33. Drystan
Chapter Thirty-Three
DRYSTAN
Two Weeks Later
It is almost nine at night. The rain stopped hours ago, but the fucker has not come out yet.
System of a Down plays low through the speakers because the silence is killing me day by day. Fourteen days without her. Fourteen days without knowing if she is alive or not.
“Please be alive,” I whisper again, the words barely audible over the music.
We went through my entire life since I was a kid and nothing seemed to matter, nothing fit whatever this is now. Until Enzo went through the time I was in jail and crossed information with the guys we were with inside, their families, and then my lawyer.
My fucking lawyer. Not him though, that would have been easier, but his wife. The apartment Archibald sent Briar to was owned by some shell company. Enzo dug deeper and deeper until he found a name. Elisa Grant.
I did not recognize the name until he showed me her married name. Elisa Stein. Married to Nicholas Stein, my fucking lawyer.
Two weeks to find this information. Why would my lawyer’s wife pay for Briar’s apartment? And he fits what Briar told me about the men. Older. Rich.
Nicholas is fifty-five years old, filthy rich. Mansion in a fancy neighborhood near Seattle.
So here I am, back in the city where it all started. Fake documents got me across the border easily, but I did not use the ones my father got me since Nicholas was probably the one who made the contacts. Enzo made me new ones so there are no trails of me ever coming here.
The night air is cold through the cracked window, the wind whispering against the car like it knows what I am waiting for.
I sit here in the shadows across from his mansion, engine off, the low thrum of the music the only thing keeping me from losing what is left of my mind.
The house is lit up with warm lights in the windows, but I have not seen him yet.
Fourteen days. Fourteen days of not knowing if she is breathing, if she is scared, if she is still fighting or if they have already broken her.
The thought alone makes my hands tighten on the wheel until the leather creaks, the rage simmering so hot beneath my skin that it feels like it might burn me alive from the inside.
I lean back in the seat, eyes never leaving the gate, the cold wind carrying the faint scent of wet earth and pine through the open crack.
She is out there somewhere. My Briar. The only piece of this world worth saving.
And this man, this Nicholas Stein, is the thread I have to pull until the whole rotten web unravels.
I will find her. I will bring her home, and every single person who touched her will pay in ways that will make the devil himself look away.
The music shifts, the beat heavier now, matching the steady thrum of my heart.
I wait.
The night stretches on, cold and endless, but I will not move until I have what I came for. She is mine, and I am coming for her.
The gate finally begins to open.
His white Mercedes drives by. He is alone, that’s too bad, I would kill his wife too.
I start the car, a black muscle car from Easton, and drive after him, keeping my distance.
The engine rumbles low and steady beneath me as I follow through the quiet streets of his neighborhood, the headlights off, relying on the faint glow of streetlamps and the full moon overhead.
He drives through one intersection, no other cars at this hour.
The next signal turns red.
Right on time.
Enzo never misses.
He stops and I ease forward very slowly and bump him from behind, not enough to leave any marks but enough for him to feel the jolt.
The impact sends a satisfying thud through both vehicles.
I see him waving his hands inside, frustrated and oblivious.
I keep the motor running as he steps out of his car.
“Do you know how expensive this car is?”
He reaches my window and leans in.
His face changes color the moment he recognizes me. I smirk.
“Hey, Nicholas.” He tries to step back, but I grab the collar of his suit and pull him in toward me. My elbow cracks into the back of his neck. His body folds against the side of the muscle car before sliding bonelessly toward the pavement.
I step out of the car, hook my hands beneath his arms and drag him across the wet asphalt before shoving him into the trunk.
I drive off toward the warehouse. I cannot drive back to Hellebore with him, so I found a replacement spot, in the middle of nowhere.
The tires bite into the overgrown track, gravel spitting beneath them as the car sinks deeper into the woods. Crossing the border with a body in my trunk is too much a risk.
So I found this place instead, an old logging warehouse rotting in the middle of nowhere, where the trees press close and the silence is thick enough to choke on.
My mind turns over every scrap of information I need to rip from his tongue. Names. Locations. The exact shape of what they did to her. Every detail is a live wire beneath my skin.
I cut the engine. The headlights die, leaving only the pale wash of moonlight through the broken canopy. The warehouse squats ahead like something that died years ago. Easton and Enzo wait by the rusted door.
“Took you long enough,” Easton says, that devil’s smirk already in place.
I step out. The night air is damp.
“Didn’t feel like explaining a speeding ticket.”
Easton rolls his eyes and drifts closer while I move to the trunk. Nicholas is still out cold, one arm twisted awkwardly beneath him. The sight of him sets something dark and hungry uncoiling in my chest.
“Is he even alive?” Easton asks.
I reach in, take Nicholas’s hand, and choose a finger. The snap is clean. Wet. The sound of it cracks through the trees and Nicholas wakes screaming, body arching so hard the trunk lid rattles.
“Yeah,” I say.
Easton laughs as Nicholas thrashes, legs kicking, fists swinging at nothing.
We move together—Easton catching his wrists while I loop rope around his ankles, yanking tight.
The duct tape comes next, the rip of it loud in the dark.
Nicholas screams for help, voice already raw, but the woods swallow every sound.
We drag him inside. His heels carve shallow trenches through the dirt and rotting leaves.
The warehouse opens around us, moonlight slicing through holes in the roof in thin, silver blades, the air thick with mildew and the sweet-rot stench of long abandonment.
In the center of the space waits the steel table, bolted to the concrete.
The moment Nicholas sees it, panic floods him.
He bucks harder, but it’s useless. Enzo steps in without a word, gripping under his arms as we heave him onto the cold metal.
The chains are heavy. They clink and drag as we loop them across his chest, his thighs, his spread arms. Each lock snaps shut with a sound that feels final.
I roll my shoulders. The tension there has teeth. My arms cross over my chest as I look down at him. The question leaves me low, almost gentle.
“Where is Briar?”
He stares up at me. I watch the lie form behind his eyes, the quick flicker, the way his throat works. I don’t have time for this dance. Not when every second without her is another thread snapping inside me.
I nod to Enzo. The corner of his mouth lifts. He turns to the small, scarred box on the crate and brings it over. Three vials rest inside, their contents dark and viscous, catching the moonlight like old blood.
“The Henbane,” I say.
Enzo’s eyes gleam. They brew it at the cottage buried in the woods near Hellebore—old roots, older recipes. Things that were never meant to see daylight.
Nicholas’s voice cracks. “What is that? You can’t kill me—I’m a lawyer, I’m important—”
Easton’s hand cracks across his mouth. Blood sprays, bright against the dull steel. “Who the fuck cares, my guy,” he chuckles. “We all bleed the same. Your money means shit out here.”
“Grab his head,” I tell Enzo.
Enzo’s fingers are precise. He pinches Nicholas’s nose shut and presses hard on the hinge of his jaw until the mouth opens on a gasp.
Nicholas tries not to breathe. It doesn’t last. The moment his lips part I tip the entire vial between them.
The liquid is bitter on the air, earth and something sweeter, like flowers left too long in a grave. He chokes, swallows, fights.
It won’t kill him. Not yet. The real pleasure, the slow breaking, the ruin, will be for my black hellebore. But this will make his mind drift. It will make him forget how to lie. With the right questions, he’ll spill everything before he even knows he’s speaking.
I look at Easton. He’s the one who knows how to steer the henbane into truth. He takes the lead on this for now.
I step back. The chains rattle as Nicholas’s body begins to slacken against the cold steel.
At first there is only the wet, choking gag, his throat convulsing as the bitter liquid fights its way down, a thin rivulet escaping the corner of his mouth to stain his collar like spilled ink.
Then the shaking starts. His limbs jerk against the heavy chains, muscles seizing in erratic spasms that make the table groan.
Sweat beads across his forehead, then pours down his temples in glistening tracks, soaking the collar of his shirt.
His skin flushes a violent, unnatural red, as if the henbane is burning him from the inside out, spreading like fever through poisoned veins.
His eyes are the worst. The pupils swell, swallowing the iris until only black, glassy voids remain, bottomless wells reflecting nothing but the fractured moonlight leaking through the rotting roof. He mumbles nonsense, words slurring into the damp air like a prayer gone wrong.
We wait. The warehouse holds its breath with us, shadows lengthening across the concrete.
“Nicholas,” Easton says, voice low and steady.
“Green leaf… I like them green—pretty petals,” Nicholas mumbles, the words thick and dreamy.