Page 18 of The Wrong Man

What if he does respond, and it confirms everything I’m desperately trying not to believe?

I think about Dylan. About the terror in his eyes when I secured the gag over his mouth. About the way his whole body shook while he watched me work on Vinnie. About the dark stain spreading across his trousers as his mind retreated from horrors it couldn’t process.

I think about the pillow I gave him after he fainted. The restraints I loosened without meaning to. The way I couldn’t bring myself to hurt him even when I was convinced he was lying to me.

Some part of me knew. Some part of me has known from the beginning.

The laptop pings.

Another video message.

I click on it with hands that aren’t quite steady.

Declan is in a hotel room now. Lavish, beachy, all pale wood and white linens and floor to ceiling windows overlooking impossibly blue water. The Maldives, probably. One of those over water bungalows that cost more per night than most people earn in a month.

He’s holding a hairdryer.

“The things we do for family,” he sighs dramatically, rolling his eyes with theatrical exasperation.

Then he switches on the hair dryer and points it directly at his face.

His strawberry-blond hair whips back from his forehead. His skin ripples slightly under the assault of warm air. His eyes squint against the blast, but he maintains that smug, superior expression throughout.

It’s real. Unmistakably, undeniably real.

No deepfake could capture those micro-movements. No prerecorded contingency would include something so specific and absurd.

Declan O’Shea is on a beach in the Maldives, sipping cocktails and mocking me.

And his innocent twin brother is tied to a chair in my bathroom, soaking wet and traumatized and hating me with every fiber of his being.

The video ends, and I continue staring at the screen.

I’ve made mistakes before. Small ones, usually. Errors in judgment that cost time or money but nothing irreplaceable. I’ve always prided myself on learning from them, on refining my methods until mistakes become impossible.

This isn’t a small mistake.

This is catastrophic.

I’ve been torturing an innocent man. A baker. A soft, sweet, probably genuinely kind person who has never done anything to deserve even a fraction of what I’ve put him through.

The Dark Room. The psychological torment. Forcing him to watch while I... while Vinnie...

Oh God.

I drop my head into my hands and try to breathe.

I don’t do guilt. I’ve told myself that for years. Guilt is a luxury I can’t afford, an indulgence that would make me weak and ineffective. The people I hurt deserve what they get. The work I do is necessary.

But Dylan didn’t deserve any of it.

Dylan was closing up his bakery, probably thinking about whatever orders he needed to fill the next day, and masked men grabbed him and threw him into a van and delivered him to a monster who spent days breaking him in ways that will never fully heal.

Because of a brother who called him a little faggot. Who clearly knows exactly what’s happening to Dylan and doesn’t care, beyond using it as an opportunity to gloat. Who is laughing about it from a beach in the Maldives.

I think I might be sick.

I stumble to my feet, knocking over the whiskey. The glass shatters on the floor, amber liquid spreading across the concrete, but I barely notice. I’m already moving, already running down the hall to my studio, already dreading what I’m going to find.