Chapter 41 #2
The room seemed to inhale and hold its breath.
The faint click of Kashani’s tongue was the final sound I heard before the air broke into violence.
They came at me like a tide. Not with hurry, no, that would be sloppy. But with the slow, methodical cruelty of men who'd been given permission to unmake someone.
The tallest of them moved first, gloved hands deliberate as if arranging tools on an operating table.
I tried to drag my shoulder back against the rope, tried to make the coil of pain mean anything but another bruise, tried to pull the breath that would make me scream into something I could aim like a weapon.
"You think you can hide things from me," Mr Kashani said, voice even and small-boned, the kind that hits harder than a shout. "You think your secrets put you above my judgment?"
"I—" I spat, but he stepped closer and I swallowed the rest.
There was a blade smell in the air—diesel, old cigarettes, cleaning solvent.
The bulb swung above, and for a second, its light cut the room into two. My face white and raw in one slice, my captors' features carved in the other.
"Kill me," I said suddenly, loud and ragged.
The words burst out before I could shape them into anything careful.
"If you want me dead, do it. End it. But know this; if I survive, Kashani, I will come for you.
I will take everything you love and burn it down until nothing of your name is left.
Do you hear me? Kill me now if you have the courage.
Save the rest of your men the sin of watching me rise. "
For a heartbeat his expression flickered, annoyance, amusement, the cool assessment of a man who'd heard plenty of threats and judged most of them empty. Then he smiled like a man removing a pleasant trinket from a display.
"Brave words, kiddo," he said. "We'll see how long they echo."
That was all the grace they needed.
Boots hit my ribs first, sharp, precise, meant to steal air and force a small, animal sound from me. I bit down hard on my tongue so my cry would be swallowed.
A fist drove into my stomach and the world condensed to a single point of hot, stabbing pain. My knees buckled; the ropes bit into my wrists as I tried to steady myself.
They didn't stop to admire their work. They took turns, one to the ribs, another to the thigh, another dragging the back of my head so that my cheekbone slammed against the concrete.
Pain radiated in punch-echo waves through my body. I tasted copper and smelled wet wool and something metallic.
Everything inside me wanted to fold, to go small and silent, to make the hurt stop. But the other part, the part that had fought men like them and won before, screeched, clawed, flared.
"Versace!" Zorian's voice tore through the fog.
He'd slid to his knees in his own bonds, straining, eyes frantic, jaw tight with failed restraint.
The sight of him shaking, not able to cross, hammered something feral in my chest. I tried to spit words through my teeth around the ache.
"Freeze. You won't touch me. You hear me?" I roared, half to the men, half to the concrete, half to Kashani. "You kill me—fine. But you keep going after my people, you make yourself a target. I will come for everything you love!"
They answered with barks of laughter like dogs told to heel.
One of them, thick neck, small eyes, grabbed my chin with two fingers and wrenched my face up so the light hit my ruined cheek. Spit and blood mixed at the corner of my mouth. My head pounded from the blows; the world sloped and swung. I could feel the bone-thin seam of a cut forming under my lip.
"You talk big for someone tied like a doll," he said, nothing to read in his face. He swung a heavy backhand into my jaw. The strike wasn't neat. It wasn't cinematic. It was a hard, ugly thud, the kind that makes the head ring with a slow, wide bell and leaves the mouth full of iron.
I saw stars and black, then, like being plunged underwater and trying to grab air, an animal noise tore from my throat.
Heat flared in my ears. Dizziness pooled. My legs dragged. My limbs felt like someone else's tools.
They hit me until the room blurred into sequence: boot-boot-boot, the slap of a glove, the grunt of exertion, the dull clack of a baton as it found flesh.
Every blow had a purpose, compliance, humiliation, stripping away swagger until the thing beneath could be instructed like machinery. They wanted me small. They wanted me to be pliant.
I thought of Sanaa then—her thin, brave text, the private space she'd offered me. I thought of Dominic's head on my laps the night he was sick. I thought of Aurelio's hand in mine on our Paris getaway.
I imagined each of their faces, and anger cut through the fog so sharp I could focus on it like a blade. Hurt didn't make you weak if you used it right. Hurt can be an engine.
"You'll pay," I rasped, blood thick on my tongue, spitting onto the concrete because I could not get air to carry the words. "You hear me, Kashani? You'll pay. Wait till Ms Versace fin—"
A boot answered where words failed, slamming into my chest hard enough to push the wind from me again. I gagged, the world going bright.
Kashani watched, hands folded like a bored spectator. "Keep on fighting," he murmured. "It makes it entertaining."
He leaned over me, close enough that I could feel the cold of his cuff against my temple. "You will see the point of confession soon."
They pulled me upright to the chair they had waiting earlier, hooking my bruised arms and hauling me forward with careful, efficient brutality.
The ropes slipped, the knots that had been armature were replaced with ones designed to hold me for longer, to make small movements useless, to let pain be the teacher.
They strapped me tight, shoulder to waist, so that breathing was an exercise and the world pressed against my ribs like a slow machine.
I panted, eyes burning, face bloody and swelled along one cheek.
Someone pressed a wet cloth to my mouth without asking, and the cold shocked my skin.
Tears burned behind my eyes. Not from pain, but from the humiliation of being the thing they wanted me to be. Exposed, teachable, human in a way that could be catalogued.
"You wanted it soft, boss," one of them said. "We can do it gently. Or we can go fast."
Mr Kashani's smile felt like a guillotine. "Gentle," he decided, and the word settled over us like a promise of slow things. "We will set an example. Keep her alive. Make sure she remembers what it means to be small."
They left me then, the room closing a little.
The hum of the machine in the next room turned louder.
Zorian slumped back against the wall, coughing and trying to focus through his fog. He managed a look that was both apology and instruction. Stay strong, he seemed to say. Don't make rash bargains, and it ripped me open inside.
I breathed through the pain. I focused on the list of things that mattered.
"Do your worst," I whispered again, not to the men but to the empty room, to the brand on my own heart. "You started something you can't finish."
When the footsteps faded away, leaving the echoes of boots and the slow mechanical whir, I let the darkness take me, not as surrender but as patience.
Pain could be endured. Pain could be used. I would live through this, and then I would come back.
Mr Kashani straightened, buttoned his cuff with the practiced, sure movements of a man who'd never had to dirty his hands.
He looked once more, with a kindness he didn't feel, at Zorian and said, "Bring him out for now. Let him think. Let him talk. He may entertain the idea of trading. He is, after all, a shadow. Shadows have secrets."
They hauled Zorian up, clumsily now, like a man moving a wounded animal. He was dragged through the doorway, forced out of sight.