“You told me lies,” I replied, calmly. “And I’ve had a very fucking long night.” I walked up behind him, letting him hearthe ladle tilt, let him feel the heat. “You know what’s funny?” I chuckled. “This isn’t even boiling. Then again, I don’t need boiling, just controlled pain. The kind that makes you talk before you think.”
He sobbed. “I swear, I don’t know anything else, Remo, please?—”
I lowered the ladle.
One drop.
Just one.
It hit his cheek, and a scream ripped out of him instantly. He thrashed, shaking, nearly tipping the chair. I let him scream, steadying the chair with my shoe.
“One more lie,” I warned, “and the next drop hits your dick.”
“I swear,” he sobbed, louder now.
What followed wasn’t a spectacle, just pressure, time, and the inevitability of pain in a room designed for it. He gave me nothing that mattered. And when I finally accepted, he’d die without telling me anything of value, I ended it quickly, because rage could be indulgent, but precision was power, and I refused to be the entertainment for someone else’s experiment.
sixty-two
. . .
Remo– 36 years old
Hospitals were designed to make powerful men feel small, to give dying men hope, and sometimes to steal lives, shift blame with a simple: ‘I’m sorry, we tried everything.’
Tonight, though, I needed to be there. The doors slid open and immediately the smell of smoke, oil, and blood morphed into a clinical, antiseptic cleanliness. White walls, white floors, white lights, so bright they’d give a blind man sight.
Cursing, I walked further into the space, my men falling back automatically, forming distance without instruction. They knew better than to crowd me right now, understanding the difference between my usual wrath and this quieter, more dangerous thing clawing at my chest.
“Mr. Rossi?” A nurse looked up from the reception desk before I could speak. “Miss Sharma is still in surgery,” she explained, her voice calm, practiced. “You can wait–”
I was already moving before she finished. The waiting area was a glass box full of strangers pretending not to look at me. My blood stained clothes might seem inconsequential in a place likethis but it was the open rage I wore on my face that had their gazes sliding away the second they caught my eyes.
Time stretched, turning mere minutes into hours. I couldn’t sit, the earlier agitation lending my legs a restlessness and I paced the length of the corridor, every step echoing the same thought through my head.
She took a bullet meant for me.
I’d lived my life anticipating violence, reading with the accuracy of a skilled mathematician, calculating angles, exists, risks, timing and I always saw the shot.
Except that one.
Because I let my usual vigilance slip. That was why I never allowed a weakness into my life, my circle, my world. Otherwise, I’d have to watch her and I didn’t.
The doors finally parted with a sterile sigh, and a doctor stepped out, mask hanging loose around his neck. Slight, composed, his dark hair threaded neatly with silver temples, his sharp eyes landed on me, paused a fraction too long, then dipped in something that might’ve been professional caution or recognition.
“Mr. Rossi.” His accent carried the soft precision of Japan, consonants placed carefully, vowels unhurried. He inclined his head slightly, hands folding into the sleeves of his white coat. “I am Doctor Takahashi. Miss Sharma is stable.” The word hung between us, fragile as glass. “She’s a lucky girl, the bullet missed vital organs by a thumbnail, but she lost a lot of blood.”
My shoulders slackened an inch, my lungs dragging in air that felt suddenly heavy, almost foreign. She’d wake. She’d breathe. She’d open her eyes and look at me again. “Can I see her?”
Those dark eyes assessed me again, dipping my brows in a frown. If he felt the weight of my name, the history stitched into it, he showed no fear, only a quiet intensity that brushed againstsomething instinctive in me. I almost questioned if he really was her doctor.
“She’s still sedated for now and when she wakes, she will need stress-free rest. Can you guarantee that, Mr. Rossi?”
The fuck! I clenched my fist to stop from paralyzing a doctor in the middle of a busy hospital corridor. “Where is she?” I gritted instead.
“Follow me.” He gave a small nod, reseated his mask over his mouth, turned and walked away.
Tipping my chin at Rogan, I silently instructed him to leave and followed the doctor down another quiet corridor until he stopped at a door and gestured for me to precede him.
