Page 37 of Scorch

I snap my fingers at Lev, who hands me the baseball bat.

“We’ll start slow. You’ll tell me where your leader is, or I’ll break both of your knees with this baseball bat. Are we clear?”

He shakes his head from side to side. “I can’t do that. I don’t know!”

“He knows,” Nikko growls. “He’s lying.”

I snap the bat against one kneecap with a vicious swing. Bone cracks. He screams, pleading for mercy, but he won’t get it here. Lydia stifles a scream.

Good girl.

The other man, the fucking son of a bitch who defiled Lydia, will get special treatment. He glares at me defiantly, daring me to touch him.

“Tell me. Where is he?”

The man beside him curses at him in Russian, daring him to defy their orders. He promises him he’ll burn in hell if he divulges anything, and his family will suffer a brutal, vicious death.

It’s a bluff, though. Neither one of them will ever leave here again.

“Do you understand the gravity of lying to me?” I ask, my voice a low rumble in the quiet warehouse. I capture his attention. “Imagine a slow, excruciating pain that only starts with the warning. Broken kneecaps.Let’s discuss facts, gentlemen. The human body is a masterpiece in its capacity to withstand pain. Take, for example, your broken kneecap. It isn’t just the broken bone, is it?” I tap his kneecap with the tip of the bat, and he screams until he’s hoarse. “The pain is about a nine on the pain scale. Severe enough to cause shock or even cloud your vision.”

I lean in, allowing him to truly process this. Sometimes, the threat of torture and pain magnifies the effect of a brutal beating. “But the true agony is what comes after. The way every movement causes unbearable pain to shoot up your leg. How a simple act like a cough or a shift in weight becomes unbearable.” I stand up straighter. “And I’m about to break your second. So I urge you to consider your next words very carefully. Are they worth so much pain you pass out until I cut you into strips and you bleed out on this floor? You know we chose this place deliberately because it’s so easy to mop up the blood and mute any noise.”

I tap my palm with the bat. Lev watches me. Nikko’s eyes are burning into our enemies’ with the heat of a million suns. Mikhail watches all of it go down, unmoved. Lydia is a statue.

I slam the bat into my palm, welcoming the burn. The man tied up cries out.

“Alright, then.” I lift the bat and rear back.

“Okay!” he screams. “Alright, okay, I’ll tell you! God!”

I lay the bat on the floor and look over at him. I nod to Nikko.

“You got Aleks on the phone?”

“I’m here,” Aleks says. Nikko nods.

The man beside the traitor rocks his chair, doing his best to get at his pussy traitor of a brother. He writhes and squirms, screaming at him in Russian.

“Manhattan!” He says, weeping. “He’s at Midnight Wharf.”

“Did you get that?” I ask Aleks.

“Yeah. I know where that is. Privately-owned port on the East River.”

The other one curses, spittle flying out of his mouth. I nod to Nikko. “Give him his rewards.”

Nikko presses the gun to the man’s temple and pulls the trigger. He slumps in his restraints.

His companion meets my eyes, unmoved.

I look at Mikhail.

“I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want her to see what I’m going to do to him.” I don’t want her recoiling from my touch. Reliving what I’m about to do.

Mikhail nods. “We’ll leave you to it, brother.”

“Viktor,” Lydia says, her voice choked. “You don’t have to do this. You’re still fucking human. Just… just end it quickly.”

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