Tortured #2
The blackened doors greet me with a sliver of red that glides across them like a snake hunting its prey.
My hand rests on the golden knob, ready to walk in blind to a meeting I shouldn’t have agreed to.
Turning, I look at him, and he’s as pale as a freshly laid sheet on a hotel bed.
“Do you have anything you want to tell me before we walk in here?” He shakes his head.
“Last chance,” I utter as my fingers move across the doorknob.
Once again he shakes his head, and I let out a sigh as I swing open the heavy door and step inside.
The air changes the second the door shuts behind me.
Heavy. Electric. My gut coils like I’ve walked into a storm I should’ve turned my back on.
The room isn’t like the others—it isn’t dressed for seduction, not in the obvious way. It’s stripped bare, all sharp corners and shadows, with just one long table in the middle and a single lamp humming low above it. A stage dressed in silence, waiting for the actors to play their parts.
My eyes sweep the corners—habit, instinct. I’ve been in too many rooms where the man who thinks he’s in control ends up bleeding out on the carpet.
“Dean.”
The voice is smooth. Too smooth.
I followed it to the far end of the table. He’s sitting there like a king in exile, back against the chair, fingers drumming idly against the polished wood. Not my client. I know immediately. This isn’t business. This is a game.
And James—the little fucker—still hasn’t said a word.
“What the fuck is this?” My voice cuts through the silence like a blade.
The man smiles only. It’s the kind of smile that says he knows every dark secret carved into your bones. “Relax. You’re among friends.”
I don’t move closer. I don’t sit. My jaw tightens because I already know—I’m not among friends. Not here.
Club Z did nothing by halves. If you were summoned, it wasn’t for negotiation. It was an initiation. It was a debt. It was blood.
And I hadn’t agreed to pay mine.
James fidgets beside me, and the air thickens with something unspoken, something I don’t want to name. My gaze flicks to him—his sandy curls, his boyish guilt etched across his face. He can’t even look me in the eye.
“You dragged me into this?” I hiss low, quiet enough that only he can hear.
His throat bobs. He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. The silence is confession enough.
The man at the table leans forward now, elbows resting like he’s been patient long enough. “Dean,” he says again, savouring it this time. “You’ve kept us waiting.”
Us.
My stomach drops.
From the shadows, movement. Two more step out, flanking him, suits cut sharp, eyes dead. This isn’t a meeting. It’s a message.
I exhale slowly through my nose, the taste of copper on my tongue from biting back every curse.
And still—through all of this—the thought snakes in unbidden, poisonous: Brooklyn.
Her name tastes dangerous in my mouth, even unspoken. She’s across the hall every night, peeking from behind the curtain, avoiding me but never far. She does not know what this place is, what threads I’m tangled in, what ghosts I’ve buried to keep standing.
And if they so much as sniff her name on me—I’ll burn this fucking place to ash.
The three of them don’t move. They just stand there, like carved statues, with the faintest flicker of amusement in their eyes. Watching me. Measuring me.
My fists clench at my sides. I’ve walked into a hundred boardrooms with billionaires and sharks, but this—this feels different. This isn’t about money, contracts, or fucking mergers. This is power. Pure, unfiltered. And it stinks of something I don’t like.
James shifts again, rubbing the back of his neck like a guilty schoolboy. My jaw grinds. I don’t want to look at him because if I do, I might wrap my hands around his throat before they even get the chance.
The man at the head of the table finally pushes back his chair, the scrape of metal on wood echoing too loudly in the stillness. He doesn’t stand fully, just leans forward into the slice of yellow light, and for the first time I see his face properly.
Calm.
Too calm.
“Dean,” he says, almost conversational. “You’ve been circling our little world for years. Profits. Properties. Clubs. You like to dip your hand in but never get it dirty.”
My lip curls. “I build. I don’t play games.”
He chuckles, low and sharp. “Everything is a game. You just haven’t been playing ours.”
The silence stretches, thick as tar. My pulse ticks hard in my throat, but I keep my voice even, clipped. “If you called me here to stroke your ego, you’ve wasted both our time.”
That earns me a slow smile. Not a friendly one. One of the men flanking him steps forward, placing a small black folder on the table. Leather. Worn. Familiar in a way that makes my stomach clench.
“Go on.” The man gestures as if he’s offering me dessert.
I don’t want to. Every instinct screams that I shouldn’t. But my hand moves anyway, dragging the folder toward me. I open it.
Inside—photographs.
Documents.
Transactions I thought were buried ten feet deep.
My throat goes dry.
He knows.
The bastard knows.
I close the folder slowly, deliberately, keeping my face unreadable even as the floor tilts beneath me. “You’ve been digging.”
“Not digging. Watching,” he corrects softly. “Always watching.”
James looks like he might throw up, and it takes everything I have not to turn and gut him right there.
The man leans back in his chair, steeling his fingers. “You’re good, Dean. Smart. Ruthless. But you’ve forgotten something important.” He tilts his head. “Nobody climbs alone.”
The words hang there, heavy as a noose.
For the first time in years, I feel caged.
The walls of Club Z close in.
And I know with brutal clarity—I’ve just been marked.
My fingers drum against the folder, a deliberate show of composure when every nerve inside me wants to snap.
“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble,” I say finally, my tone flat. “But you should’ve saved yourself the time. I don’t respond well to threats.”
The man smiles. Not the wide grin of someone amused, but the patient curve of a predator who’s already sunk his teeth in. “Dean, if I wanted to threaten you, you wouldn’t be sitting at this table. This isn’t about intimidation—it’s about opportunity.”
“Funny,” I drawl. “Opportunities usually don’t come wrapped in blackmail.”
One of his men chuckles darkly. The sound rattles in my bones.
James shifts beside me again. I can feel his panic radiating like heat, the sweat rolling down his temples, and it makes my jaw ache. I don’t look at him. Not yet.
The man—Rafe, I remember now, a name whispered in certain circles with just enough venom to mean trouble—leans forward.
“You’ve built something respectable. You’ve kept your hands clean.
Admirable, really. But tell me…” His voice softens.
“Has it satisfied you? To be half-in, half-out? To watch the world burn from the edge instead of lighting the match yourself?”
My silence is answer enough.
He pushes the folder back toward me, his gaze locking onto mine like a vice. “I don’t want to destroy you, Dean. If I did, you’d already be rubble. I want you in. With us. Full stop.”
“And if I say no?”
The smile sharpens. “Then you’ll discover just how fast a man can lose everything he’s built.”
The air turns heavy, thick enough to choke on.
I lean back in my chair, forcing a smirk, though my pulse is hammering against my ribs. “You think you’re the first man to corner me? You’re not. And I’m still here.”
His eyes glitter. “You’re here because I allow it.”
The silence after that feels endless. My skin crawls. I want to break his neck, to put a bullet between his eyes and be done with it, but I know the kind of men who sit at tables like this. Kill one, two more appear, each hungrier than the last.
Rafe finally lifts a hand, casual, dismissive. “Take the week. Think it over. You’ll find the world much smaller than you believe.”
The two men at his side move then, stepping forward just enough to remind me that this isn’t a conversation—it’s a verdict.
I rise slowly, the chair scraping the floor. My eyes flick once to James, pale and stricken, before I pin Rafe with a last look. “If you’re going to play with fire,” I murmur, “be careful you don’t burn.”
Rafe only laughs. A slow, rich sound that follows me as I push through the doors and back into the dim stairwell.
But the truth gnaws at me with every step down.
I hadn’t walked out victorious.
I’d walked out owned.
The stairwell feels longer on the way down, each echo of my boots against the iron steps grinding deeper into my skull. James trails behind me, silent, and it’s that silence that makes my blood simmer.
By the time we hit the lobby, I’d had enough. I grab his arm, yanking him to the side where the glow of the neon doesn’t quite reach.
“What the fuck was that?” My voice is low, lethal.
James blanches. “Dean—”
“No.” I jab a finger into his chest. “You walked me into that room blind, with him sitting there, and you thought I wouldn’t notice? You think I wouldn’t smell the setup a mile away?”
He swallows hard, throat bobbing. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“Bullshit.” I slam him back against the wall, the sound of it cracking like a gunshot. “There’s always a choice. You either didn’t make one, or you made the wrong one.”
His eyes flicker, guilt written all over him. “They came to me. Weeks ago. Said if I didn’t—” He breaks off, jaw tightening, but I see the fear. It’s raw, real.
I lean in closer, my hand braced beside his head. “If you didn’t what?”
“They said they’d ruin me. They knew about… everything.” His voice is barely a whisper. “My debts. The girl.”
Christ. My gut twists, fury mixing with something uglier—disappointment. I’d taken him in, trusted him, and he’d handed me to the wolves because he couldn’t keep his own nose clean.
I step back just enough to keep from putting my fist through his face. “You just put me on Rafe’s leash, James. Do you have any idea what that means?”
His eyes dart, desperate. “I thought maybe you could handle it.”
“Handle it?” I bark out a bitter laugh. “This isn’t a boardroom negotiation. That man doesn’t play games. He burns people alive for fun. And you’ve tethered me to him.”
“I didn’t know what else to do.”
I stare at him for a long moment, my fists clenched so tight my knuckles ache. There’s a part of me that wants to walk away, leave him to whatever mess he’s dug, but I know it’s not that simple. Rafe doesn’t just ruin the weak link—he ruins everyone attached to it.
I lower my voice to a razor’s edge. “Listen carefully, because I won’t say it twice. You breathe a word of this to anyone, you look at me the wrong way, you so much as flinch around me—and I’ll deal with you myself before Rafe gets the chance. Are we clear?”
James nods frantically, sweat dripping down his temple.
I release him with a shove and step out into the night, the air cold against the heat burning through me.
But no amount of cold can smother the truth clawing at the back of my skull.
I wasn’t free anymore.
And I didn’t know if I ever would be again.