Chapter 8

"The second day, you said he talked too much, so I made him lick the entire hallway clean with his tongue. He couldn't even stick his tongue out properly for days."

"Oh, and I specially put up your picture in his room, playing your voice on a loop. Isn't he especially obedient now?"

"Right, there was an old mutt on the island, getting on in years, so I cut out his kidney and gave it to the old dog to extend its life. Waste not, right?"

Briggs was kneeling on the concrete floor of Isabella's basement, recounting his deeds with a sickening pride that hadn't yet given way to fear. He still thought this was a performance review.

Isabella sat in a leather chair, one leg crossed over the other. Her face was expressionless, but her nails had dug so deeply into the armrest that the leather had split.

"Continue," she said.

Briggs grinned, showing yellowed teeth. "And the rats — that was my personal touch. Three nights in the cage. Most people break after one. Your boy lasted all three. Tough kid, I'll give him that."

Torres, kneeling beside Briggs, was smarter. He'd read the room. His face was ashen, and sweat poured down his temples.

"Ma'am, we were just following orders—"

"Whose orders?" Isabella's voice was silk over steel.

"Yours! You sent the ring! You said to keep him alive! We kept him alive!"

Isabella stood slowly. The click of her heels on concrete was the only sound.

She walked to Briggs, who was still smiling, still oblivious. She crouched down to his level, her perfume mixing with the dank air of the basement.

"You cut out a nineteen-year-old boy's kidney," she said, her voice conversational, "and gave it to a dog."

Briggs's smile faltered for the first time. Something in her eyes must have finally registered.

"He... he was just—"

Isabella straightened up and removed her rings, placing them carefully on a tray.

"That boy's father died saving my family. That boy was entrusted to me by his mother. That boy is worth more than every person on that island combined."

She rolled up her sleeves.

"And you fed his kidney to a dog."

What happened next in that basement would become legend in the Blackwood organization. Details varied depending on who told the story, but the outcome was always the same.

Briggs and Torres were sent to Devil's Island — not as wardens, but as prisoners. The same cells. The same rat cages. The same rules.

But this time, Isabella's orders were very specific.

"Don't kill them. I want them to live a long, long time."

When it was done, Isabella sat alone in the basement, her hands washed clean but still trembling. Her phone buzzed.

A message from her lead investigator: "Warehouse kidnapping — traced payment to a shell company. Company's sole director: a law school classmate of Sebastian Thorne."

Isabella stared at the message for a full minute.

Then she called her most trusted bodyguard.

"Bring me everything you have on Sebastian Thorne. Bank records, phone records, emails. Everything."

"Ma'am, he's your fiancé—"

"Did I stutter?"

"No, ma'am."

She hung up and sat in the dark basement, surrounded by the echoes of confessions that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

Every scar on Jacob's body. Every broken bone. Every nightmare. Every flinch.

All of it traced back to her.

She had been so focused on punishing a teenage boy's crush that she'd handed him to monsters. And the man she'd chosen instead — her sophisticated, charming fiancé — had been pulling strings the entire time.

Isabella Blackwood had built an empire on reading people. And she had been utterly, catastrophically blind.

She picked up her phone one more time and dialed my hospital room.

It rang six times. I didn't answer.

She didn't blame me.