18. Chapter 18
Chapter eighteen
Pain dragged me out of the dark and back to this godforsaken cell.
My left leg kicked hard enough against the restraints to wrench the chair sideways. The cramp climbed from my battered thigh into my hip, stomach, and ribs, locking everything at once. My breath jammed in my chest in the worst possible way.
Pain I could handle. The thirst was becoming a bigger problem.
What little food and water Mouse had gotten into me last night was long gone.
Between that and Isabeast treating electricity like a personality trait, my thoughts were starting to move a fraction slower than I liked.
I needed that shit to stop before an escape window opened and I was too fucked up to use it.
The bare bulb blurred above me, doubled, then slowly became one again.
No blindfold.
Christ. Isabeast had finally done me a favor. After two days of darkness, being able to see whoever came through that door counted as progress.
Isabeast had thrown it aside before she started because she’d wanted to see my eyes every time she gave an order.
I held still and let the aftershock burn itself out. Fighting muscles still spasming from the shocks would only waste what little strength I had left.
Once I could think past the pain, one change was impossible to miss. My cock was back inside my pants.
My belt was buckled and my zipper closed, but she’d shoved my cock down the wrong side of my pants. Right instead of left.
Isabeast had handled me while I was unconscious. Not to give me back any dignity. She wanted me to wake knowing she’d done it because I couldn’t stop her.
The last thing I remembered was her thumb settling over the switch on the black box controlling the electrical pulses.
She’d strapped one electrode against the bruised flesh along my side and shoved the other beneath my waistband against my upper thigh, then stood in front of me holding the control box as if she’d finally found something that could make me obey.
“Ask me to stop politely,” she’d purred.
The current punched through my side and leg at once. My back had snapped away from the chair, lungs locking before I could drag in a breath.
“Call me Mistress.”
Another burst turned every muscle rigid and drove the restraints into skin already rubbed raw.
“Tell me you’ll behave for the camera.”
By then, all I could focus on was her mouth, the box in her hand, and how many seconds I had before she hit the switch again.
“Thank me properly for teaching you to behave. Then say my name.”
Then she held the switch down.
The scream tore out of me before the darkness came.
As I went under, she’d leaned close and whispered that I was finally learning.
Stupid bitch.
Pain had never been an effective method of coercion for me. Lucian had nearly beaten me senseless at sixteen after I stole his first motorbike and buried it in a ditch. Hurt like hell. Still didn’t make me sorry.
By the time I blacked out, Isabeast had learned the same lesson Lucian had years ago.
Hurt me, and I only became harder to handle.
She’d dragged sounds out of my throat that one day I’d kill her for. Not one of them was what she’d demanded.
Not one fucking syllable.
My thigh seized once more before the muscle finally released.
I closed both hands, flexed my fingers, and moved each foot inside the cuffs. My left leg answered more slowly than the right, but it answered. A full breath sent a sharp stab through my ribs, but nothing felt broken.
Nothing that would keep me in this chair once Isabella turned the key.
She had to have heard me.
There was no chance those screams hadn’t been heard across the compound.
That wasn’t a problem for my pride. It was a problem for our escape.
Isabella had already risked her life twice to sneak in and help me. After hearing Isabeast push me past anything I could hide, she might have decided waiting was no longer an option and done something stupid.
I’d told her to come back.
She’d promised she would.
Now I needed her to wait a little longer.
Stay upstairs, Mouse.
A key scraped inside the lock of the door, and I expected Isabeast to walk through.
Shit.
If she’d already come back for another lesson, I was about to discover another circle of hell beneath this fucking dungeon.
The door swung open.
Not Isabeast.
Two guards entered first. One carried a folded table under his arm, while the other lugged two hard black cases. A thin man in dark clothes followed with a tripod over one shoulder and a laptop case in his hand.
Well, this was new.
They spread out without saying much. The thin man opened the tripod in the middle of the room while one guard unfolded the table behind it and the other popped the latches on the cases.
A camera came out first.
Then cables, a compact transmitter, and enough electronic shit to answer the obvious question.
Ciro was finally ready for his proof-of-life show.
While the operator mounted the camera and started connecting everything to the laptop, one of the guards walked over to me.
He stopped.
“Jesus.”
His eyes moved over the burns, bruises, blood, and sweat Isabeast had left behind.
The second guard glanced over. “What?”
“Look at him. This is more than Delgado ordered.”
No shit.
The first man disappeared to the sink and returned with a wet cloth and a towel.
“Hold still.”
“You lads really do know how to make a man feel special.”
He ignored me and wiped dried blood from the corner of my mouth, then worked carefully around the cut on my cheek before dragging the cloth down my neck and chest.
The water should have felt good.
Instead, having water rubbed over me when I couldn’t drink any of it felt like another form of torture.
The other guard crouched to check the ankle restraints while the operator opened the laptop and began testing the camera angle.
“Leave the cheek alone,” he said without looking up. “We don’t want it to start bleeding.”
“Then Delgado should’ve kept his fucking psychopath from playing torturer.”
That shut both of them up.
The operator looked through the camera, pointed toward me, and said something in Spanish.
Both guards grabbed the chair. They hauled me several feet toward the front of the dungeon and angled it toward the camera.
My ribs objected to every jolt.
The move left Isabella’s hidden panel behind me and off to the right, well outside the camera’s frame.
One less thing to worry about.
The operator made a few adjustments, checked the laptop, then stepped back.
The guard who’d cleaned me headed out. The other moved to the open dungeon door and took up position with his rifle across his chest.
Farther out in the corridor stood an older man I hadn’t seen before.
Gray touched his dark hair at the temples, and a radio hung from his belt. He said nothing, just watched the guards, the equipment, and the doorway before giving me one quick assessment.
He didn’t stare or posture. His attention simply moved on.
Interesting.
I filed him away for later.
The room settled into an uneasy quiet while the camera operator ran whatever final checks the equipment required.
Then the guard at the door straightened.
So did the man working the camera.
Cigar smoke drifted in from the corridor a second before Ciro appeared.
There was the cartel king.
He walked in with a cigar between his fingers and the easy arrogance of a man who believed everything inside these walls belonged to him.
Isabeast followed.
She was dressed in fitted black trousers and a crisp white blouse. Her dark hair was sleek again, and her makeup polished.
The New York attorney had returned—the same woman who’d walked into Xyst.
Mateo came in directly behind her in dark clothes, his pistol riding at his hip.
Ciro made it two steps into the dungeon before stopping.
His gaze moved over me slowly.
They’d cleaned off most of the blood, but I still looked like a man who’d been beaten, shocked, and barely given water for two days.
Ciro looked at Isabeast.
“I told you he was to be presentable.”
“He is.”
Ciro turned back toward me.
I almost laughed.
If this was her definition of presentable, I’d hate to see what she considered rough treatment.
“He looks like hell.”
“He’s alive.”
“That wasn’t the order.”
Her chin lifted. “His face is fine.”
“And can he walk?”
“He could yesterday.”
Ciro’s eyes snapped back to her.
“Yesterday?”
She didn’t answer.
He stepped closer to me.
“I need Volkov to see exactly what I intend him to see. Not proof that you indulged yourself before the negotiation even started.”
Ciro didn’t give a damn that she’d tortured me. He cared that Nik and Lucian might see a man who couldn’t keep his own people in line. The damage had to look deliberate, exactly enough to make the threat clear.
Isabeast crossed her arms.
“He’ll survive.”
“I didn’t ask whether he’ll survive,” he barked. “I gave you limits.”
“And I stayed within them.”
Ciro gave a humorless laugh. “Look at him.”
“He needed correction.”
“He is leverage, not one of your toys. Volkov already has men searching this country. If this location becomes compromised, I need to move Byrnes fast. I’m not wasting six men carrying him out because you had to prove something.”
His gaze returned to me.
“When I say he needs to walk, I mean he walks.”
Ciro took another drag from his cigar and blew the smoke aside.
“This prisoner is worth more than whatever sick little obsession you’ve developed with him. Remember that.”
For the first time since she had entered, Isabeast had no quick answer.
Last night, Isabella had told me Mateo and several guards were answering to Isabeast now, not just Ciro. I hadn’t known how far that loyalty went.
When Ciro humiliated her, Mateo shifted half a step closer to her.
Not Ciro.
Her.
Big fucking difference.
Ciro still thought every armed man in the compound belonged to him. Mateo had just shown me otherwise.
I was beginning to think he was the only one in the room who hadn’t noticed otherwise.
The camera operator touched the keyboard and leaned toward the laptop. A status bar crawled across the screen, then turned green as a red light blinked on above the camera lens.