Page 114 of Inescapable Darkness

A small smile blows across his face, and he jerks his chin. “Just go get your girl, brother.”

I give him one last grateful nod.

Then I throw myself into my car and floor it.

41

ISABELLA

The coldness from the hard floor seeps into my legs and chills my whole body even more. I’m on my knees, my wrists and ankles shackled. Those manacles are in turn secured to a thick metal ring set into the concrete floor behind my back, trapping me in a kneeling position. And since I picked the lock on the handcuffs while I was in the van earlier, they also decided to remove most of my clothes to make sure that I didn’t have any other lockpicks sewn into them.

So I kneel there in the cold basement, in only my underwear, while Federico Morelli begins to torture Derek.

Sebastian is kneeling a short distance from me, also shackled and wearing only his underwear. Six muscular men stand guard around the room, guns in their hands.

There are four rooms on the other side of the empty space. That entire wall is made of what I assume to be one-way glass, so that the people in this room can watch what happens in the other smaller rooms.

Only the room on the left is occupied. Derek is tied to a chair there, while Federico stands before him like the devil himself. A truly impressive set of torture instruments are laid out on the table beside them.

I drop my gaze to the floor.

The moment my eyes are no longer on the room ahead, the guard next to me pushes his gun against my temple.

“Mr. Morelli ordered you to watch,” he growls. “So, watch.”

Raising my head again, I do as I’m told and continue watching as Federico tortures Derek.

It takes less time than I had expected for the screaming to start. Derek is well-trained. We all are. But apparently, Federico is a skilled torturer.

Once that stubborn silence has been broken, the patriarch of the Morelli family sets his tools down and leaves the room. Derek slumps back into his chair, his chest heaving. I keep my eyes on him, as instructed, while Federico walks back into our room.

He stops between me and Sebastian.

My heart slams against my ribs.

“Him,” Mr. Morelli says. “Put him in the next room.”

I flick a glance towards Sebastian, who clenches his jaw to suppress the brief flash of dread on his face, as two of the guards remove the chain that locks him to the floor and then drag him towards the room next to Derek’s.

Federico’s hard eyes land on me for a second.

And I suddenly realize what he’s doing.

Not only is he trying to increase our fear by making us watch the others’ torture, he is also trying to break our pride. Our will. Our souls. He will torture Sebastian until he screams for the first time too. Then he will come back and put me in the third room, and then torture me until I scream. Once I have broken down and screamed, he will go back to Derek. And only when he screams, will Federico move on to Sebastian.

The only way to get a brief respite from his torture is to scream and acknowledge the pain he is inflicting and the power that he has over us.

He will no doubt keep increasing that threshold. At first, he will stop when we scream. Then we might need to cry too. Then beg. And then outright grovel. Until he has ground our spirits underneath his heel and broken us completely.

Fuck.

Panic clangs inside me, growing more intense with every second as I watch them shackle Sebastian to the chair in the second room.

My silver necklace shifts around my neck as a shiver courses through me.

It was one thing to meet this fate of torture and death when I knew that I was doing it to save Rico’s life. But now, the Master will think that I have betrayed him and will put Rico back at the top of his hit list. So I will just be tortured and executed without it even accomplishing anything.

I will die for nothing.

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