The basement of the compound always smelled of the same three things: damp concrete, copper, and fear. Right now, the fear was particularly pungent.
I leaned against the heavy metal table, rolling a silver scalpel between my knuckles. In front of me, strapped securely to a steel chair, was a waiter.
At the Alsrio estate's party, he had been a glitch in a perfectly coded matrix. A real waiter doesn't possess that kind of hyper-vigilant peripheral vision. A real waiter doesn't have calluses on his knuckles that match the grip of a semi-automatic, nor do they carry themselves with the tense, coiled weight of a man waiting for a gunshot. His body language had shouted threat from the moment I spotted him.
"We can do this the long way, or we can do it the very long way," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. The silence in the room made it echo. "Your choice."
The man spat a glob of blood onto the concrete floor. He glared at me through a swollen eye, his lips pressed into a tight, stubborn line. He wasn't talking. Not yet.
"The silent type. Admirable. But deeply inconvenient." I stepped forward, the heels of my boots clicking sharply. I didn't waste time with more questions. If a man thinks he can hold out, you have to break that illusion immediately. I grabbed his left hand, pinning his wrist to the armrest with a grip like a vice, and picked up a pair of heavy-duty pliers.
He lunged forward, but the leather straps held him fast. I didn't blink. I clamped the metal teeth around his index fingernail and pulled. Slowly.
A choked, raw scream tore from his throat, vibrating against the concrete walls. Blood welled up instantly, dark and thick, coating his fingertip. I tossed the bloody nail aside. It clicked against the floor.
"Let's try this again," I murmured, wiping a stray drop of blood off my cuff. "Though, to be honest, I already know who you are, Dex."
He froze, his ragged breathing hitching at the sound of his name. His blown-out pupils, unmistakable mark of a heavy drug addict going through sudden, forced withdrawal-snapped to mine.
"That's right," I said, leaning in so close he could see his own terrified reflection in my eyes. "Dexter Vance. No family. No friends. No one who will wonder why you vanished off the face of the earth. Just a pathetic junkie who needs his next fix badly enough to take stupid risks. I can make your death take days, Dex. I can peel you apart piece by piece, and nobody is coming to save you."
The bravado completely drained from him. The agony of his missing nail, combined with the crushing weight of his absolute isolation, broke him.
"I was hired!" Dex shrieked, his voice cracking as tears mingled with the sweat and blood on his face. "I was just hired, man! Please! I don't know anything!"
"Hired by whom?" I demanded, my voice dropping an octave, cold and lethal.
"I don't know! I swear to God, I don't know!" he sobbed, shaking violently against the straps. "Someone called me. A blocked number. They told me to get into the Alsrio party, blend in, and keep an eye on the family. They paid me in cash, left in a drop-box. No names. No face-to-face. They told me to make sure there was no proof left behind."
I narrowed my eyes, studying his micro-expressions. The terror was genuine. The ignorance was real. He was a blind pawn.
"You didn't try to find out who was feeding your habit?" I asked, testing him.
"I tried!" Dex panted, swallowing hard. "Before I took the job, I tried to trace the routing on the burner phone they used. I couldn't get much. Just... just a location ping from the initial call setup. It originated right here. Valencia. Whoever it is, they live in this city."
Valencia. Someone right under my nose. Someone right here in my town was targeting the Alsrios, playing games in my backyard. A dark, dangerous fire lit up in my chest.
"That's all I know! I swear, that's everything!" Dex begged, his chest heaving as he stared at the pliers in my hand. "Please, man. You got your answers. Just let me go. I'll leave the country. I'll disappear."
"Let you go?" I let out a soft, humorless chuckle. It was a terrifying sound, even to my own ears. "You think you're in this chair because you're a terrible spy, Dex?"
I stepped back, setting the pliers down, and picked up a heavy, solid iron rod resting against the wall.
"Well right spying exists in the list too but you're in this chair because of what you did on the balcony," I said, my voice dropping into a register of pure, unadulterated malice.
Dex went rigid. The color completely evaporated from his face, leaving him a sickly, ghostly gray.
"When that girl was out on that balcony at the Alsrio estate," I continued, stepping into his space, the iron rod scraping against the floor with a horrific screech, "you weren't just watching the family. You were watching her. You had your filthy, pathetic eyes all over that girl. And I saw you mixing something into a drink. A little extra cocktail for a girl you thought was vulnerable."
Dex began to thrash violently, his heart hammering so loudly against his ribs I could practically hear it. "No—no, wait—"
"You thought she was alone," I growled, the fury finally breaking through my calm facade, turning my blood to boiling acid. "You thought you could take advantage of the moment. You wanted to drug her. You wanted to take her. You wanted to touch her."
"I didn't touch her! I didn't do it!" Dex screamed, his voice reaching a panicked, hysterical pitch. He knew he was looking at a dead man in the mirror. "I just saw her alone, I thought-I thought I could take benefit of the moment! Just sex, man! Just a quick hit! Nothing more, I swear! I didn't know she was yours!"
"Before you finish that sentence," I whispered, stepping up directly in front of him, raising the heavy iron rod high above my shoulder, "know that this is going to hurt more than anything you could ever conceive."
I didn't let him speak another syllable. I brought the iron rod down with everything I had, ensuring that his final moments on this earth were defined by pure, unbearable agony.