He unlocks the door for me and the metal gives a low complaining creak as the hinges strain under the weight of years and neglect, the sound echoing down the narrow corridor in away that settles under my skin, and I push the door open just far enough to slip inside, letting it swing shut behind me with a heavy, final click.
The man we dragged off the street sits slumped in that chair with his wrists cuffed behind him, his head drooping forward under the weight of blood loss and whatever fear has been eating at him since they brought him down here, a dried smear of red at the corner of his mouth.
He hears the door close and his head lifts in a slow, dragging pull of muscle, like it costs him something just to raise it, his chin trembling once before he manages to lock his gaze on mine. The dim yellow bulb above us flickers and the light cuts across his face in a harsh stripe, enough to show the way his pupils widen, the way his breath catches in a short, tight jerk he tries to hide. His shoulders tense first—barely a twitch, but unmistakable—followed by a quick, darting glance at the door, even though he knows it’s shut. Then comes the part he can’t control: the way his throat works around a swallow that doesn’t go down, the way his knuckles strain against the cuffs as if his body is bracing for impact before his mind can catch up.
Good.
I grab another chair, drag it across the floor slowly, letting the metal scrape echo through the room until he shifts in his seat like the sound alone slices into him. I sit directly in front of him, legs spread, elbows resting loosely on my knees.
“Who sent you?” I ask finally, my voice low, steady, stripped of the softness Kira heard last night.
He looks away.
I grab his jaw with my good hand and force him to look at me.
“Who sent you?”
He clenches his teeth. “Fuck you.”
My hand tightens around his jaw. “That’s not an answer.”
He laughs—dry, shaky, trying to look brave but failing miserably. “If I talk, I die. If I don’t talk, I die. So, what do you think I’m gonna do?”
“You’re going to tell me,” I say, my voice low and even, the kind of tone that leaves no room for misunderstanding, no room for negotiation, nothing but the inevitable truth he’s going to choke out one way or another.
“And why the fuck would I?—”
I hit him before he finishes the sentence, my knuckles sinking into the side of his face with a satisfying, jarring impact that sends the chair skidding half an inch across the concrete, not hard enough to knock him out but hard enough for the crack of bone to snap through the room like a warning shot, hard enoughto split the skin across his cheekbone so a thin line of blood snakes down toward his jaw as his head whips to the side in a violent, involuntary jerk.
He spits blood onto the floor, like that tiny gesture can pretend he still has control of anything happening in here, and I let him have the illusion for the length of a breath before I stand and grip the back of the metal chair, lifting and tipping it over with one smooth, brutal motion so it crashes onto the concrete with his shoulders taking the hit, his body folding awkwardly around the cuffs while a raw, guttural sound tears from his throat before he can swallow it back.
I crouch beside him, my fist tightening in the collar of his shirt as I haul him up just enough that he’s forced to meet my eyes, no escape in the tilt of his chin or the twitch of his jaw, nothing to hide behind except the fear he’s pretending isn’t already bleeding through his expression.
“You’re not stupid,” I say, leaning in close enough that he can feel my breath on his cheek, close enough that the blood on his skin almost touches mine. “So don’t act like it.”
His chest shudders once, almost invisible, like he knows something in the room has shifted against him.
“I want a name,” I continue, my voice dropping into something quieter, darker, something that makes the tiny muscles in his throat tense.
I catch just a flicker, a tiny break in the mask he’s trying so hard to hold together, a brief widening of his eyes, a twitch at the corner of his mouth, something sharp and involuntary and entirely out of his control that betrays him before he can stop it. He tries to bury it, to flatten his expression back into stone, but I’ve already seen it, already filed it away, already felt the spark of cold anger settle deeper in my chest.
“Why?” I ask, my voice low enough that it feels like a blade dragged along the inside of his ribs. “Why her?”
He looks at me like he’s measuring his options, and he drags his tongue across his split lip, pulling in the metallic taste of his own blood before finally muttering, “Orders.”
“Whose?”
He hesitates.
And that single second of silence burns through whatever patience I had left. I stand, grab the cuffs behind his chair, and lift the entire fucking thing in one violent, controlled movement, hauling him up with it like he weighs nothing and slamming the legs back down onto the concrete hard enough that the sound ricochets off the walls, hard enough that the breath is punched out of him in a strained, startled cry.
The echo hasn’t even faded when I lean over him again, my face inches from his.
“Whose,” I repeat, the word no longer a question but a promise of what happens if he makes me ask it a third time.
He shakes his head frantically. “I don’t know his name! I don’t—fuck—please?—”
He’s not lying, but I know there’s something else he’s hiding.
