Chapter 9

“Seraphina! Don’t you dare! I will end you!” I thrashed, but the days of confinement had sapped my strength. The men easily grabbed my arms.

“End me?” She laughed, a light, tinkling sound. “Renato would stop you long before you got close. Or have you forgotten which of us he always believes?”

The words were a precision strike. They found the core of my despair and detonated it.

The fight drained out of me. What was the point?

The men didn’t strap me to a chair. They hauled me to the center of the room where a heavy chain with manacles hung from a hook in the ceiling, used in the past for… interrogations.

They fastened the cold steel cuffs around my wrists and hoisted me up until my toes barely scraped the concrete. The strain on my shoulders was immediate, agonizing.

Seraphina watched, her head tilted. “Too impersonal.” She walked to a utility shelf and came back with a rubber-coated sap, the kind used to inflict pain without leaving obvious marks.

“Let’s see if we can beat some sense into you.”

The first blow took me in the ribs. A sharp, breathtaking burst of pain. I gasped.

The second hit the back of my thigh. A third across my shoulders.

She wasn’t strong, but she was relentless, and the sap was designed to hurt. Each impact was a localized explosion of agony. I bit my lip until I tasted blood, refusing to give her the satisfaction of a scream. My body jerked and twisted in the chains.

Eventually, she tired. She dropped the sap, panting slightly. “Still nothing to say? Fine. We’ll try something else.” She nodded to one of the men.

He pulled a small, black rectangular device from his pocket. A handheld electric prod.

My eyes widened.

He pressed it against my side and triggered it.

White-hot lightning speared through me. Every muscle seized. A raw, animal scream was torn from my throat. My vision flashed white, then black.

The pain receded, leaving behind a full-body tremor and a buzzing numbness.

He did it again. And again.

The world dissolved into a cycle of searing pain and shuddering aftershocks. Consciousness frayed at the edges, then finally snapped.

I woke in a soft bed, in a dimly lit room that smelled of lemon polish and old money. Not the strong room.

Renato sat in a chair beside the bed. He looked at my pale face, the sweat-damp hair, the way I held myself stiffly. “I sent you to the strong room to think,” he said, his voice tight. “To cool off. How did you come back looking like you went ten rounds with a professional?”

I kept my eyes closed. I had nothing to say to him.

“Aria,” his voice dropped, holding a thread of something that might have been concern. “I am your fiancé. You can tell me what happened.”

Fiancé. The word was a joke.

I opened my eyes. I looked at him, my gaze flat. “Alright. I’ll tell you. Your precious Seraphina came into the strong room on the third day. She had two of my father’s men chain me up by my wrists. Then she beat me with a sap. When that didn’t break me, she had one of them use an electric prod on me. Repeatedly. That’s how I ended up like this.”

Renato’s pupils contracted. Shock, then swift, adamant denial flashed across his face. “A prod? Beating? That’s impossible. Seraphina… she wouldn’t. She couldn’t…”

“See?” I gave him a tired, hollow smile. “You never believe me.”

It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t settle the debt. So I would.

That very night, I called in a favor from a street crew that owed my mother a debt, one they’d carry to me. Seraphina had a terror of heights. A childhood thing.

They found her. They took her to the roof of the Caldera-owned financial district skyscraper. They stripped her to her underwear, bound her hands and ankles, and lowered her over the edge with a single rope, leaving her suspended forty stories above the city lights, the wind screaming around her, for the entire night.

The next morning, Renato stormed into the townhouse. His rage was a palpable force. “Aria! Have you lost your mind? You left Seraphina dangling from a rooftop! She panicked, she slipped! If the safety net hadn’t been deployed during window cleaning last week, she would be dead!”

I sat by the window, sipping tea. I didn’t look at him. My face was blank.

His anger grew at my indifference. “If our wedding weren’t in three days, neither I nor your father would let this stand! You will stay in this house. You will not leave. You will not cause any more trouble. Is that clear?”

Silence.

He stared at my impassive back, then turned and left, slamming the door so hard the frame shook.

Seraphina was brought home, pale and trembling, the night before the wedding.

Marco saw me and erupted. “You monster! You heartless bitch! What did you do to her?”

I looked up. “If I were a monster, your precious bastard would be in the morgue, not her bed.”

He sputtered, face turning purple. “You… you disgrace! Why do you insist on destroying this family?”

“You destroyed it when you moved your mistress and her brat into my mother’s house,” I said calmly. “I’m just living down to your expectations.”

“Enough!” he roared, clutching his chest. “Tomorrow is Seraphina and Renato’s wedding! You are not to show your face! Do you understand me? You will not ruin this!”

A faint smile touched my lips. “Don’t worry. A stuffy, formal prison ceremony? I wouldn’t attend if you begged me.”