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Dante picked up a wooden mallet and stroked it lovingly, like a musician would caress a cherished instrument.
“Lovely tools,” he explained as he looked me directly in the eyes.
And then he slammed the mallet down onto my middle three fingers, crushing the bones in an instant.
Pain, unlike anything I’d ever known before in my entire life assaulted me. It was so fast, so effectual, all I could do was inhale a sharp breath.
But before I could even muster a cry, I passed out.
* * *
I came to.
Red-hot pain in my right hand blew through me like a tsunami over land, obliterating everything in its path.
I turned my head and vomited.
The sour stench of fear and bile wafted to my nose. After a few more dry heaves, my insides stopped lurching. There was nothing left to purge.
I slowly swiveled my head. Dante sat across from me in another chair that Bruno or Juan must have brought for him while I was passed out. He looked bored and unhappy.
“I'm not a fan of your reaction.” He sighed like a schoolteacher disappointed in one of his students.
I looked down at my hand. The bones of my right fingers were shattered and swollen. Constant pain throbbed through the nerves and shot up my entire arm. Tears welled from deep within me. They came of their own volition, and I could do nothing to stop them.
The irony of a surgeon’s hand, a tool used to help heal other people being so badly broken wasn’t lost on me. The fingers looked mangled, nothing more than bone and fleshy pulp, now devoid of structure and beauty. Even if I lived, even if I had surgery, I doubted it would be reparable beyond being usable for routine, daily tasks.
Dante had broken more than my fingers.
He’d destroyed my ability to perform surgery in one fell swoop. He’d taken a vital piece of who I was and flushed a dozen years of schooling down the toilet in an instant.
Dante picked up a screwdriver that sat on the table and lightly dragged it across the knuckles on my shattered hand, causing me to whimper.
“No,” I begged. “Please. God, no.”
“I’m not God.” Dante’s voice was cold. “I’m the devil, and I’m going to make you pay for what your boyfriend has done.”
He raised the screwdriver, and with a maniacal look, he rammed the screwdriver into the top part of my hand, sending it deep into my flesh.
I screamed.
And then he took the hammer and slammed it down onto the handle of the screwdriver, driving the metal deeper, straight through to the table.
My bloodcurdling shriek echoed off the stone walls.
“She pissed herself,” Juan commented.
“Excellent,” Dante said. “Unlock her shackles. Let her lie in it.”
* * *
I passed out again, and the next time I awoke someone was holding a cup of water to my lips and cradling my head. The liquid was lukewarm and tasted brackish, but my lips were cracked, and I was dying for it. I tried to gulp it down greedily, but whoever held me wouldn’t let me. “Easy,” he said quietly in heavily accented English.
My eyes were caked with dried tears and dust from the floor, but I managed to flip them open. I stared into the face of a man with battered skin and grooves around his mouth that reminded me of dried riverbeds.
I glanced down. The fingers of my right hand were splinted, and gauze was wrapped around the palm to stop the bleeding. I couldn’t feel anything. I frowned up at him wanting to ask questions.
“I’ve given you enough morphine to dull the pain,” he explained, as if sensing my unasked query. “I’m a doctor.”
