Page 106 of Hellebore

The tires bite into the overgrown track, gravel spitting beneath them as the car sinks deeper into the woods. Crossing the border with a body in my trunk is too much a risk.

So I found this place instead, an old logging warehouse rotting in the middle of nowhere, where the trees press close and the silence is thick enough to choke on.

My mind turns over every scrap of information I need to rip from his tongue. Names. Locations. The exact shape of what they did to her. Every detail is a live wire beneath my skin.

I cut the engine. The headlights die, leaving only the pale wash of moonlight through the broken canopy. The warehouse squats ahead like something that died years ago. Easton and Enzo wait by the rusted door.

“Took you long enough,” Easton says, that devil’s smirk already in place.

I step out. The night air is damp.

“Didn’t feel like explaining a speeding ticket.”

Easton rolls his eyes and drifts closer while I move to the trunk. Nicholas is still out cold, one arm twisted awkwardly beneath him. The sight of him sets something dark and hungry uncoiling in my chest.

“Is he even alive?” Easton asks.

I reach in, take Nicholas’s hand, and choose a finger. The snap is clean. Wet. The sound of it cracks through the trees and Nicholas wakes screaming, body arching so hard the trunk lid rattles.

“Yeah,” I say.

Easton laughs as Nicholas thrashes, legs kicking, fists swinging at nothing. We move together—Easton catching his wrists while I loop rope around his ankles, yanking tight. The duct tape comes next, the rip of it loud in the dark. Nicholas screams for help, voice already raw, but the woods swallow every sound.

We drag him inside. His heels carve shallow trenches through the dirt and rotting leaves. The warehouse opens around us, moonlight slicing through holes in the roof in thin, silver blades, the air thick with mildew and the sweet-rot stench of long abandonment. In the center of the space waits the steel table, bolted to the concrete.

The moment Nicholas sees it, panic floods him. He bucks harder, but it’s useless. Enzo steps in without a word, gripping under his arms as we heave him onto the cold metal. The chains are heavy. They clink and drag as we loop them across his chest, his thighs, his spread arms. Each lock snaps shut with a sound that feels final.

I roll my shoulders. The tension there has teeth. My arms cross over my chest as I look down at him. The question leaves me low, almost gentle.

“Where is Briar?”

He stares up at me. I watch the lie form behind his eyes, the quick flicker, the way his throat works. I don’t have time for this dance. Not when every second without her is another thread snapping inside me.

I nod to Enzo. The corner of his mouth lifts. He turns to the small, scarred box on the crate and brings it over. Three vials rest inside, their contents dark and viscous, catching the moonlight like old blood.

“The Henbane,” I say.

Enzo’s eyes gleam. They brew it at the cottage buried in the woods near Hellebore—old roots, older recipes. Things that were never meant to see daylight.

Nicholas’s voice cracks. “What is that? You can’t kill me—I’m a lawyer, I’m important⁠—”

Easton’s hand cracks across his mouth. Blood sprays, bright against the dull steel. “Who the fuck cares, my guy,” he chuckles. “We all bleed the same. Your money means shit out here.”

“Grab his head,” I tell Enzo.

Enzo’s fingers are precise. He pinches Nicholas’s nose shut and presses hard on the hinge of his jaw until the mouth opens on a gasp. Nicholas tries not to breathe. It doesn’t last. The moment his lips part I tip the entire vial between them. The liquid is bitter on the air, earth and something sweeter, like flowers left too long in a grave. He chokes, swallows, fights.

It won’t kill him. Not yet. The real pleasure, the slow breaking, the ruin, will be for my black hellebore. But this will make his mind drift. It will make him forget how to lie. With the right questions, he’ll spill everything before he even knows he’s speaking.

I look at Easton. He’s the one who knows how to steer the henbane into truth. He takes the lead on this for now.

I step back. The chains rattle as Nicholas’s body begins to slacken against the cold steel. At first there is only the wet, choking gag, his throat convulsing as the bitter liquid fights its way down, a thin rivulet escaping the corner of his mouth to stain his collar like spilled ink. Then the shaking starts. His limbs jerk against the heavy chains, muscles seizing in erratic spasms that make the table groan. Sweat beads across his forehead, then pours down his temples in glistening tracks, soaking the collar of his shirt. His skin flushes a violent, unnatural red, as if the henbane is burning him from the inside out, spreading like fever through poisoned veins.

His eyes are the worst. The pupils swell, swallowing the iris until only black, glassy voids remain, bottomless wells reflecting nothing but the fractured moonlight leaking through the rotting roof. He mumbles nonsense, words slurring into the damp air like a prayer gone wrong.

We wait. The warehouse holds its breath with us, shadows lengthening across the concrete.

“Nicholas,” Easton says, voice low and steady.