She just stood there—so still the air felt afraid to move around her.
“Who arethey?” she asked.
Her voice wasn’t raised or sharp. It was soft. Controlled. Polished to a razor so fine Sinclair didn’t realize he was bleeding on it.
Sinclair swallowed, throat convulsing. “I—I can’t tell you that.”
Grace’s stare didn’t waver.
“They’re dangerous people,” he rushed on, words spilling out too fast, too terrified. “You don’t understand. It doesn’t matter what you do to me—they’ll do worse. They don’t forgive. They don’t forget. They?—”
“Well,” Grace said, cutting him off with the same tone she might use to remark on the weather, “I guess we can find out.”
Sinclair froze.
“What?” he whispered. “F-Find out what?”
Grace tilted her head, just slightly, gaze steady enough to pin him to the chair harder than the zip-ties ever could.
“Whether whatyoucan imagine,” she said, “or whatwecan imagine… is worse.”
Sinclair’s breath hitched, just once, before another sob tore out of him.
For the first time since the interrogation began, he looked genuinely, viscerally afraid.
Not of the rope. Not of the pain. Not of any of us.
He was afraid ofGrace,finally understanding far too damn late that he wasn’t dealing with a victim anymore.
He was dealing with the reckoning.
Chapter
Nine
GRACE
Sinclair fell apart faster than I expected.
The moment he realized I wasn’t bluffing—that I wasn’t trembling or panicking or begging—his whole being seemed to liquefy with terror.
He folded into himself, shoulders curling, breath hitching in frantic little gasps that sounded almost childlike. Sweat slicked his face. Tears and snot smeared together. He looked like a man unraveling one thread at a time, helpless to stop his own disintegration.
And still I felt… nothing.
Not satisfaction. Not triumph. Not relief.
Just cold, steady purpose.
Behind him, Voodoo checked the second shock collar AB was pulling together. It was a job Legend usually did, but Legend was handling this side of things. AB was a miracle worker and a menace in equal measure, he’d barely blinked when Voodoo told him to prep another unit. He’d just nodded, rummaged, and started fiddling with wires like he was assembling a toy instead of a torture device.
Legend swung the rope again.
The sound it made cutting the air always came a second before the thud. Always just long enough to let Sinclair anticipate the pain.
He screamed. Or tried to. It came out broken.
Legend didn’t look at me, but he didn’t have to. I felt him beside me—solid, grounded, radiating this strange mix of fury on my behalf and discipline I hadn’t known he possessed. He wasn’t doing this because he enjoyed it.
