Chapter 3

The high-pressure hose hit me like a punch to the chest.

It wasn't a shower. It was a punishment. The water was ice-cold. I screamed and nobody came.

I fell to the tiled floor. My knees scraped raw against the rough stone.

"Get up, 402!" a voice barked.

I couldn't breathe. Every time I tried to pull air in, the freezing blast knocked it back out. I tried to shield my face, but the pressure ripped my hands away.

"I said get up!"

A heavy boot kicked me in the thigh. Not a warning. It was meant to hurt. I scrambled to my feet, slipping on the soapy tile. Five other boys stood naked beside me, shivering so hard their teeth chattered. None of them looked at me. Looking meant you hadn't been broken yet, and none of us wanted that label.

I understood it fast.

A guard with a shaved head and a black rubber apron stood over me, electric clippers buzzing like an angry hornet.

"No," I wheezed. "Not my hair. Please."

"You don't have a name, no hair, no identity when you're here. You are just 402," the guard said, grabbing the back of my neck like a vice. "In the Forge, pretty is weak."

"My father is Don Moretti! He'll kill you for this!"

The guard laughed, dry and nasty. "Your father paid for this package, kid. Premium. He told us to shatter your ego. Shave it all off."

The clippers pressed to my forehead. Cold metal on my scalp. Then I felt the weight of my hair falling away, clumps of dark curls hitting the wet floor one by one. I closed my eyes and made up my mind not to cry.

I didn't cry. That felt like the first tiny win I’d managed in this whole nightmare.”

"Look at the floor," the guard hissed.

I looked down. My hair swirled toward the drain. I felt empty, not like a Prince anymore. I felt like I was being processed, already halfway done.

They threw us into a large, dark hall. The air smelt of sweat and old iron. A single row of red lights ran along the ceiling. It felt like something had swallowed us whole.

"Line up!"

Six of us. Bald. Shivering in thin white jumpsuits. I stood at the end of the line and stared at the far wall. One goal I had was to just survive the night.

A man walked out of the shadows. He wore a black tactical mask that covered everything but his eyes. He carried a heavy wooden baton and moved down the line slowly. The silence he left behind was worse than noise.

He stopped in front of the boy next to me, a kid who couldn't have been older than sixteen. "Why are you crying, 405?" the man asked.

The boy didn't answer. He just sobbed.

Whack.

The baton hit the boy's stomach. He folded like paper and went down. Nobody moved nor looked. I kept my eyes forward and felt sick.

"We don't cry here," the masked man said. His voice was muffled, but I knew that voice. I instantly recognised its weight. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

He moved down the line and stopped in front of me. Taller than the others. Broader. He smelt like leather and tobacco.

"402," he said.

I looked up at those dark, gold eyes behind the mask, and the floor dropped out from under me.

Viktor.

Relief hit me so fast it made me dizzy. "Viktor?" I whispered. "Please, get me out of here. This place is..."

Whack.

The baton cracked across my shins. I screamed and went down. The pain was white and blinding.

"There is no Viktor here," he hissed, came close until the mask was an inch from my face. "I am the Lead Instructor here. And you don't have a right to call me that. Stand up."

I looked at him, searched for the man from the car, the man who pressed his thumb to my lip, the man who said he wanted me. There was nothing. He had packed that person away completely.

"Why are you doing this?" I gasped. "You said you'd be my handler!"

"I truly want you," he whispered, low enough for only me. "I want you broken. Because a broken Prince is easier to keep."

He stood and barked at the room. "402 is resisting! Give him the heavy bag!"

Two guards came forward, dragged me to the centre of the hall, where a giant sandbag hung from a chain in the ceiling. It weighed over three hundred pounds.

"Hit it," Viktor ordered.

"My hands are shaking. I can't."

"Hit it, or the others don't eat tonight."

I looked at the row of boys. I could feel their pain and anger already shifting toward me.

I summoned everything I had and began to hit the canvas. My fist connected and my knuckles burst open right away.

I hit it again and again. My arms went to lead. My lungs burnt. Viktor circled behind me with the baton tapping his palm. Every time I slowed, I swung harder, not because of the baton. But because I was furious at my father, at the Forge, at the man behind me, and at the way my body had betrayed me in that car. Hitting the canvas was the only thing that made any sense right now.

"Is that all a Moretti has?" Viktor mocked. "Your father was right. You're a girl in a man's suit."

"I hate you," I said through gritted teeth. My hands were bleeding. My face felt like a furnace. Before I could stop myself, I went for his throat with both hands and didn't care about anything.

Viktor moved like lightning. He caught my wrist, twisted my arm behind my back, and slammed me face-first into the sandbag. My nose cracked against the canvas. Blood sprayed across the white fabric. He held me there, his body heavy against mine, mouth close to my ear.

"That's it," he breathed. "Give me that anger. Use it. Tonight is long, and the hard part hasn't even started."

He let me go. I slumped to the floor.

"Take the others to their cells," Viktor ordered. "Except 402. He stays with me for special instruction."

The other boys were led away. The hall went quiet. Just me and him and the row of red lights.

Viktor pulled off the black mask. He wasn't smiling. He looked exhausted and miserable. But his eyes still burnt with that hungry, terrible focus that I was starting to think he saved just for me.

He walked to a small table and picked up a heavy leather strap.

"Your father sent a list, Leo," he said, holding up a folded piece of paper. "A list of everything you love. Everything he wants me to make you afraid to want."

He looked at me, and for the first time I saw something wet in the corner of his eye. It didn't stop him. He didn't put the strap down.

"Do you want to know what is first on the list?"

I looked at the strap. I looked at him. I thought about the car, the door, and the way his hand had felt over mine.

"Is it my fault?" I whispered.

Viktor didn't answer. He just raised the strap.