48. Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Eight
Reaper
I come back to consciousness slowly. Thickly. Like clawing my way up through tar. My head feels heavy. My heartbeat is too loud in my ears. The first thing I register is pain, a deep, burning ache in my shoulders and wrists, a pull in my spine, a drag of metal against skin.
The second thing I register. I can’t move.
My arms are stretched out and up, bound in heavy restraints.
My legs too. Spread wide. Immobilized. A Saint Andrew’s cross.
A big one. They built this for me. My vision flickers into place in disjointed frames, an overhead light that’s too bright, concrete walls, the replica of Wrenley’s childhood bedroom staged in the distance.
A shape sitting in a chair in front of me comes into focus. Sebastian. Holding a delicate glass teacup between his fingers like we’re in a fucking parlor instead of a torture chamber. He smiles when he sees my eyes open.
“There you are,” he says, voice bright, pleasant, wrong. “I was beginning to think they’d overdone the sedative.”
I test the restraints. Thick, bolted, and cold against my skin. They dig deeper the harder I pull. Sebastian watches me fight them with the fascinated calm of a man watching a tiger from the safety of a cage he built himself.
“Saves me so much trouble when you’re awake,” he adds conversationally.. “You’re terribly heavy when you’re unconscious, did you know that? It took three of my men just to get you into position.”
I stare at him, jaw tight. My voice comes out raw, shredded from whatever they drugged me with. “What do you want?”
He sips from the cup. Tea. Something floral. The image is obscene against the backdrop of rusted steel and dust.
“What do I want?” he echoes, amused. “Liam, we’ve only just begun. There’s no need for impatience.”
The name, my name, hits harder this time. Because now there’s no distance. No buffer. No weapons in my hands. He’s using it like a knife.
“Don’t call me that.” I growl.
“Why not?” Sebastian tilts his head, smile widening. “She does.”
A muscle in my jaw twitches. He sees it. He savors it. Sebastian rises from the chair, walking toward me with slow, easy steps. His shoes click softly on the concrete floor.
“You know,” he muses, “When I imagined this moment, I pictured her. Not you.. But I must admit…” His gaze drags down the length of me, strapped tight and immobile. “…this is a delightful surprise.”
I pull at the restraints again, harder this time. Metal creaks. Skin splits at my wrist.
He tsks. “Careful. You’ll hurt yourself before I get the chance.”
“Go to hell,” I rasp.
Sebastian laughs quietly. “Oh, Liam. We’re already there. And I’m your devil.”
He circles me, slow, studying the cross, the bolts, the tension on my arms. Checking his work.
“You traded yourself for her,” he says finally, tone turning soft, deadly. “An admirable decision. A predictable one. You must love her very, very much.”
I say nothing. Because the truth is too big to fit inside words. He knows that. He steps close, too close, resting a hand lightly against my chest like he’s checking the temperature of something he ordered at a restaurant.
“Tell me,” he murmurs. “Do you think she’ll come for you?”
My heart stutters once. Just once. He feels it.
“Oh,” he breathes, delighted. “She will. Eventually. She would come for any of you.”
He steps back slowly, tapping the side of the teacup with one finger. “But by then… you’ll be so beautifully broken.”
I pull so hard against the restraints the veins in my arms bulge, teeth gritting as metal cuts into skin. Sebastian smiles like he’s watching a masterpiece in progress.
“That’s right,” he says softly. “Fight. I want her to see what you look like when you finally stop.”
He turns toward a tray behind him, metal tools neatly arranged, glinting under the light. The sight of them doesn’t scare me. What scares me, what curdles something deep in my gut, is the look in his eyes when he touches them. Soft. Tender. Reverent. Like this is holy.
He lifts a blade, small, sharp, surgical. “Now then,” he says, turning back to me. “Let’s begin, shall we?”
Sebastian doesn’t touch me at first. He talks. Of course he talks. He sets the blade down with surgical care and chooses a different tool entirely. His voice. He prefers to start there. Of course he does. He circles behind me slowly, hands clasped, voice mellow and warm as poison.
“You know,” he muses, “I’ve been thinking about the last time I had my hands on her.”
My muscles coil. He senses it. His smile sharpens.
“Oh, yes,” he purrs. “After the crash. When that car hit them. When she lay crumpled in the leaves like some wild little thing that finally stopped running.”
He steps closer until I can feel his breath graze the back of my neck.
“She didn’t wake up at first. I tied her between those two tree trunks, arms spread, head hanging.” His voice drops into something hungry. “She was so beautiful. Even bruised. Even bleeding. Even broken. The perfect combination of fragility and rage.”
My hands clench against the restraints until skin splits further. Sebastain goes on, unbothered.
“She didn’t beg.” A soft chuckle. “Not then. She couldn’t. Her jaw was slack, her pulse barely there.”
He moves to my side, fingers lightly touching the wooden edge of the cross.
“I remember leaning in,” he breathes. “Just here.” He taps at the side of my own hip. “And biting her. Hard. I wanted to see if she’d scream when she woke.”
My vision narrows. Heat flashes down my spine. He tilts his head, studying me.
“Such a strange, perfect sound she made,” he says. “Half gasp, half sob. When she finally woke. I told her I wasn’t going to kill her yet. That I like to play with my food first.”
A tremor hits my ribs. He notices. He savors it.
“And her eyes—” he murmurs, smile softening into something utterly unhinged. “—you should’ve seen them, Liam. Shock and fury all tangled together. Like a wildcat with a broken leg.”
He steps away, strolling toward the tray of tools.
“But do you know what disappointed me?” he asks lightly. “She didn’t scream when I hit her. Not really. She bit down on her own tongue to stay quiet.” A pause. “But that driver of hers…” He laughs, delighted. “Oh, he screamed. Loud enough to echo through the forest when I started carving into him.”
My heart lurches, thinking about Donnie being alive and carved into. Sebastian picks up a slender hooked blade and turns it in the light.
“Tell me,” he says casually, “Do you think you’ll scream like he did?”
I lock my jaw so hard my teeth ache. He steps close again, bringing the blade up, not touching, just hovering.
“No?” he whispers. “Mm. We’ll see.”
My mind splinters around the edges. Old instincts kick in, the kind I haven’t needed in years.
Dissociation. Dropping into myself. Pulling back from the body while staying aware enough to survive.
I stare past him, past the concrete walls, past the heat of the lights, letting the edges of the world blur and fade. But he notices. Of course he does.
“No slipping away,” he murmurs, grabbing my jaw and forcing my face toward his. “Not yet. I want you present for the reveal.”
He walks toward the far end of the room and presses another button. Lights click on down a long hallway of glass rooms. One after another. Each one a replica of somewhere we’ve lived. Somewhere we’ve fought. Somewhere we’ve bled.
The kitchen at the mansion. Max’s penthouse balcony. Our war room. My old living room from the apartment I shared with Torque. The armory. And at the very end. Wrenley’s childhood bedroom. Exact. Perfect. Horrifying. Sebastian spreads his arms like an artist unveiling his masterpiece.
“I rebuilt them all,” he says, voice full of quiet pride. “Every detail. Every shadow. Every chipped drawer handle she used to catch her fingers on.”
My stomach drops into ice.
“I want you all to feel at home,” he whispers. “For what comes next.”
Cold terror ripples through me, real, visceral, unmistakable. For her. For max. For all of them. Because if they walk in here, none of them will walk out. A prayer slips out of me before I can stop it. Not conscious. Not logical. A whisper to a God I stopped believing in a long, long time ago.
Please… don’t let them come. Don’t let her come for me. Don’t let them follow. Keep them away from this place. Please.
If Sebastian wants me broken…fine. I can accept that. But if he gets his hands on her. A bolt of nausea hits me so hard I almost choke. Sebastian smiles. He can see the fear. He likes it.
“Beautiful,” he says softly, walking back toward me with the hooked blade glinting in the overhead light. “You’re ready.”
Sebastian approaches with the hooked blade held delicately between two fingers, almost like he’s about to carve fruit instead of a man twice his size. He stops just inches from me, head tilted with childlike curiosity.
“You know,” he says softly. “Most people beg before the first cut.”
I meet his eyes, and I laugh. It’s low, hoarse and ugly. But it’s a laugh. His smile fades. Good. “Beg?” I rasp. “You’ve never met a real Serpent, have you?”
His expression flickers, not fear, not anger, but annoyance. A crack in the porcelain. He recovers quickly, but I saw it. He steps closer, pressing the blade lightly against my skin. Not enough to break it, just to remind me it’s there.
“You think you’re special,” he murmurs. “But you’re not the first soldier I’ve played with… Reaper.”
My jaw clenches. He sees it. He loves it. “You boys always pretend you’re made of steel,” he continues. “Until the pain starts.” He drags the cold metal down my sternum, slow enough that my breath stutters. “But perhaps you’re different,” he says, eyes bright. “Perhaps she made you softer.”
I laugh again. A real one this time. “You think softness is weakness?” I ask. “Then you’ve never had anyone to lose.”
His eyes sharpen, a hit, right to the center. He wants to break me with fear. With pain. With words. So I give him something else entirely. I give him the truth. “She made me stronger,” I say. “Both of them did.”
Sebastian’s nostrils flare. Then, the blade bites. Not deep. Not lethal. But the sting rips through nerves that have been dormant since the military. Places where old scars live. Places I swore I’d never feel again.
My mind flashes white, a tent full of screaming, men dying around me, a knife twisting under my ribs, and I almost go under. Almost. But I cling to the sound of her voice in my memory. To Max’s laugh. Hugo’s weight against my legs.
I stay. I stay present. Sebastian steps back, watching my face. Waiting. I look him dead in the eyes and say, “That's all you’ve got?”
His jaw ticks. He chooses a second tool, long, metal, cruel in ways that don’t require blood.
He presses it into a pressure point behind my shoulder, angled perfectly to make the muscles seize.
A white-hot bolt shoots through my arm, a sudden, brutal twist of agony.
My body jerks against the restraints, muscles clenching involuntarily.
Sebastian’s breath hitches in satisfaction. “Does that hurt?” he whispers. “It must. That nerve cluster is—”
I cut him off with a grin. “You’re shaking,” I rasp. He blinks. His hand is, in fact, trembling. Just slightly.
“I’m not afraid of you,” he says calmly.
“Sure looks like you are.”
He strikes the nerve again, harder this time. For a second, the world goes silent except for a sharp buzzing behind my eyes. My back arches involuntarily. My teeth grind so hard that copper floods my mouth.
Sebastian leans in close, observing every twitch, every spasm, hungry. “Tell me about the one you love,” he murmurs. “Let’s see what it does to you.”
I force a breath. Another. Then another. “Which one?”
He recoils, an actual flinch. I let my head fall back on the crook of the cross, panting, and laugh through the pain. “Wrenley?” I taunt. “Max? Margot? Wrecker? Torque? Hell, even Elias or Riot—”
His fist slams into my ribs, right over an old break. A bright flash explodes behind my eyes. But I laugh again, harder. “Keep going,” I grind out. “I’ve taken hits that made grown men drop to their knees crying.”
Sebastian’s voice goes thin and sharp. “Pain makes everyone crack.”
“Not me.”
His eyes narrow. “Oh?” he whispers. “That panic in your eyes earlier said otherwise.”
My breath stutters. Not from pain. From the truth. Because yes, I am terrified. Terrified of what happens if she comes.
“That fear,” Sebastian says softly. “That’s what I want. That’s what I’m after. I want to know the exact moment you realize she won’t survive this place.”
I go still. He smiles. And that, right there, is when my dissociation claws again at the edges of my mind. A cold tunnel pulls at me, promising escape.