Page 38 of Bound By Blood and Lies

I flick a glance toward Felix. The grin that spreads across his face is immediate and deeply unpleasant. He shifts his grip on the pliers and slides them along Ben’s hand until the metal jaws settle around his ring finger.

“I swear,” Ben rushes out, his voice cracking. “I swear I don’t know. I just do security. I get shifts. I get told where to be and when?—”

Felix moves before the sentence finishes. He grabs Ben’s jaw with enough force to snap his head upward. Ben flinches under the grip as panic flashes across his face. Felix leans in close enough that their foreheads almost touch.

“Where were you assigned recently?” Felix demands.

“Transport and warehouses,” he sobs, his nose dripping with snot.

The wordwarehousepings around my skullas I keep my hand steady. I pinch the flap of skin at his collarbone before slowlypeelingit away.The heat of his blood leaches onto my hand as the wet squelch echoes off the walls.

“What warehouse,” I bark over his cries and screams.

He doesn’t respond, so I continue slicing through skin and muscle, cutting away a six-by-six square.His nerve endings must be screaming at the exposure and when I finally get the last connecting tissue separated, I throw the discarded square onto the floor with a wet slap.

“Do not make me ask you again, what fucking warehouse…”

“I don’t—there are loads. We just get sent co-ordinates and told to shut up and do our job.”

“Benjamin Miller. Thirty-eight. Lives in Braintree. Married. Two children. Sophie and Emma,” Atlas cuts in without looking up. Ben goes still, even his sobs stop completely, and the sound is as chilling as Atlas’s fingersthat keep tappingin a calm and relentless pattern. “Sophie’s nine. Emma’s six. Both are at home, according to your partner’s social media that she posted an hour ago. She thinks you’re on a night shift.”

Ben’s mouth opens, then closes. His throat works. His eyes fill, not with tears of pain, but with terror.

“Please, my children?—”

“I don’t care about saving your children or your family, Ben. I care about saving mine,” I spit.

I mean, I’m not in the business of harming children, but I have no intention of telling him that. Let him sit with the fear. Let him imagine the worst possible version of what men like us might do. If the thought of his daughters is the thing that finally cracks him open, then I will use it.

Bargaining chips don’t have to be real to work.

I step forward again, returning to the patch of exposed muscle at his collarbone. The scalpel slides beneath the loosened skin and I peel another section away.Blood runs over my fingers, hot and slick, and Ben’s scream tears out again, though the strength has started to drain from it.His body is reaching its limit. His legs kick once before sagging again as shock creeps in. Felix doesn’t slow down either. The pliers clamp down again with brutal certainty and another finger gives way beneath the pressure.Bone snaps again and echoes off the stone walls.Where my blade is slow and methodical, Felix is force and fracture.

“Who makes the calls, Ben?” Felix’s voice sharpens.

“Stop—stop—” Ben sobs, head thrashing.

“Names,” I say.

“I don’t know!” he screams, vomiting from the pain as me and Felix jump out of the way.

“This is why I work in the shadows. I prefer my trauma with fewer bodily fluids,” Riggs mutters as Ben continues to heave.

“F-Fisher,” he finally stutters and we freeze as we turn back to him.

“Ackworth,” he cries, and my chest goes cold as Felix stills beside me.

“Fuck,” mutters Atlas, and my head snaps toward him. “He’s been getting paid from a holding account linked to the Ackworth estate.”

“I… I have?” the man simpersand my blood pressure spikes as I take in Felix.

Every thread leads back to the same name, ignoring it now would be nothing more than cowardice. Felix looks hollow beside me, but the hesitation burns away almost as quickly as it came. His expression hardens and he surges forward, grabbing Ben by the throat with a violent grip that snaps the chains tight. I take a step back, careful not to lose my footing on the slick mixture of blood and bile coating the floor.

“Say it again,” Felix barks. “The name. Who Fisher works with.”

“Ackworth,” Ben stutters.

“FUCK!” Felix roars, releasing Ben’s throat and stumbling.