled sterile. Cleaner than most of Ironhand. The interrogation space.
Shit.
I cracked my eyes open carefully after another few seconds. My vision swam hard before slowly stabilizing under the harsh fluorescent lights overhead.
The room itself was exactly what I expected once the blur settled. Concrete walls. Drain in the center of the floor. One reinforced door. No visible cameras, which usually meant there were hidden ones everywhere.
In front of me was an empty metal table.
I swallowed hard against the bitter taste in my mouth, forced my brain to keep functioning despite the sedative’s lingering effects. Panic wanted to creep in around the edges, sharp and ugly, but I crushed it down immediately. Panic got people killed faster than bullets did.
Think.
I tested the restraints subtly first, rotating my wrists just enough to feel where the locking mechanisms sat. Industrial zip restraints reinforced with metal catches. Not impossible to break eventually, but not while drugged and definitely not without leverage.
The chair itself was bolted down.
My eyes moved methodically around the room after that, cataloging everything automatically.
Vent placement. Weak points near the hinges.
Electrical panel outside the probable reach radius.
The overhead sprinkler system was inactive but functional.
No immediate exits, obvious weapons, or clock.
That last part mattered. Interrogation rooms loved removing time first. It made exhaustion easier to weaponize later.
My pulse slowed slightly as the fog in my head started clearing enough for memory to crash back fully into place.
Silas.
The restricted files.
Mira Navarro.
The realization hit hard enough to tighten my chest painfully all over again.
He knew enough to connect me to Sanctuary. Enough to connect Aiden to Ghost.
Aiden.
The thought of him landed heavier than the restraints that dug into my wrists. Because if Silas understood even half of how compromised Aiden was where I was concerned, then this room wasn’t about information anymore.
It was bait.
And that terrified me far more than whatever they planned to do to me personally.
I exhaled slowly through my nose, forcing the fear back under control as another wave of dizziness washed over me from the lingering effect of the drugs. My muscles still felt sluggish, but my thoughts started to sharpen, instinct settling back into place piece by piece.
Good.
Because if they expected me to break quickly, they were in for a disappointment.
The faint sound of footsteps echoed somewhere beyond the reinforced door. I straightened slightly against the restraints despite the pain that tore through my shoulder. Time to see how much Silas thought he already knew.
The door opened slowly enough to feel intentional.
Silas stepped inside alone again, dressed the same as always — dark clothes immaculate, composure untouched, like he wasn’t running an international trafficking network out of a glorified underground war zone.
He carried a thin folder in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other, steam curled faintly into the room’s cold air.
Its casualness made my skin crawl.
He shut the door behind him quietly before crossing toward the table. No rush. No aggression. Just controlled patience that somehow felt infinitely more dangerous than outright violence.
“You’re awake faster than expected,” he observed calmly.
I didn’t answer.
Silas sat across from me. He set the folder down neatly before she took a sip from the mug. His eyes tracked every movement I made while I stayed silent, measuring the effects of the drugs, the restraints, the fear he probably expected to see by now.
Too bad for him.
“Most people panic first,” he said conversationally. “You started assessing exits before you fully opened your eyes.”
I held his stare evenly. “Maybe your hospitality needs work.”
One corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “There’s the attitude I was expecting.”
Silence settled between us after that, heavy but not uncomfortable for him. He looked entirely at ease sitting across from a restrained prisoner while I fought through the lingering chemical haze still clawing at the edges of my thoughts.
That told me this wasn’t his first interrogation.
Not even close.
“You know,” he said after another moment, casually flipping open the folder, “I spent a long time trying to understand Sanctuary.”
My pulse stayed steady through force alone.
Don’t react.
“Interesting place,” he continued. “Built by violent men pretending they’re something nobler than they are.” His eyes flicked up briefly. “Saint fascinates me most. Elijah Mercer doesn’t speak unless necessary, yet somehow people still follow him like religion.”
I stayed motionless. But inside, my stomach tightened hard.
Silas watched me carefully before continuing. “Reaper is easier to understand. Maddox Calder looks exactly like the kind of man who enjoys cleaning up bodies.” Another sip of coffee. “But Ghost…”
There it was—the real target.
His gaze sharpened slightly. “Ghost was frustratingly difficult to identify.”
I kept my face blank despite the adrenaline that tightened my chest.
“For years, there’d been no confirmed photos,” Silas said. “No reliable operational pattern. No unnecessary exposure.” His fingers tapped lightly against the folder. “Aiden Vega erased himself so thoroughly that even after Ghost surfaced, nobody could definitively connect the two.”
Aiden.
He was talking about Aiden.
Every instinct in me screamed to protect that truth, no matter what happened in this room.
Silas leaned back slightly, studying me with quiet interest. “What intrigues me,” he murmured, “is why the woman connected to Elijah Mercer, Maddox Calder, and Aiden Vega would willingly embed herself inside Ironhand without backup.”
I said nothing.
“Was this sanctioned?” he asked calmly. “Or was this personal?”
Still nothing. The silence stretched long enough that another person might’ve gotten frustrated by now. Not Silas. I think he enjoyed the pressure more than the answers.
“You’re loyal,” he observed quietly after another moment. “That’s unfortunate. Loyal people tend to suffer longer.”
I met his gaze steadily despite the ache building in my restrained shoulders. “Then you’re wasting your time.”
Silas smiled faintly at that.
“No,” he said softly. “I don’t think I am.”
The confidence in his voice sent a cold chill down my spine. It sounded less like a threat and more like a man certain he would eventually get what he wanted.
The first twenty-four hours weren’t about pain.
They were about erosion.
Silas understood that better than most people. Physical violence got immediate reactions, but exhaustion? Isolation? Uncertainty? Those things hollowed people out slowly from the inside, until even breathing felt heavier than it should.
The lights never turned off in the room. Not once.
Every time exhaustion started to drag to the point where my body felt like shutting down, someone would enter just long enough to wake me again. A slammed door. Ice water splashed on my face. Questions repeated in calm, endless loops until time itself started to feel like it was slipping away.
I eventually stopped trying to count hours. That was intentional, too.
The cold stayed constant and bit through my skin until my muscles ached from tension alone, while the restraints kept my shoulders pulled tight enough to send sharp pain down my arms every time I shifted.
Not enough to permanently injure me. Just enough to keep discomfort simmering nonstop beneath the surface.
Controlled.
Measured.
Silas rarely raised his voice during any of it. That somehow made him worse.
“You look tired, Mira,” he observed quietly during one of the later interrogations, seated across from me again while another guard stood near the wall behind him.
I stared at him through burning eyes without answering.
He opened a file slowly, flipping through pages with deliberate calm. “Adrian hasn’t been sleeping much either.”
My pulse stumbled once despite myself.
Damn it.
Silas noticed immediately.
“There he is,” he murmured.
Rage flared hot beneath the exhaustion clawing through me. “Go fuck yourself.”
His expression barely changed. “Interesting thing about emotional attachment,” he said conversationally. “It turns highly disciplined people into predictable ones.”
I stayed silent after that. Not because I wanted to, but because I realized too late that every reaction tied to Aiden gave him information.
Silas stood then. He moved slowly around the table until he stopped beside me. Close enough that the faint scent of smoke and expensive cologne settled unpleasantly in the cold air.
“You know what I think?” he asked quietly.
I didn’t answer.
“I think Ghost built his entire identity around detachment. Control. Isolation.” His voice lowered slightly. “And then he made the mistake of caring about you too visibly.”
My jaw tightened hard.
Wrong move.
Silas’ hand caught my chin instantly, grip firm enough to hurt as he forced my gaze upward toward his. “That reaction right there?” he said softly. “That’s why he’s already compromised.”
I jerked against his hold immediately, fury burned hotter than exhaustion now. “Touch me again and lose the hand.”
The guard behind me shifted forward instantly at the threat, but Silas only smiled faintly before releasing me.
“You still think this room is about breaking you,” he said calmly.
Cold slid heavily through my stomach at the certainty in his voice. Because deep down, I was starting to realize he might be right. This wasn’t really about me anymore. It was about what I could do to Aiden if Silas applied enough pressure.
When the door finally clicked shut for the last time, tiredness clung to me like a second skin.
Exhausted. Not frail. Drained. Of all my will to fight, with my spirit sucked out through each hour they kept me in this room … tormenting me slowly, patiently attempting to chip away at me rather than just shattering me completely.
My wrists felt raw from pulling too hard against the binds earlier, and my muscles were rigid from not being able to relax fully. All of this faded away, however, when I kept circling back to one thought, one reality, that pounded through my mind more intensely with each passing minute.
They could’ve killed me.
If Ironhand thought I was just a tainted asset affiliated with Sanctuary, then they would’ve ended my life quietly. Efficiently. Without jeopardizing anything. Silas wasn’t going to torture me for days just to feel better about snapping my neck.
Which meant only one thing settled into my mind.
They drugged me.
Strapped me to this damn chair.
Hurt me without killing me.
Bombarded me with questions about Aiden rather than… simpler extraction techniques.
This was… wait! This wasn’t torture. This was… bait.
Silas wasn’t doing this to see if I’d break because I was important on my own.
I was important because Ghost was.
My head lolled back against the chair as my vision blurred and fear wormed its way through my rib cage.
Aiden was going to come for me.
I knew it. There was no other way to say it. My stomach turned, and my hands shook, but I knew him too well to doubt what he was going to try to do.
Silas knew that, which was exactly why they were doing this.
My chest felt empty with the realization, as the lights hummed quietly above me and the room filled with stillness once more.
They weren’t torturing me for information.
They were torturing me for a reaction.