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Most of his expression didn’t change, but his eyes widened just a little.

“Not the eye,” Xavier all but whimpered.

“Why not?”Annie stepped forward.“John… Do you mind if I call you John?”she mock-asked the man.“John here was the one who suggested it.”

“He didn’t fucking suggest you stab him in the eye.”Xavier’s accent was thicker, and he looked slightly green.

“He said torture.”Annie looked to the Spartan Guard who hadn’t seemed all that worried by the idea of torturing someone.The guard stepped beside her and her soon-to-be victim, grabbing his head and holding it still.

Now the man started to struggle.

“Do you know why I’m going to call you John?”Annie straddled the man’s thrashing legs—he wasn’t thrashing much, since his ankles were zip-tied to the chair.“After Long John Silver.The pirate.”She covered her eye with the hand not holding the knife.“You know, the one-eyed pirate with the eye patch?”

“Non.Absolument non,” Xavier declared, heading for the door.

Annie shot a pointed look at Colum, who was swallowing hard in the way people did before they were sick.

Xavier grabbed Colum on his way out, hauling the other man out of the room.

Annie let the smile drop from her face.“Anyone else who doesn’t have the stomach for this, or still has a moral compass, leave.”

The knight and other guard both stayed, though neither looked happy about it.

Annie still sat on John’s knees, which had caused him to freeze in confusion at the odd intimacy of their position.

She traced a line across his lower lip with the knife, opening a small cut.Lips healed easily and fast, but any injury to them hurt like a bitch.He grimaced, trying and failing to pull away.

“How much do you need me to hurt you before you’ll talk?”she asked.“If, say…breaking your arm would be enough to do it, let’s do that.You’ll heal and probably have no permanent damage.If you want a little bit of pain over a long period, I’m happy to do that too—this knife is thin enough to go under your nail without permanently damaging the nerves in your fingers, and we can go at it one finger at a time.”

Annie tipped her head to the side, knowing that it was disconcerting to see a pretty, petite woman with a soulless, merciless expression staring back at you.

“So, John, you tell me, how much do I have to hurt you before you tell me who sent you, and what your mission was?”

“Ah, but sure she wouldn’t…”Colum’s voice trailed off as Xavier arched a brow.“She would,” he finished grimly.

Xavier pointed at his eye and made a popping noise.

Colum gagged.“For the love of God, don’t be making that noise.”

Xavier grinned and did it again.

Colum swallowed hard, then shoved him toward the stairs.“Get up there, you gobshite.”

Xavier chuckled—teasing Colum had erased his own horror at seeing Annie in murder mode.

His mood further shifted when Colum whacked his ass as they started up the stairs.

“No, no, keep going,” Colum said, as Xavier started to stop on the main floor.“There’s a sitting room up at the top.”

Colum wanted to put distance between them and whatever Annie was doing, and Xavier didn’t blame him.

Xavier kept going up another flight.They bypassed well-maintained rooms with plaster ceilings and crown molding, each filled with state-of-the-art archival storage units from pressure-controlled glass cases, to large metal cabinets, and even a few wooden crates.Everything neatly labeled in what Xavier knew was Colum’s handwriting.Only his workroom—as Xavier had come to think of it—was organized chaos.The rest of the archive was simply organized.

Colum had taken the lead, since Xavier didn’t know where they were going.He stopped by a door with a glass inset.The room on the other side looked like more storage, not a sitting room.Colum put his hand on the knob but hesitated.

“Er, do you want to see my favorite piece in the archive?”Colum’s head was turned away, so Xavier couldn’t see his expression, but the hesitation and vulnerability in the words made Xavier’s heart clench.

“I would love to see it.”He cupped the back of Colum’s neck, forcing him to turn until their gazes locked.“Show me the things you love.”