Page 63 of Tarnished Reign

“No. That’s where you will be left to die if you don’t cooperate.”

He peers into the darkness below, and I help him see by clicking the light on my phone and shining it down.

Dorian swallows hard three times. “What the fuck? I can’t fit in there.”

“Yes, you can. You’ll be hunched, but you will fit. You can’t stand straight in it, and you can’t sit, or crouch. You can only hunch over. Let me tell you, it becomes hellish very fast. After mere hours? Your body is screaming in pain. Your heart will be skipping beats because the blood is pooling in your feet, and you can’t move around to help it flow. Hell, you might faint a few times. Perhaps vomit. You most certainly won’t be able to do a thing to stop the cramping agony seizing every part of your body. Oh, and there are rats, spiders, and God knows what else.”

He turns to stare at me, horror etched on his features. “You’re fucking insane,” he hisses. “Sick. What kind of mind invents something like this?”

“You give me far too much credit. I didn’t invent it. The French did.”

Virgil stares down into the hole, and his face pales. Yeah, take a good look, motherfucker. “There are a few medieval castles in Europe with oubliettes. Most had at least dungeons. There is nothing, and I mean nothing we could today do that the medieval mind hadn’t already invented. They were sick fuckers.”

Then, just because I want to mess with him even more, I quote Shakespeare’s line about Pontefract castle, which in those days was called Pomfret. “O Pomfret, Pomfret! O thou bloody prison! Fatal and ominous to noble peers.”

“Jesus Christ.”

I glance at Virgil, who stares in distaste at Dorian, and no wonder. He’s soiled himself. Piss darkens his pants, and he gulps repeatedly.

“I’ll tell you everything I know; just please, don’t throw me down there. Let me live. I can help you.” He’s shaking now.

“The living part is negotiable and dependent on just how much you help us, Dorian. You turn out to be a great help, of course we will keep you alive. We aren’t mad men; we don’t destroy our assets.”

He nods feverishly.

“You tell me who this group is, and why they want Adriana. Tell us why you took Mila. You might also be able to help me track down a man who wants to buy Adriana before the auction even happens. You do all that, and you definitely won’t go down there. The rest is up for negotiation.”

“So if I tell you whose idea it was to take Mila, how we did it, and what I know about the auction, then you’ll not put me in there? It’s just a bullet to the head if I can’t help more?”

“Yes, you have my word.”

He nods. “T-t-they say your word is everything.”

Do they? Interesting. “They’d be correct,” I reply.

“Okay. Okay, well Mila was Ari’s idea, not mine.”

“You’re the leader,” Virgil cuts in.

“Ari’s my enforcer, and he has a lot of leeway. He said he had someone on the inside with a security team, and if he could get their guards in your home, he could pay them to look away while we took Mila. We just had to make sure your men got sick, and we had a contact who could do it.”

I glance at Virgil and any rivalry, brewing enmity, and issues poof out of existence. We have a fucking enemy in the camp.

“Who?” Virgil demands.

“I don’t know. All Ari said was that this guy would make sure the regular guards were sick, and then the newer, hired guards would be paid a lot of money to watch porn.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, we were set up,” Virgil shouts.

He kicks Dorian so hard in the leg the man crumples to the ground, sliding through my fingers.

Dorian rolls around on the floor, screaming and holding his leg. We ignore him.

“Who the fuck?” Virgil demands as if I know the answer.

It’s his house that needs cleaning out, not mine. “You must do a clean sweep. All the regular staff cleared out. Everyone,” I clarify. “The guards, the ground staff, the maids, get rid of them all immediately and if it’s okay with you, I’ll ask the woman we use to investigate people to do a deep dive on everyone.” I’ll actually ask Damen, but I don’t want Virgil to know that because while I’m at it, I’ll get Damen to investigate him. “Don’t make a move on your soldiers yet as it will give them a heads-up, but we need access to their devices, phones, and the like. We keep this between me, you, and Jacob for now.”

“Yes, of course. I need to find out who did this. I should shoot them all. Make an example.”

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