Page 251 of Maddening Fixation

The heavy oak door of the safe house groaned shut behind me just after eleven at night.

The sound echoed through the empty hallway like a warning.

The air inside smelled of damp concrete and the cold metallic scent that always lingered in places where men came to confess their sins.

I barely noticed.

My mind was somewhere else.

On revenge.

On the years I had spent trapped behind prison walls because of this man.

On the sister I lost.

On the woman I had just condemned.

Keegan walked beside me in silence.

He knew better than to speak when my anger was this close to the surface.

His footsteps matched mine as we descended deeper into the safe house, each step taking us closer to the basement where Sokolov waited.

Where justice waited.

Or at least, that was what I had convinced myself.

The basement door opened.

The bastard sat in the center of the room, tied to a metal chair beneath a single hanging bulb.

The ropes around his wrists and ankles were pulled tight, cutting deep into his skin. Blood had seeped through the torn flesh, running down his hands in thin, dark streams before dripping onto the concrete floor.

He looked smaller than I remembered.

Older. Broken.

But not broken enough.

I stopped in front of him.

For years, I had imagined this moment.

I imagined his fear.

His begging.

His realization that no matter how far he ran, I would eventually find him.

This was the man who had destroyed my family.

The man who had thrown my sister from the top floor of the Flynn mansion as though her life meant nothing.

The man who had framed me for her murder and watched as I was dragged away to prison.

Ten years.

Ten years of surviving a place designed to break men.