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My mother used to make me do it when I was young. Said a steady rhythm gave a man time to remember who he was before he did something he couldn’t take back.

His breathing turned ragged, frantic. “Please⁠—”

“Don’t,” I murmured, wiping the blade on the cloth at my side, my gaze sliding back to the slice. “You weren’t careful with her. I’m being careful with you. That’s more grace than you deserve.”

The ropes creaked with the violent shaking of his legs.

“She was sixteen,” I said softly.

The man broke then, really broke. He sobbed so hard he nearly toppled the chair. It didn’t move me, though. Not an inch. Crying was probably the first honest thing he’d done in a long, long time.

“You know what comes next,” I told him.

His voice cracked. “Please—please don’t⁠—”

I touched the fresh cut again, watching the newest bead of blood gather. “Don’t beg,” I said. “It didn’t make a difference for her.”

The hum rose in my chest. Almost tender.

“This isn’t punishment,” I murmured, lifting the blade. “It’s correction.”

My mother had spent years trying to teach me the difference between the two. She just hadn’t been able to win that argument with herself.

I reached for the iron waiting in the coals. The Hayes Ranch brand was a simple, vicious thing I’d forged myself years ago. A circle broken by a sharp diagonal slash that curved into a hooked tail at the bottom—like a brand-new moon caught on a barbed-wire fence. Clean lines. Impossible to mistake. Perfect for cattle, but even better for men who deserved worse.

His brown eyes widened until the whites showed all the way around and his pupils were blown huge and black with horror. “What are you going to do with that?” he gasped, his voice cracked raw from pleading and screaming, spit flecking his chin.

I didn’t answer. Just tilted the iron so the glowing brand filled his vision. “This eye saw her fight,” I hummed. “Saw her claw at your hands while you squeezed until her throat caved. Saw the exact second the light went out.”

He tried to thrash, but the chair didn’t budge. I’d bolted it to the concrete years ago. Zip ties sawed deeper into the cuts I’d opened on the soft insides of his forearms, and blood ran in ribbons now, dripping off his fingertips in pretty, perfect drops, one steady beat at a time, into the small drain beneath the chair.

“Please, I’ll confess, I’ll turn myself⁠—”

My humming drowned out his voice.

I brought the iron close enough that the heat blistered his cheek before it even touched. The air shimmered, thick with the smell of singed hair and terror.

Then I pressed the brand home.

The sizzle was wet and intimate, like fat hitting fire. The eyeball deflated under the brand with a soft pop, and fluid hissed out in a scalding puff that steamed against my glove. The scent was pork and copper and something sweeter, like overcooked caramel left too long.

His body snapped rigid, and his spine arched so hard I heard vertebrae crack. A sound tore out of him that wasn’t a scream anymore, just a long, broken animal bellow muffled by the basement walls that swallowed everything.

I held it there. One… Two… Three… Long enough for the iron to kiss the bone through the melted jelly.

When I pulled it back, my brand sat perfect in the wreckage. Blackened edges, raw crimson center, the curves crisp and cruel. A bead of cooked vitreous slid down his cheek.

His head lolled. The noise coming out of him now was small and wet and endless. I set the iron back into the coals, and it hissed, hungry again. My hum drifted out, threading through the sour heat of the room.

He’d passed out somewhere right after the first scream, but I wasn’t done.

One eye had been corrected. But one was still waiting.

The iron glowed hotter.

And of all the thoughts to rise in that moment, it was her.

Sienna.