So how?
A sick realization settled cold in my gut.
Someone had betrayed us.
Footsteps echoed across the warehouse floor—slow, deliberate, heavy enough to vibrate through the chair legs andinto my bones. Each step was measured, unhurried. Whoever was approaching knew exactly how this would unfold.
The massive warehouse doors groaned open again, rusted hinges screaming like a dying animal.
Two masked men shoved a third figure forward.
Chains clanked.
The sound alone made my heart stop.
“No,” I breathed.
Dmitri.
They forced him into the light, dragging him like a trophy. His hands were cuffed behind his back with thick iron chains, wrists raw and bleeding where the metal had eaten into his skin.
He stumbled, nearly collapsing, before one of them jerked him upright by the collar and slammed him forward again.
I couldn’t breathe.
His face was brutalized beyond anything I’d ever seen.
One eye swollen completely shut, the other ringed in purple and black.
His cheekbone was split and bleeding.
His lower lip hung torn, blood crusted dark against his skin. Cuts traced his jaw and cheek—too deliberate to be random. Rings. Knuckles. Someone had enjoyed this.
His shirt was shredded, soaked through in places, hanging open to reveal deep bruising across his ribs, mottled and angry.
A long gash stretched across his abdomen, hastily stitched or taped, still oozing crimson. He favored one leg, knee buckling slightly before he caught himself.
And yet—
Even broken.
Even bleeding.
His spine stayed straight.
They forced him down onto his knees in front of us, chains rattling as he hit the concrete.
Something inside my chest cracked.
Guilt. Terror. Rage. Love.
It all crashed together, violent and suffocating.
They’d tortured him.
For hours.
While Seraphina and I sat untouched—waiting.
