Chapter 7: The First Interrogation

HENDRIX

The air in Erdem's office felt thinner, colder, like all the oxygen had been replaced with threat.

I sat on the chair across from his desk, hands folded in my lap, heart hammering against my ribs while my face remained carefully neutral.

Erdem stood by the window, his back to me. The silence stretched, deliberate and suffocating.

I didn't speak. Finally, he turned.

He moved closer, perching on the edge of his desk, looking down at me.

"Tell me about your previous owners," He said. "The ones who had you before the auction."

I exhaled inwardly, I was so scared he had found out about me.

I'd prepared for this question, I had built an entire backstory with Liora's help years ago when she'd first taught me about deep cover operations.

"They were Eastern European," I said, keeping my voice soft and frightened. "I don't know exactly where they moved us around a lot. Different warehouses, different cities, they said it was safer that way, harder for authorities to track."

"How long were you with them?"

"Eight months, maybe nine. Time got confused after a while." My voice broke slightly. "They took everything that connected to my old life, saying, I belonged to them now."

All true, just not about these fictional owners.

Liora and I had been taken once, briefly, when I was seventeen. Three days in a shipping container before she'd picked the locks and gotten us out. But thoes three days had taught me exactly what captivity felt like, what fear tasted like, how time dissolved into an endless present tense of survival.

"What did they use you for?" Erdem asked.

"They used me to communicate with different buyers,and suppliers," I wrapped my arms around myself. "And sometimes... sometimes they rented me out to clients who wanted someone who looked like me. Young."

Real shame covered my voice, because of the last line.

Erdem looked directly at me. "Look at me."

I raised my eyes slowly. His gaze was intense, searching, looking for cracks in the story, inconsistencies in the emotion.

"You're lying," he said quietly.

My heart stuttered, shit what did I miss?

ERDEM

Everything he said could have been true, but something about it felt off. Because the real Kozlov's file I found had nothing like what he just said.

"I'm not lying," he whispered. "I'm just-I'm scared. Scared of what you'll do if you think I'm not valuable enough to keep. Scared that if I tell you everything, you'll realize I'm not worth the price you paid."

"What aren't you telling me about your previous owners?"

"They're dead." The words came out flat, emotionless. "All of them. There was a raid-police, or maybe a rival organization, I don't know. Gunfire, explosions, chaos. I hid in a storage container until it was over, when I came out everyone was dead or gone. That's when the auction house found me."

I studied his face looking for the lie within the truth.

"And you expect me to believe that you survived a massacre by hiding?"

"I expect you to believe I'm very good at being small and quiet and forgettable when I need to be." His voice was stronger now, edged with something that wasn't quite defiance but wasn't submission either. "I've been surviving dangerous men my entire life, Mr. Veyra you're not the first monster I've had to please."

There. That's the real Hendrix beneath the fear and who ever hev was pretending to be.

I'm loving this.

HENDRIX

Fuck, did I say too much.

But Vera already told me that Erdem likes someone that challenges him with a touch of fear.

Erdem's expression shifted-not anger, but interest. The kind of interest a predator shows when his prey does something unexpected.

"Surviving dangerous men," he repeated slowly. "Interesting choice of words. Not 'enduring' or 'suffering under' but surviving."

"I didn't mean-."

"Yes, you did." He stood, towring me again. "You meant exactly what you said. "

He moved to a table against the wall and picked up something I couldn't see.

"I'm going to ask you questions," he said, his back still to me. "And you're going to answer them truthfully. Every lie, every half-truth will have a consequence. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good." He turned, and I saw what he was holding, a small device, medical-looking, with electrodes and wires.

My stomach dropped.

"This," Erdem said, holding up the device, "Measures Heart rate, skin conductivity, micro-muscle movement. It's not perfect but it gives me a baseline."

He approached and attached the electrodes to my wrist, my throat and my temple. His touch was impersonal, but I felt the heat of his fingers against my skin .

"Let's start simple," he said, returning to stand in front of me. "What's your real name?"

Erdem watched the device's reading as I answered.

After some time, he reached up and removed the electrodes, his movements careful, almost tender.

"You told the truth and also lied, but here's what's going to happen, Hendrix. You're going to stay in my house, under my control until I decide what to do with you and I'm also curious to see what you're really after."

His hands came up and gripped my chin, forcing me to maintain eye contact. after some time he released me and stood.

"Take him back to his room," he told Konstantin, who'd been standing silently by the door. "And I want to know everything that happens in and out of that room."

He escorted me back to the glass room.

"Sir is very good at finding lies," Konstantin said as we walked. "Most people don't last ten minutes before they confess everything."

"I noticed," I said quietly.

"You lasted longer than most." he stopped outside the door.

I looked at him with wide innocent eyes.

"I'm just trying to survive, Konstantin. That's all."

"Everyone in this house is trying to survive, the question is what you're willing to do to achieve it." Konstantin said, then opened the door. "And who you're willing to betray."

I entered without responding, and he locked the door behind me.

Back in my glass cage, I collapsed on the bed, my body shaking from the adrenaline crash and the last thing Konstantin said.

"Who you are willing to betray." What does he mean.

Then I saw Konstantin pulled out his phone and typed on it before pocketing it and left.

Hmm, it seems everyone in this house is playing a game.

The question is who is playing whom.