I didn’t move when the van pulled up. My arms locked over my chest, nails digging crescent moons into my sleeves. My jaw stayed clenched until the ache started to bloom behind my ears. It was either that,or let something leak out.The rear doors creaked open.Two men stepped forward, their movements stiff with quiet precision. No wasted motion. No words exchanged. They reached inside and lifted the casket like they’d done it a hundred times.It didn’t make a sound as they brought it down. No thud. No rattle. Just the whisper of polished wood against metal rails. I used to imagine holding him in my arms. A blanket. A lullaby. His father's eyes. My hands around his tiny body, warm and alive.But this was a different kind of cradle now.It didn’t make a sound as they brought it down. No thud. No rattle. Just the whisper of polished wood against metal rails.I stared at it, waiting for something,anything,to hit. A nois
The dungeon was quiet. Not the comforting kind. The kind that seeps,like guilt through stone, like rot through bone.I could feel it in the soles of my boots.Every step I took sounded like it was happening somewhere else,in a memory I didn’t choose to remember,in a nightmare I refused to wake up from.My boots clicked softly against the floor, but inside, I was weightless.Hollow.Like something had been scraped out of me and left behindon a blood-stained blanket that still smelled like lullabies.Ivan looked smaller than I remembered.Sunken.Shivering, not from cold, but from the absence of meaning.His skin clung to the angles of his face like it had given up on him.The bravado was gone.The madness, too.Just a man now.Or the leftover shape of one.But when I entered,when he heard me,his chin lifted.“Emilie,” he rasped.That half-broken voice I once mis
The dungeon was quiet.Not the kind of quiet that comforts.The kind that breathes. That spreads like damp through stone.It had an echo now. A pulse.I could feel it in the soles of my boots.Every step I took sounded like it was happening somewhere else, in a dream, or a memory, or a graveyard.Ivan looked smaller than I remembered.Hollowed out. Dehydrated.The bravado was gone.The madness, too.Just a man now. Or close enough.But when I entered, when he heard me,his chin lifted.“Emilie,” he rasped, with that half-broken voice I used to mistake for softness.I didn’t speak.I walked forward.The pistol in my hand felt heavier than I expected.Not because of what it meant.But because of what it no longer did.Redemption. Justice. Balance.None of those things lived here.Not anymore.His eyes meet the gun.He didn’t flinc
The dungeon didn’t smell like blood anymore.It smelled like fear.Fermented. Stale. Masculine. Like a man dying slowly from the inside out.Ivan didn’t lift his head when I entered.He’d learned.The sound of my footsteps,bare, deliberate,was its own kind of violence.I didn’t speak. I didn’t need to.Just the clink of the tray I set down was enough: surgical tape, a flame-blade still glowing orange, water I wouldn’t offer.I circled him.His body twitched with every click of my fingernails against the tray.“Tonight,” I said finally, my voice silk wrapped in glass, “I don’t want screams.”I bound his thighs with surgical tape,tight. So tight his pulse fluttered under the skin.No room to wriggle. No room to run. Just raw exposure.Then I pressed the blade to his shoulder. Not to cut. Just to sear.The skin hissed.He gasped. Then shuddered. But he didn’t scream.“Good
The light above flickered once.Just once.Like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to witness what came next.I didn’t blame it.This room had seen too much.It reeked of rust and rot and resignation, like the air itself had given up a long time ago.Concrete walls swallowed sound.The corners were damp.Every inch of space carried history in blood splatter patterns and peeling paint.It hadn’t changed.Not since the last time I stood here.When it was my son who bled.Not him.Not the man I once trusted to hold us both.Now?He was the one trembling.Ivan’s body sagged in the chair, slumped and sagging like a puppet with half its strings cut.Breath ragged.Muscles slack.Face torn between exhaustion and terror.I hadn’t cut him again. Not yet.Just that one slice across his thigh, deliberate, clean, a promise.
They threw him to the floor like an animal.Chains dragged behind him, rattling like the end of a ghost story.His body hit the concrete with a wet thud,already bruised, already bleeding, already half-dead.Stripped of everything.Clothes.Dignity.Name.Ivan didn’t scream.Didn’t curse.Didn’t even fight.He just… breathed.Barely.His wrists were cuffed behind his back. Ankles chained.Blood streaked down his thigh from some wound I didn’t recognize.One eye was swollen shut, the other glassy, flickering between consciousness and something worse.The chair stood waiting in the center of the room like a throne made for ghosts.Two of Milo’s men hauled him upright,locking his limbs into place like they were assembling furniture.Metal cuffs clicked into bone.His head dropped forward.That was all that was left of him:Bone.