I want to feel defiant. To spit in his face and tell him he can't break me. But as the brass knuckles are removed and replaced by a scalpel, all I feel is terror. Pure, animal terror.
"Wait," I plead, my voice high and desperate. "I have accounts. Millions. Offshore. I can—"
Lorenzo smiles. It's the most frightening expression I've ever seen.
"I'm not interested in your money," he says. "I'm interested in your screams."
The drugs in my bloodstream make time stretch, contract, then shatter into fragments. Has it been hours? Days? I feel the pressure release as Ruslan lowers my suspended body. My remaining limbs won't support me. I collapse.
Cold metal presses against my back as they secure me to a table. The chill seeps into what remains of me, a mockery of comfort against my fevered skin. Steel restraints bite into the stumps where my hands used to be. I can't even struggle properly anymore.
Time jumps. Skips. I'm missing sections of memory like damaged film.
Voices pull me back. Not the ones from the dark. These are real. Too close. Too sharp.
I surface just long enough to understand I'm still breathing. That alone feels wrong. My body doesn't line up the way it should. Something is missing. More than one thing.
I try to move. Nothing answers.
My mind recoils on instinct, slipping away before the pain can finish forming. It's been doing that for hours now.
Retreating. Returning. Retreating again. Like it's learned the pattern before I have.
Someone says something near my head.
"He's strong," a calm voice says. Clinical. Almost bored. "Stronger than most. But another dose like that and his system won't recover."
A pause.
"He won't last."
"I know," Anton says.
Footsteps come closer. Measured. Unhurried.
Anton moves into what's left of my vision. One eye sees nothing at all. The other struggles to hold him in focus. His face swims, then steadies. Stone. He looks at me the way you look at something already decided.
He takes inventory. "No feet. No hands. No teeth."
I feel phantom pain where my feet should be—where my hands should be. Gone now. All gone. How long have they been working on me? My body is a catalog of agony, each nerve ending screaming in its own distinct voice.
Whatever I was before this, it's gone.
Anton doesn't look away when he speaks. "What do you want?"
Lorenzo's voice comes from behind him. Close. Heavy. Not rushed.
"His tongue."
I try to say something. It comes out as nothing.
"That will kill him," the calm voice says again. Ruslan. "He'll bleed out."
Anton nods once. Not permission. Just acceptance.
My mind scrambles for the dark, tries to fold inward again.
Through my remaining eye, I see Vadim materialize again, leaning against the wall. This time, he's not alone. Mother stands beside him, her face lined with disappointment.
