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I drag myself up from the floor and head for the shower. It’s late, and she’s probably already asleep, but I want to go to her now. I want to tell her I’m done. For every truth in my mind, I will tell her a lie. Instead of confessing that she occupies my thoughts day and night, I will tell her I never think of her. I could tell her that she was a mistake. I could tell her the thing that I know would wound the deepest. She isn’t what I want or need.
A sick feeling churns my gut as I consider that this is what I have to do. When it comes to her, I am too weak. The only solution is to make her hate me now before she allows me to destroy her life.
I focus on the mechanics of my actions as I wash, dry off, and dress in a fresh shirt and trousers. My mind is clear, determination heavy on my shoulders as I carry myself up the stairs to the second floor. Her door is cracked for my arrival, a welcome I don’t deserve.
When I push it open, my chest tightens at the sight of her propped up against the headboard, staring at me. She’s been waiting. I swallow, prepared to make my speech without delay before I can regret it. Before I can reconsider it. But Natalia beats me to it, reaching for her phone, playing the message she’s already written.
Don’t come in if you aren’t going to stay the night with me.
Those words rattle around inside my head. She wants me to stay the night with her. When my eyes move over her face, I can see she already knows I can’t. She’s shut down. Empty, just like me.
“Natalia,” I choke out her name, trying to find the words I’d rehearsed so many times on the way up here. But they don’t come. “Goodnight.”
“You’re not going to like this part much.” I drag the sorry son of a bitch I’ve been torturing for the better part of the morning from the ice bath. He flops onto the floor like a fish, staring up at the ceiling, mouth gaping. His face is a bloody fucking mess, and he’s managed to get it all over me. It makes me more irritable than I already am, though I have to give the asshole credit. He’s held out longer than most, but he’s about to break. I can sense it. I always do.
I grab him by the arms and drag him across the concrete floor to the large masonry oven I converted myself. As soon as he sees it, he starts kicking and clawing in resistance, but there’s not much fight left in him.
“Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.” I grab him by the jaw and stare into his beady eyes. “If you want to take it to your grave, what do I fucking care? Most men only last ten minutes at three hundred and fifty degrees. It will all be over soon enough.”
“Fuck you, you goddamned psychopath,” he wheezes. “There’s something wrong with you. You’re not right in the fucking head.”
“You think I don’t already know that?” Sarcasm tinges my voice as I roll him onto the platform that doubles as a door and shove him inside.
He clings to the frame, his bloody fingers slipping over the stone. “Come on, man. We can work something out. You want money? Is that it?”
I stare at him with a bored expression. “Money? I’ve got more money than God, asshole. There’s only one thing I want from you, which I made clear from the beginning. If I don’t get it in the next ten minutes, you’ll be dead, and I’ll be on my way out to lunch for a burger.”
I yank the door up, slamming it against his fingers, and he releases a violent yelp before removing the broken appendages. With his hands out of the way, I shut the door again, securing it with the external locking mechanism before turning the crank.
“Have fun.” I lean down and tap on the glass.
He attempts to maneuver around and kick his way out of the box, but he’s not going anywhere. With time to kill, I rejoin Angelo at the abandoned bar where he’s been watching the show, grabbing a drink of water for myself.
“I can see you haven’t lost your touch,” he muses.
I shrug, suspecting he has more to say. Angelo is my cousin and another Sovereign Son within The Society. He’s spent the last six years in the Tribunal prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Now that he’s free, he’s on the warpath, and I have been busier than usual helping him extract information from anyone who participated in setting him up.
“Are you really going to roast him in there for ten minutes?” he asks.
