Jesse's weight presses to my back, pinning me between him and the ground and knocking all air from my lungs. The earth shakes. Pieces of glass, drywall, and wood fly past us, and a horrible, loud ring silences everything around me.

Where is the girl? I was holding her hand just before Jesse tackled me. I try to feel for her, but I can't move under his huge form. I can't even see through this cloud of dust and the stars in my vision. A warm trickle runs down my temple. I think I've hit my head. Might have even passed out. How long have I been lying here?

The sharp twinge of panic rises in my chest and I begin to hyperventilate with the little air I can take in. The fear of the worst happening to Jesse and the terror of his dead weight suffocating me make me want to hurl. I try calling out to Roy, to Travis, even to the secretary, but they either don't hear me or can't. I can't hear anything besides the awful ring in my ears, still.

Jesse blessedly stirs and lifts his weight off of me. I gulp air like a fish returned to water and immediately cough as dust fills my lungs. I cover my mouth with the crook of my elbow and try to calm myself down, but tears form in my eyes all the same, tears as much from the dust and smoke as they are from frustration and terror.

Jesse's muffled voice breaks through the ringing in my ears, but I can't make out his words. He guides me up to my feet. I stumble amid the debris, the room spinning about like I'm on one of those carnival teacup rides cranked up to eleven. Strong hands support me, though, and the blurry and star-filled images in my vision begin to take shape.

The secretary lies beside me, dazed but alive amidst pieces of drywall and the remnants of furniture. Ahead, Roy gets up from under a crouch and approaches us, his boots trekking on top of shattered glass. He says something, voice no less muffled and no more understandable than Jesse's through the persistent ringing in my ears. It doesn't matter, though, because the butt of a long gun hits him on the side of the head, and he collapses like a rag doll.

I try hard to make sense of what happens next.

Four masked shapes appear as if out of nowhere. Stumbling, Jesse puts himself between them and myself. Though he can barely stand on his own two feet, he pistol-whips one of them and shoots another in the shoulder. A third manages to grab him by the neck and press something small to it. Then he slumps in the man's arms.

Everything inside me seizes. The world is still spinning, my ears are still ringing, and my vision is only halfway there, but a white fury roils in me, penetrating through it all.

Not him. Anyone in this room, but not him. Me, but not him.

I don't think, just move. My hands quickly find my gin and I shoot two of the three standing guys. My aim is shit in my current state, and they're wearing bulletproof vests, but it's enough to make them stumble from the man holding Jesse, giving me enough time to get a knife free and stab the motherfucker in the eye.

It bursts like a watery cyst. He opens his mouth in a muffled scream as blood oozes down his face from where my knife sticks out. He stumbles back as Jesse slumps to the ground. I catch him before he reaches it, managing to keep his head from hitting the floor as the room spins about me once again.

Two powerful hands seize me under the armpits and drag me away from him. I writhe, kick the air, and scream until my throat is raw in protest. The absolute dumbass that I am, I must've dropped my gun when catching Jesse.

Two more hands grab my ankles, pinning them in place. Their hold on me is like a vice, like shackles in a chain gang. The hands under my armpits dig into my flesh, like iron rails. I look up into one black predatory eye and a bleeding socket from behind a ski mask. There is nothing behind that void but rage, relentlessly piercing through my thick skull, radiating cold and bitter fear that overtakes me completely.

Something hot pinches my neck. Something white and loud flashes in the distance. My vision, halfway restored, rapidly clouds again. That black void of an eye sucks me in, drinks everything around me like a man half-dead in the desert. I forget how to move, forget where I am.

My last thought as the darkness overtakes me is that of Jesse.

 ━━▲━━ 

After some time, that darkness gives way to vague shapes.

My eyelids feel like they weigh three tonnes each as I crack them open and blink. I'm in a dark room with nothing but the brick and rock of the walls. Rats scurry somewhere in the distance, and the smell of old blood, rot, and urine penetrates my nostrils. I move to cover my nose from the stench but realize my hands are cuffed behind the back of the metal chair I'm sitting in. I try breathing through my mouth, but quickly abandon that idea as it makes me taste the excrement instead.

I feel like I'm about to vomit, and it's not from the stench alone. Everything in me hurts, my head feels like it's been put through a blender, and my left temple itches with dried blood. I probably have a concussion, possibly something twisted or broken, I may even be bleeding internally somewhere. Who knows what those monsters did to me while I was out.

I fail to suppress a shudder at the thought and image of that black void of an eye. I don't know the last time I've ever been so afraid of anything. Maybe my father...

My father.

No, it can't be him behind it all. He won't sink that low, he's too proud.

Is he, though? I thought sex trafficking children was beneath him, and yet...

No. Call my father what you will, but he wouldn't be stupid enough to take out an asset as good as Councilman Bennett. That's not his MO, this play is not the way he does things. It's someone else. It has to be someone else.

At least that's what I tell myself.

Something clicks in the distance, and unoiled door hinges scream. Light passes through a widening crack, burning my retinas and flaring the pain behind my eyes. I close my eyes reflexively, turning away from that ray of pain. Still, I crack one eye open, enough to make out a silhouetted figure approaching me.

"Wakey-wakey, princess," says an unfamiliar mocking baritone. "Comfortable?"

He makes his way behind me. I'm about to cuss him out to next Tuesday, but shut my stupid mouth at the last second. Instead, I swallow what little saliva I have and rasp.

"What do you want?"

"I want you to be a good little girl and shut the fuck up," he says as he yanks my wrists towards him. The metal cuffs dig into my skin like fiery blades. I suppress a hiss of pain. "Can you do that, or do I have to make you?"

"Eat shit, asshole," I spit through clenched teeth, not catching my stupid mouth in time.

He clicks his tongue and releases me. I still can't see what he looks like, can barely see what's going on around me in this bright light. But I can hear his footsteps slowly approach me, and can feel the heat on my cheek as the back of his hand strikes it. My neck snaps to my left fast enough to pull a muscle, the aforementioned heat quickly rising to a fiery burn. He grabs a fistful of my hair and turns it towards him, levelling his gaze with my throbbing face, eyes inches away from mine.

Two light brown eyes. Not one. Not black. Almost amber. Almost like Jesse's.

My relief is mingled with new fear and fury at this piece of shit.

"Wanna try again?" He asks, his breath sickly sweet with the scent of spearmint. His fair face is square with a strong jawline, his nose structured, his cheekbones prominent, his hair a brown so light it's almost blond, but not quite. It's quite a nice look, beautiful even.

I spit in his face.

He releases me and stumbles back, wiping what little saliva I managed to expel off of his cheek.

"Where is he?" I growl, wrenching in my bindings as if I can break them apart. "What did you do to him?"

The next slap is worse.

I feel something tear in my right cheek, a fiery sting on my cheekbone. My vision blurs for a moment, eyes as adjusted as they can be to the light. But I force my neck to turn back to him and glare. I glare with the glare I inherited from my father, one that I always thought could freeze a fucking ocean, one that I put all my gathered fury into. To my credit, a pang of fear flashes across his face, if only for a moment.

That moment, however, is quickly gone, and he grabs my jaw. He grabs it like Gage had grabbed it on my balcony. Only this man doesn't care if my jaw shatters like a vase in his hand. I feel it begin to collapse on itself in his palm, feel his fingers pressing into my back teeth, urging them to break.

"They told me to keep your pretty face recognizable," he says, voice like the growl of a wolf. "I think a broken jaw won't be too bad."

My nostrils flare as his grip tightens, his ring—the culprit behind my cheekbone scratch—digging into my skin as my jaw is about to snap in two. Breaking it like that is impossible. I know that, but my pain receptors are telling me otherwise. Tears start welling up in my eyes, and I curse inwardly as this man's smile widens.

"That's enough, Kenneth." A woman's voice, stern and sharp.

He releases me and steps back. I breathe as I flex my jaw and look at the woman in the doorway.

She's of average height, but her heels make her level with the man, Kenneth. Her hair is black and pin-straight, reaching her waist. Bangs hang over the epicanthic folds of her brown eyes. Her face is oval with prominent cheekbones, her nose is small but flared at the base, and her mouth is small, but her lips are full. There's something familiar about her.

"Sorry, Sienna," she says with the softest hint of an Asian accent. "Kenneth can get carried away sometimes."

She lays a palm on Kenneth's cheek, patting it affectionately. "Be a doll and make sure everything's set up. I'll keep our guest company."

Without another word, without even a glance my way, the man nods and leaves, closing the door behind him.

At some point, someone turned one ceiling light on, leaving somewhat of a dull blue-white spotlight on me in the dark room. I blink as I get a proper look around. As I figured before, there's nothing here save for my chair and another vacant one by the door. Large rectangles mark spots on the floor that furniture used to occupy. An exposed pipe lines the left wall, attached to an old drinking fountain. My only company, other than the woman, are the rats in the walls. On one such wall, right before me, is a large pane of glass.

"You have an interesting idea of hospitality," I tell the woman, whose heels click as she drags a chair towards me. She sets it to the right, diagonally, facing both me and the glass pane.

"Yes, well," she takes a seat and crosses one leg over the other. "In our line of work, desperate times call for desperate measures. I'm sure you understand."

I narrow my eyes at her. "And what line of work would that be?"

The woman smiles and an unnerving sensation of deja vu overtakes me.

"Don't be stupid, Sienna," she says. "I don't work for your father, if that's what you're afraid of. I don't deal with Diego either. He didn't betray you."

A cold knife plunges into my stomach, and a million questions jump around in my mind. How does she know me? What does she know about Diego? Who is she? What does she want?

But I only voice one.

"Where's my partner?"

She raises her eyebrows, the gesture again so familiar. "Which one?"

Another stab. Has she gotten to them all?

"You have to forgive me," she continues. "There is a rather big gaggle of men you surround yourself with, I can't keep track."

My eyes morph into my father's glare, and I'm rewarded with a minuscule widening of the woman's eyes.

"The one who was with me when your boys did your dirty work," I say, not taking the bait.

"Ah," she breathes, trying to act unfazed. "Jesse. Quite the dark and handsome type, isn't he? Don't worry, he's still in one piece. You'll see him very soon."

"What do you want?" I mask my sigh of relief with the question.

Her lips curve upwards and she looks down at me from behind long eyelashes. "I want to know what your plan is."

When I don't answer she purses her lips and shakes her head. "You do have a plan, don't you? You're smart enough not to escape Vasilios without one."

"Trying to win his favour, are you?"

She laughs a laugh too hearty for one her size. "Not even close. Now, are we going to do this the easy way, or the hard way?"

I clench my jaw as my glare returns. "Do your worst."

This wouldn't be my first time at the other end of questioning, and I've held my own through much worse than her or Kenneth.

Her smile doesn't falter as she takes her phone out of her pocket. "As you wish."

She types something and puts it back. A few heartbeats later, a light brightens the space behind the glass, revealing Jesse and plummeting my heart to the floor. He's in an identical but fully lit room, his side profile facing the glass, blinking at the light in a chair identical to mine, hands cuffed behind his back. He's caked in blood.

I call out to him as I try and fail to stand up.

"He can't hear or see you, dear," says the woman in the chair.

And that's when my concussed brain finally catches up to the moment. I see, now, that we're in an abandoned interrogation room and this is a two-way mirror. As Kenneth steps before Jesse and affixes brass knuckles to his fist, I feel horror strike me like lightning in the heart, dropping me like a rag doll in my seat. I can't feel my limbs, but I know they're shaking.

"Let him go," I say to the woman, voice as much a plea as it is a command. "Let him go!"

What I hear instead of an answer is Kenneth's voice.

"Alright, let's try this again," he says to Jesse. "Where is the money?"

Jesse spits out something red and glares at him. "I left it in your mother's house when I—"

Kenneth drives his fist into Jesse's abdomen, expelling air out of his lungs with an awful groan. I scream at the glass as much as my raw throat allows me to, clenching my fists hard enough to draw blood.

"This will stop," the woman in the chair says, "if you just tell me what I want to know."

"I can do this all day," says Kenneth, the same thing Kaen told Nico the other night. "But if this won't work, maybe I should try your girlfriend instead. Will you talk then?"

Jesse's gaze snaps to him, looking nothing like the prisoner that he is and everything like a murderous lion ready to chew its prey's head off. "Don't fucking touch her."

He doesn't even know, I realize. He has no idea that this is likely all a ruse, that it's the other way around. That I am the one they want something from.

Or is it?

I mean, what good will knowing my plan do this woman, who doesn't work for my father or want his favour? It makes more sense that they're after some Hydra money instead. Was she lying then, or is it all an act?

My brain pounds in my head with a pain that threatens to split it in two. I can't think straight, can barely even focus on what's happening to Jesse. My Jesse. My kind, gentle Jesse who deserves not a thing of this. Hot tears stream down my face as I look at his bloody face, willing him to see me.

"Hey, I like that idea," comes a new voice along with a figure stepping into the room. The man is tall and lanky but muscular, and a white patch of gauze is pressed to the left side of his face. "The bitch owes me an eye."

Every nerve in my body lights on fire and then freezes as he stares through the glass, seemingly right at me. That void. That blood-curdling black void threatens to swallow me all over again. Everything else disappears as that emptiness sucks me in like a whirlpool of death.

"Remember, darling," the woman's voice again. "All you have to do is talk."

Fuck talking.

Sliding my finger over a seam in my waistband, I peel my eyes away from that obsidian orb like one would peel a fresh scab. They dart to the woman's, to those narrow brown pools, so calm and collected. So similar, yet so different, from the man she reminds me of.

"I hope you know," I wet my lips as I spit the words at her. "Your son and the rest of his brothers will kill you very slowly for this."

A smirk, Kaen's smirk, spreads on her lips as my finger finds something thin and solid. "They did tell me you were perceptive."