REBORN TO LOVE MY FATHER-IN-LAW
A tool panel, similar to the ones workshops mount on every available surface, wrenches and pliers hanging on hooks, and at the end of the row a bolt cutter with red handles.
Sixty seconds, maybe less.
I grabbed it, jaw on the padlock shackle, both hands on the handles, pressed and the metal resisted and I pressed harder and it gave with a sound that was too loud in that quiet hallway, and the padlock fell and I pulled the door open.
Three men…two sitting, one lying flat, all of them thin and pale and blinking in the corridor light like men seeing it for the first time in a long while. Chained at the wrists, long chains bolted to a ring in the wall.
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