Page 12 of The Wrong Man

“You’re stronger than you look,” he says. “Most people break completely in that room. The darkness strips away all their defenses, leaves them begging to confess to anything just to make it stop.”

He walks around my chair again, and I can feel him studying me from every angle.

“An innocent person wouldn’t be able to handle that,” he says conversationally. “They would break down completely. They’d confess to crimes they didn’t commit just to make the fear stop. But you... you took that like a professional.”

Something cold settles in my stomach. “What are you saying?”

He stops in front of me again, and when he speaks, his voice is flat and certain.

“I’m saying that only someone with extensive experience in the violent world of crime would be able to maintain their composure like that.”

“No, that’s not…”

“Only someone like Declan O’Shea.”

The words hit me like a punch to the gut. After everything I’ve been through, after singing myself hoarse and reciting every recipe I know, just to stay sane, he’s more convinced than ever that I’m my brother.

“You’re wrong,” I whisper. “You’re so wrong.”

But I can see in his eyes that he doesn’t believe me. My survival in that horrible room has somehow become proof of my guilt.

And surprisingly, he looks incredibly disappointed by this. As if refusing to believe me, is hurting him even more than it’s hurting me. As if he wanted to trust me, and my failure to prove myself has destroyed all his hopes and dreams.

“We’ll see,” he says quietly. “We’ll see exactly how wrong I am.”

And with that terrifying promise, he turns and walks away, leaving me tied to the chair with the growing certainty that I’ve just made everything infinitely worse for myself.

Chapter five

Dante

The call comes at three in the morning.

I’m not sleeping. Haven’t been able to sleep since I dragged Dylan out of the Dark Room and saw something in his eyes that looked disturbingly like resilience rather than defeat. Professional criminals develop that look over years of surviving in brutal environments. Innocent bakers from Borough Market should not have it.

Unless surviving his brother’s cruelty as a child taught him how to endure things that would break most people.

I shove that thought aside and answer the phone.

“We have another one,” Nicolo says without preamble. “Vinnie Vitelli. He’s the inside man who fed information to O’Shea about the shipping schedules.”

Vinnie Vitelli. I know the name. Mid-level associate with gambling debts and a taste for expensive women. Exactly the kind of weak link that gets exploited by people like Declan O’Shea.

“Bring him to me.”

I end the call and stare at the ceiling of my bedroom. The apartment next to my studio is sparse and functional. A bed, a wardrobe, a bathroom. A tiny kitchen and a dingy living room. I don’t need much. Material possessions have never interested me. What I need is purpose, and right now my purpose is tangled up in knots because of a man with hazel eyes and freckles who claims to be someone he isn’t.

Or claims to be exactly who he is.

I get up and dress in dark clothes. Black trousers, black shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows. Professional attire for professional work.

When I enter the studio, Dylan is slumped in the chair, chin on his chest, sleeping or unconscious. I can’t tell which. The sight of him makes something uncomfortable twist in my gut.

I ignore the feeling and start preparing.

The metal table needs fresh tools. I select them carefully, laying each one out with the precision of a surgeon. Pliers. Scalpels. A small blowtorch. Wire cutters. Each instrument has its purpose, its moment in the symphony of information extraction.

Except tonight isn’t about information. Tonight is about punishment. And about proving something to myself.