Rage crashes in from every direction, molten and blinding.It feels like I’m swallowing glass and dying a thousand fiery deaths.
Anguish stabs behind my eyes, the unbearable pressure splitting my skull.Breathing becomes a conscious act, each inhale and exhale ripping me apart as I fight to keep the sounds from leaking out.
I don’t blink or react.My posture stays loose.But the effort costs me.I clamp my teeth too hard, and the razor bites back.
Pain spikes inside my cheek.Copper washes across my tongue, and a warm trickle runs down my chin.
I relax my jaw, but it’s already done.
“You’re bleeding.”Crowe stares at my mouth.
“Smile, Wolf,” Oliver says in my ear.“Give them your worst, most crazed smile.Make them look away.”
How?How can I smile with a fucking sob stuffed in my throat?Everything inside me is shaking violently, unraveling, coming apart at the seams.
My seams.
She’s my seams.She’s my fairy tale, my queen, my happily ever after and after and after…
And they’re hurting her.
Raping her.
Every unsound, no-return, cliff-diving part of me wants to swipe my thumb and blow these ass pelicans into shits and bits.
But I won’t.
I won’t give up on Jag.I won’t quit until Dove is free.
This isn’t the end.
Make them look away.
I drag the corners of my mouth up by force alone, blood in my teeth, muscles screaming, and cheeks stretching where they don’t want to go.I make it wide.Too wide.I make it wrong.
It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
The room recoils from it, eyes sliding away and discomfort rippling with a shudder.
I hold the grin, jaw burning, blood slick and metallic.
New plan.
No retreat.No restraint.Tonight is the reckoning.
My fingers clinch around Adrian Crowe’s arm, a casual grip that pretends we’re just two men watching doom-scroll bait.
I angle the necklace cam at the screen while maintaining the charisma of a nutjob.
Meanwhile, it feels like a rusted blade is sawing back and forth across my soul.
Doesn’t matter if the video is live or recorded.The intent is the same.This is what they’re forcing Jag to watch.For how long?Why are they trying to break him?Have they succeeded?
“What’s the point?”I tilt my head, studying the screen like a critic.“You need the hacker.Why scramble his mind like this?”
“I require his cooperation.”Crowe watches the video with a bored, proprietary calm that makes my teeth itch.“He’s being stubborn, and the woman provides context.”
“Wolf.”In my ear, Mikhail cuts in.“I am analyzing the room she’s in, and something is off.The shadows don’t line up.Camera angle is lying.”
