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I’d given her nothing to complain about. She’d survived without me for months before—she could give me a week now.
A bounce came into my step as I walked over to the front door, still hearing our song in my mind. If the few underlings hanging around keeping watch thought I looked dorky, I really didn’t give a shit at this point.
I stepped into the foyer, switching to picturing the leftover Polish takeout I’d like to dive into to replenish some of the burned-off calories, but the clack of heels on the hardwood floor broke through my imaginings.
“I hope you’re not thinking of heading off to your room.”
My head jerked around. My mother emerged from the shadows at the top of the staircase like a grim reaper in Gucci. Her dark brown eyes narrowed dangerously. Both red-nailed hands were curled into fists on each hip.
She looked ready to deal out a wave of death. My stomach knotted. What had gotten her in a mood like that?
“I wasn’t,” I said carefully. “Not if you need me.”
She smirked at me, and I hated myself. “Good answer. As a matter of fact, I do need you. Come down to the basement, and I’ll fill you in.”
My gaze flicked to the doorway off to the side of the foyer—the one that led to a narrow staircase and the maze of halls and rooms that stretched out below the mansion. Some of those rooms were just for storage, but I doubted Mom just wanted me to haul supplies.
The other rooms… Nothing good happened down there.
As Mom descended the stairs with brisk steps, I swallowed thickly. “The basement? You didn’t mention anything about… work we’d need to do down there.”
There was something oddly twitchy about Mom’s movements as her head turned toward me. I got the impression that she was on edge, holding herself back from revealing even more coiled tension.
That didn’t bode well for this afternoon’s activities either.
Her gaze sharpened into a glare. “I’m mentioning it now. You’ll come along if you know what’s good for you—or do you need a reminder of who you’re talking to?”
I held up my hands, even more uneasy than before. “All right. No problem. I was just asking.”
With dread winding through my gut, I followed her down the stairs into the cooler air of the basement.
We passed several closed doors, making our way to the far end of the basement where most of the rooms were secured behind heavy locks. Where things went on that even most of the lackeys weren’t privy to.
Mom stopped in front of a plain but solid door that I knew led to one of her “interrogation rooms.” Heavily soundproofed so that no hint of what went on in there would seep through to the outside world.
She motioned to me. “Open it.”
My throat constricted, but I didn’t even know what was going on here to argue against it. Squaring my shoulders, I twisted the doorknob and pushed it ahead of me as I stepped into the room.
The second I’d moved past the door enough to see the far corner of the room, my feet stalled in their tracks.
A thin figure was standing in the corner, his hands raised over his head, restrained there by a chain that dangled from the ceiling. He’d been stripped to a wifebeater undershirt and his boxers, both soiled with sweat and in the case of the boxers, maybe worse. His skin looked sickly sallow, but he stared at me with a clenched jaw and a sullen expression.
Mom brushed past me and rested her hand against the prisoner’s cheek. When he tried to move away from her touch, she slapped him with a rake of her fingernails.
Stark red lines formed across his face where she’d scratched the pale skin. He hissed and thrashed against the chain, but Mom stepped away, turning back to me.
“This young man works for one of my Devil’s Dozen colleagues,” she informed me in a cool voice. “We caught the snake trying to sniff around some of our operations. So now he gets to spill everything he knows about his boss’s work. It seems he needs a little more incentive to start talking, though. Your job is to get all of it out of him.”
My heart lurched. “Me?”
I wouldn’t have dared let so much shock show if I hadn’t been so very startled. Mom had forced me to watch a few of her interrogations in the past, but she’d never had me so much as pitch in with the actual torture, let alone direct it myself.
She was throwing me right into the deep end. And this was a pool I had zero interest in swimming in.
Her lips drew back, and a hint of a snarl came into her voice. “You. Everything’s laid out. Get to work.”
A metal stand stood next to the wall beyond the reach of the guy’s feet. It held rows of vicious instruments, ranging from knives to clamps to a propane lighter and thumb tacks. Bile rose in my throat, but I willed it down, not wanting Mom to see my nausea.
