Page 197 of Alessio

“That doesn’t tell me—”

“Easy or hard,” Cree said behind the black mask.

“Tell me where my brother is.”

“Hard it is.”

They came in on him, then.

All of them.

Corrado couldn’t ever remember being taken to the ground so fast or hard before. His bones shook when they put him to the floor, an ache radiating throughout his whole body. He let out a shout, and tried to fight back. It was fucking pointless, though. There were too many, and only one of him.

His gaze darted from one mask-covered face to the other, but they didn’t speak. Five of them, he thought, but maybe six. It was hard to tell when they moved so fast, and he still didn’t know what in the hell was going on. His arms were tied at his back, but hell, he hadn’t even seen the zip ties come out for them to do it.

Someone dragged him up from the floor while someone else leaned in beside him, their eyes being the only thing he could see behind the mask as they said, “Don’t make this worse for yourself, kid. You’re already in, and there’s no way out. Just let it happen.”

Right.

Okay.

Damn.

“W-what happens now?” Corrado asked as he was pulled from the room.

“It’s gonna hurt before it gets better.”

Who said that?

He didn’t even know.

Hidden in the shadows of the hallway, Alessio watched from a safe distance as Corrado was pulled from his room by the team. The team being a small group of men and women hand-picked by Cree to help him train whoever had signed the contract. They were never easy about it—they didn’t go in easy, either.

All or nothing.

Corrado’s shout echoed down the corridor, his voice thick with panic and uncertainty. Not fear, though. Not yet. That would come soon enough, Alessio knew. The fear would come when he was either locked in total darkness, rounds of beatings marking the passing hours he spent in isolation to fuck his mind entirely up, or when they put him in the tank.

Fuck.

That fucking tank.

Alessio felt the pressure building in his chest simply remembering his own time in that cold, dark water. It never got any better in the tank, or the darkness. Long stretches of time where your mind was too awake—fear saturating your entire body because you never knew what was going to happen next.

And when it did happen …

“Where the fuck is my bro—”

Corrado’s question cut off abruptly when the first hit came. The sound of flesh meeting flesh was sickening, and unforgiving. A grunt followed the hit before a second one came, and then another and another. Alessio tipped his head back so all he could see was the white ceiling of the corridor, and then he closed his eyes altogether when the beating continued.

They didn’t want him to ask questions.

He wasn’t allowed.

Orders were given.

He was to follow.

Alessio knew how this worked, but the problem was, he couldn’t tell Corrado that. Maybe back in his room, but even then … it wouldn’t have helped. This was something all The League’s prospects had to learn on their own, in their time. It was the very purpose of the training—to take a man who was already set in his ways, break him, and then change him into a better version of himself.