Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 88918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
His hand vanished from view, and his footsteps shifted behind Tate.
A featherlight scratch moved across his shoulder blade. Chills swept through him, stealing his breath.
It’s the razor. He knew it. His clenching muscles knew it, and he tried to relax, to convince himself to accept it. But dread turned his body into a shaking block of ice.
“Nooooo!” Lucia screamed just as shocking, fiery pain seared through his skin and muscle.
His head fell back as violence and fury roared from his throat. It was so excruciating his limbs convulsed and slammed him against the wall.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Breathe. It was just one cut. Just one. I’m better than this.
“See, if you buck like that, you’ll rip the chains from the ceiling,” Badell said at his ear. “I can’t have that.”
He was still heaving with blinding pain when Armando wrestled his forearm against the wood above his head. Blinking away the spots in his vision, he watched in horror as Armando stabbed an icepick through his arm and pinned him against the wood board.
The pain was unimaginable, shooting through him in shocking quakes of agony. His head hung on his shoulders, and his knees buckled, causing his weight to pull on the arm nailed to the wall. Nausea rose, and his vocal chords shredded. He tried to stifle his screams, but they were constant. Or maybe it was Lucia. Her anguish had become one with his own.
When I fully understand the lengths at which you’ll go for her, I’ll give her the medicine.
He needed to breathe. Breathe. Breathe. In and out. Stay alert. Focus. He was strong.
As his lungs found their pace, he planted his feet beneath him, lifting on toes to minimize the movement of the icepick through his arm.
“Why do you care if I love her?” he growled in a thick, guttural voice. “What do you gain from this?”
“Your loyalty to her intrigues me. I want to examine it. Challenge it.” Moving into his line of sight, Badell studied him with a pensive expression. “To truly understand the veracity of love, a man must be tested. He must pay for it.”
What is the price you’re willing to pay?
Cole’s question repeated in his pain-addled mind, and he spat the words. “I’ll pay, you son of a bitch. Just name the price.”
“The price of love is devastation.”
“How the fuck would you know?”
A muscle bounced in Badell’s cheek. “I’ve paid it a thousand times over.”
The sick fuck wasn’t capable of love. Not that it mattered. He was lord and king here, Hell’s monarch in human flesh. There would be no mercy.
And so it began.
The blade sundered his flesh from neck to waist, striping, curving, digging, cutting. Cutting. Cutting. Hours of continual pain immersed him in a bottomless pit. He went into shock, but it didn’t numb the insufferable misery.
He kept his feet firmly beneath him and cheek pressed against the wood, staring at the metal handle protruding from his forearm. Every breath caused slight movement, shifting tendon and bone around that spike.
Everlasting fire incinerated his back, his ribs, his arm. Dizziness dulled his thoughts. But at the outskirts of his senses, he tracked the clang of Van’s chains and marked the moment Lucia’s weak cries dissolved into wheezing breaths. God willing, she must’ve passed out. He couldn’t imagine what his back looked like and didn’t want her staring at it.
How much blood could a person lose? Was he reaching his limit? It drained from his arm in steady red rivulets, leaving tracks down his bicep and ribs and soaking his jeans. The same wet warmth flowed from his back beneath the relentless slice of the blade. There was so much blood his feet slipped in the sticky pools cooling on the floor.
“How long have you known her?” Badell traced a soft finger through the agony along his spine.
He swallowed, tried to clear his head. Five days? That was when they met. But he’d known her for six years through photos, Camila’s stories, and the depths of his investigations.
“Long time.” He choked on a throat full of phlegm and bile and spat it out.
“And Van? How do you know him?”
Another stroke of that finger down his back, a gentle taunt that fired muscle-flinching pain. But Badell wasn’t cutting. Conversation meant a reprieve from the blade.
Tate tried to make his mouth work, to give an answer that would delay the torment. Words eventually slipped out, but they were strangled and unintelligible.
“I kidnapped him,” Van said from across the room.
“Explain.” Badell shifted, creaking the stool beneath him.
Van outlined the sex trafficking operation, focusing on the training and the network of slave buyers. His words were carefully chosen, avoiding details that might’ve suggested they had friends or family. He also didn’t explain why or how it ended. As far as Badell knew, it had been just Van and Tate and a dozen other faceless slaves.