Page 108 of Santiago's Conquest (Four Dark Horsemen 1)

Never.

His remorse, his attempts to fix a broken thing, his desire to find the boy within me that no longer exists… it will never stop angering me, because my father forever destroyed us when he gave up his search for me.

Even though they claim they did all they could, I don’t believe it. With their resources, how couldn’t he fucking find me?

I can never forgive or forget it, so the relationship he seeks is impossible.

Why can’t he just fucking accept it so we can make the women in our life happy with those dinners that are nothing but suffering for us?

I might have lost a hero during my captivity, but my father lost his son.

And sometimes I hate him for it too.

I no longer feel he considers me his, and surprisingly that still has the ability to bring me pain, even though I thought the emotion was forever lost to me.

Briseis’s face flashes before my eyes, her lost and shocked expression plaguing my mind all the way here, and something akin to guilt slams into my chest for leaving her there alone, but not enough to drive back to hell on earth.

Because irrevocably, that’s what my childhood home became, a museum of my parents’ memories about the boy who no longer exists. But they desperately seek to bring him back to life.

Squeezing my fist, I bang it on the nearby wall and welcome the pain traveling through my arm and replacing the confusing emotions burning in my chest for the woman who I never should have touched in the first place, yet our fate connected us a long time ago, not asking our permission or willingness.

After all, she was brought into this world to become mine, and mine she’ll stay, no matter how much heartache it will cost her.

Louder whimpering penetrates through my thoughts, and I wipe away any images of my wife in my head. She cannot exist in the torture chambers, as she is my one bright spot in life. I store my feelings for her in a special place no one could ever find out about.

I finally reach Octavius’s torture room, the space so fucking white the color blinds me, and I cover my eyes with my arm, muttering, “Fuck.” And then quickly my vision adjusts, the white dots disappearing one by one only to open up the view on the sterile operating room with several machines buzzing around me, various surgical tables that hold all the necessary equipment.

There are two beds, around six harshly bright lamps, and different medications stored on several shelf counters.

Before entering though, I grab the nearby soap and wash then grab a towel. A press on the button allows the doors to slide open, and the smell of antiseptics twitches my nostrils while the tiled, spotless clean floor squeaks under my leather shoes.

Octavius, already wearing his medical scrubs and mask, puts on his gloves while the man lying on one of the beds whimpers, thrashing around, but he can barely move due to the leather straps keeping him in place. “I didn't do it. Those are lies. Please listen to me.”

Octavius barely spares me a glance as he opens a syringe and pulls some liquid medication from one of the shelves, then inserts the needle in the vial.

I go to the room with a glassed wall several feet away where Remi and Florian already sit on the couch, their legs propped on the small table in front of them, whiskey in their hands, awaiting the show.

“Since when does Octavius allow us to watch?”

Remi takes a large sip from his glass, slides farther down on the couch to rest his neck on the back of it, and ignores my question, swallowing the drink loudly. I look at Florian, who shrugs, silently answering my question of what the fuck is wrong with Remi.

Although, considering Florian is the last person Remi would ever go to with what bothered him, I’m not that surprised he doesn't know.

If it wasn't for his deep friendship with Octavius, I don't think he’d even be part of our brotherhood. He has always been the biggest dick, plus he didn’t give a fuck who he fucked around with.

“Extreme circumstances,” Florian tells me, leaning forward and grabbing a bottle from the floor and then extending it to me, but I wave it off.

Right. I might have been in a hurry to leave my father’s place, but the only reason I didn't bring Briseis with me was because Remi messaged us about an urgent meeting. Shit was about to hit the fan, and none of us would like it.

Only an urgent meeting has the power to allow Octavius inside his holy torture room where he transforms into an evil doctor who twists the Hippocratic oath he gave a long time ago, and instead of saving people, he kills them all with his medical knowledge.

I don’t blame him much.

During torture, you can learn as much about the victim as you can learn about the serial killer. If you study his words, methods, and weapons enough, you might find all his vulnerable spots, building his childhood image quite quickly, which will in turn allow you to control him or at least try to play it right until you can use such information in the future.

And our vulnerabilities are sacred to us.

“Hey, Remi, want to share what’s so urgent you had to summon us here?” Stepping closer, I nudge his foot, hoping to snap him out of whatever the hell is going on inside his head.

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