Page 100 of South of Justice

“You just need to say the words, Lucía, and it all stops.”

Her mouth was dry, but somehow she managed to collect enough saliva in her mouth to spit on his face.

Javier didn’t react; he just kept the gas flame directed at the metal frame. At the point of contact, the metal had turned white hot.

Her throat worked, but she refused to make a sound. The smell of something acrid reached her—burned oil, scorched dust, maybe fabric—and for a moment she told herself that was all it was. Then came the pain.

It didn’t come as a wave. It bloomed. A flower of fire spreading under her thighs, into the soft places at the back of her legs, along the curve of her spine.

Her body jolted once, involuntary, and the zip ties at her ankles bit deep. Her breath came fast and short, the way it did before crying, but she wouldn’t cry. She couldn’t give him that.

Javier watched her, head tilted slightly, studying her face like a man assessing a work of art.

“Pain,” he said quietly, almost conversationally. “It isn’t the enemy, Lucía.”

He shifted the torch a few inches. The blue flame licked along the frame. The heat climbed. The metal armrest began to glow faintly orange.

The smell changed. Stronger. Sharper. Meatier.

Lucía’s stomach lurched. She bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood.

Another ping. The chair popped loudly as the welds expanded.

Lucía’s mind fractured into two distinct planes—one screaming, the other counting. She counted her breaths. Counted how long it had been since he’d turned the flame on. Twenty seconds? Thirty? The air smelled of burned hair and something worse.

“Say the password,” he said softly. “It’s only a few words. Just words,querida.”

The back of her legs felt wet now.Sweat, she told herself.It’s just sweat.

“Fuck you,” she whispered.

Javier watched her for a long moment, the torch steady, the reflection of its flame turning his eyes a hellish gold. Then, finally, he shut it off. The silence afterward was almost unbearable—her pulse roaring in her ears, her breath ragged.

He stood, set the torch on the table with delicate care. “I’ll be back in an hour for round two,” he said, almost tenderly. “And you’ll beg before sunrise.”

He straightened, checked the cuffs on her wrists as though adjusting jewelry, then walked to the door. Then he was gone. The door shut behind him with that same soft click.

Lucía sat in the stillness, panting, her body trembling uncontrollably. She stared at the flame-shaped shadow still dancing on the wall from the afterimage burned into her retinas. The smell of scorched metal filled her nose; the pain was so complete it felt almost distant now, as if it belonged to someone else.

FIFTY-SIX

The surveillance screen froze mid-flinch.Lucía’s body—naked, trembling—was caught in a sick stutter of pixels, her face twisted in pain, lips pulled back in a silent scream. Her thighs were blistered red where the metal chair had burned into her skin. Smoke shimmered faintly in the corner of the frame.

Ryan’s pulse kicked so hard he thought he might black out.

Javier knelt beside her, blow torch still hissing in his hand, blue flame licking the edge of the steel frame as casually as if he were searing crème brûlée.

Ryan moved.

The chair scraped back, the legs shrieking against concrete. He didn’t hear it. Didn’t hear the clatter of the fallen radio, or the way his own heart sounded like a war drum in his chest.

He was already out the door, sprinting. Because that wasn’t a video. That wasn’t replayed footage. That was happening.

Right now.

The world came to Lucía back in pieces.

Pain, first.