Liora stood outside the car, flanked by a few scoundrels, cigarettes dangling from their lips, their eyes lingering on me with cruel amusement. In her hand, she gripped a bucket brimming with muddy, foul water.
“It’s too dry in here,” she said, glancing down at me with icy contempt. “How could you possibly understand Gareth’s helplessness, waiting for a parking spot in the rain?”
I tried to move my lips, but each word cost me everything. “Liora... please… save me…”
She snorted coldly, and the thugs around her immediately caught the signal.
Rough hands yanked me out of the car and slammed me onto the cold, muddy ground. The filthy water soaked my clothes instantly. I struggled to rise, but a heavy boot pressed down on my back, holding me down.
Liora approached, lifting the bucket.
The dirty water crashed over my head, the stench choking my nose and mouth.
I shivered violently, cold seeping into my bones, pain radiating from my kidneys, dragging my consciousness toward the edge.
“Aren’t you a mysophobe?” she taunted, her voice thick with satisfaction. Her high heel ground mercilessly against my trembling fingers. “You disinfect your house three times a day, remember? How does this feel now?”
She winked at one of the thugs, who grinned and pulled a baseball bat from the trunk. He tossed it to her.
Squatting beside me, Liora’s voice dropped to a soft whisper.
“Gareth said after getting caught in the rain, it felt like his lungs would explode.”
She rose slowly, raising the bat high.
“Let me feel that too.”
With a sharp whistle through the air, the bat slammed into my lower back—right over my kidneys.
“Ah!”
The pain exploded inside me, a scream tore from my throat, my body arched uncontrollably, and darkness rushed over my vision.
On the car’s screen, Gareth’s voice dripped with false concern.
“Liora, don’t hurt him. I still need him...”
His words only fueled Liora’s fury. Her eyes flamed with madness.
“He almost killed you! This little pain is nothing!”
She stopped the thugs and took the club herself, smashing it down onto my shin.
“Crack!”
The sound of bone breaking echoed in the cold air.
Pain threatened to swallow me whole, but she wasn’t done.
She discarded the club and barked, “Tear his shirt off!”
The cashmere sweater I’d treasured—her birthday gift—was shredded with a brutal hiss.
My bare skin met the biting late-autumn wind, and my whole body trembled.
Summoning every ounce of strength, I fixed my gaze on her.
Amidst the agony, my fingers trembled but reached for my collar. Sewn inside was a small, custom distress brooch.
Before I was hospitalized, my assistant Quinn Faraday had insisted I wear it—half-forced me—with a grim warning about trusting others too much.
I pressed the hidden switch with all my might.
A sudden calm washed over my ragged nerves—I nearly collapsed.
Quinn would come.
He had to come.
If I could just hold on until then...
“Silas, what do you think you’re doing?”
Liora’s voice cut through my fragile hope like a blade.
She leaned over and tore open my collar, exposing the brooch.
Her eyes flickered, momentarily frozen—then darkened with rage, twisted with cruel amusement.
She raised her foot slowly, the sharp tip of her scarlet high heel aiming squarely at the brooch.
