22. Emma
twenty-two
Emma
The air in the processing room was subzero, or at least my lungs thought so.
The house above sat half a football field away, buried in insulation, but down here the concrete walls and meat hooks kept the temperature at “find God or die trying.” I loved the silence most. There were no clocks, no television, not even the buzzing of the outside world.
Just the thump of one heart, if you were listening close enough.
I wheeled the folding chair in with one hand, cradling a mug in the other.
The chair legs shrieked against the tile before I even set them down.
I made a show of unfolding it, positioning it by the stainless table, then smoothing the seat with my palm.
The table was the real focus, anyway: six feet of cold metal, sloped for drainage, with an aftermarket set of anchors at the foot and head.
The hardware was Adam’s touch, not mine. I appreciated the elegance.
Sniper lay spread-eagle, cuffs at wrist and ankle, the steel biting deep enough that he’d have pressure sores in under a day.
I’d doubled the padding on his right arm, where the gunshot had blown out a hole the size of a dime, but the bandage was already peach-colored and puffed around the edges.
He was shirtless, blood dried at the pit of his arm, and the skin of his chest and shoulders had gone blotchy from the cold.
His face was pale, but there was no weakness in it—just that quiet, quiet hate.
He kept his head tipped back and his eyes closed, like he was trying to imagine anywhere else to be.
I sat, hands folded, mug steaming. My housecoat was pale blue with a ribbon tie, nothing showy, but the effect was intentional.
I wanted him to see that I’d dressed up for the occasion, that I’d planned this, that I’d bothered to brush my hair and wipe the sleep from my face even if he couldn’t. My slippers didn’t match.
He opened his eyes, blinked once, and stared straight at my chin. Not at my eyes. Not at my hands. Just the point where my jaw met my throat, as if he’d already picked his target for later. It made me want to laugh.
“Marcus,” I said. My voice was honey-sweet, a notch above a whisper, soft enough to require listening but not so soft he’d miss a syllable. “Would you like tea?”
Nothing. His mouth stayed a horizontal slash, his breath slow and deliberate. He didn’t even flex the chains.
I lifted my mug, took a slow sip, then set it down with a click. “I can get you water, if you’d rather. Maybe something for the pain?”
Still nothing. I watched the small muscle jump at his temple, the jaw locking and unlocking as if it was fighting with itself about whether to bite.
I let the silence stretch, filling every square inch of the room. I let it go until I felt my own heart slow to match his. When I finally spoke, it was as if the words belonged to the silence, not to me.
“You don’t want to talk. I get that.” I leaned in, elbows on knees, voice dropping lower. “But you have something I want. And I always, always get what I want.”
He moved his head then, just enough to meet my gaze. There was no fear in it. Not a drop. There was something else, though—an invitation to get this over with.
“Where is she,” he said. Not a question. Not even a command. Just the thing itself, hanging in the space between us.
I smiled—not wide, just enough to show him the edges of my teeth. “You mean Jasmine, obviously.” I made the name a little joke, letting it flicker between us. “She’s fine. I could show you, if you’re polite.”
He didn’t rise to it. Instead, he sucked in a breath through his nose and flexed his hands. The cuffs clanked against the table, but there was no give.
“You can do whatever you want,” he said, and now there was a little shake in the voice—not weakness, not quite, but adrenaline. “You don’t touch her.”
I steepled my fingers, resting my chin on the tips. “Let’s talk about you for a second,” I said. “I heard you were the smart one in your chapter, the problem solver. The guy who could plan three steps ahead, who never left a mess behind. That’s what they said about you.”
He didn’t move.
“And yet, here you are. Bleeding on my table.”
He exhaled, slow. “You got me. Congratulations. What’s the point of this, Emma?”
I let the name hang, let him feel the intimacy of it. The way he said it meant he’d studied me, probably read every scrap of gossip from Adam’s background checks. It meant he’d built a mental model of who he thought I was, and now he was running the simulation.
I stood and took two steps closer, enough to bring my knees up against the edge of the table. I looked down at his torso, the way the chain pressed into the ridges of his pelvis, the way the dried blood made a path down his arm.
I said, “The point is, I want to see how you work. What you’ll do when the world is exactly the size of this table and nothing else.”
His nostrils flared. “I’ll wait. That’s what I do.”
I shrugged, then reached into my robe pocket and produced the blade. It was a little thing, a folding utility knife, but sharp enough to carve meat in a single pass. I made a show of flicking it open, then set the tip against the waistband of his jeans. He tensed, just a little, and I savored it.
“I could just torture you,” I said. “That’s Adam’s style, not mine.” I pressed the blade down, slicing the button away with one quick motion, then tugged the fly open. “But pain is so inefficient.”
He grunted. It might have been an exhale, might have been a growl.
I put the knife under the waistband, flipped it sideways, and drew a line straight down.
The fabric split with a soft rasp, and the chill hit his skin instantly, making the hair on his thighs stand up.
I tugged the jeans apart, then set the knife at the hem of his boxer briefs.
“Don’t,” he said, but it came out low and soft, more warning than plea.
“Don’t what?” I said, my voice honey again. “You worried about modesty, Marcus?”
He bared his teeth, but he couldn’t stop me. I cut the boxers away in two clean strips, letting the elastic snap back against his hips. He was naked now, from the waist down, cock limp and balls drawn up tight from the cold. I let my eyes linger on it, then looked back up at his face.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” I said. “I’m here to teach you something about yourself.”
He spat sideways, saliva arcing onto the tile. “You don’t know anything about me.”
I bent over him, so close I could feel his breath on my cheek. “I know exactly how people break,” I said. “And I know how much it kills you, not having any control.”
I wrapped my hand around his cock, cold fingers closing tight around the base.
He flinched, but there was nowhere for the energy to go except into the steel and the nerves.
I started slow, thumb circling the crown, index finger running the length with a steady, mechanical precision.
His body rebelled instantly, hips jerking upward, but the chain held him flush to the table. I squeezed harder.
He said nothing, just locked his jaw and turned his face away, but the motion told me everything.
I stroked him, slow and even, watching for the micro-responses: the clench in the thighs, the flex in the left foot, the way his eyes narrowed when he thought I might stop.
I didn’t stop. I kept the rhythm exact, clinical, unhurried.
“This isn’t about me,” I said, voice barely above a hum. “It’s about you, and what you’ll do to survive.”
He made a noise, somewhere between a snarl and a cough, but he couldn’t keep his body from betraying him. The shaft thickened in my hand, skin taut and flushed, the veins standing out like blue wire. His breathing went ragged, but he never looked at me.
I kept going, watching the pulse jump in his neck, the way the muscles of his stomach knotted, how the bandage at his shoulder went from pink to crimson in a spreading stain.
Every time he tried to fight it, I slowed down, made the friction more deliberate, until he bucked against the restraints and the table actually creaked.
“You can hate me,” I said, “but you’re going to come. And you’re going to know that I did this to you.”
He said, “Go fuck yourself,” teeth grinding, but his hips arched off the table and the chains rattled loud enough to echo. He was fighting the whole way, body rigid, head thrashed side to side, but the blood and the drugs and the pain all worked together to tip him over the edge.
He came hard, every muscle locking, jaw wide in a silent yell. I held him through it, squeezing every spasm out of him, not letting go until the pulse faded and he slumped back to the table, sweat cold on his skin and the mess glistening on his thigh.
I wiped my hand on the cloth I’d tucked in my pocket for just this purpose. I folded it with care, then put the chair back where I’d found it, and stood over him.
His chest heaved, breath ragged, the bandage blooming a new color. His eyes stayed shut.
At the door, I paused, hand on the knob. The words were gentle, almost an apology.
“Now you know what it feels like to lose,” I said. “Remember it.”
I closed the door behind me, let the echo bounce down the corridor, and left him alone with the silence and the drip, drip, drip of what he’d just lost.