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Dr. Strauss frowned but lowered the sharp blade toward her skin.

“No! No! Please don’t!”

Dr. Strauss paused and he actually gave her a warm smile. “You’ll thank me for this one day.”

Then he pressed the cold blade to her leg and began cutting.

She screamed and thrashed against the restraints, tears streaming down her face as her voice choked and cracked in agony, begging him to stop, pleading for someone to save her.

But no one answered, and her cries of terror stayed within the dark corners of the room.

She screamed till her voice was raw and blackness crept into her vision. Seconds later, her eyes drifted closed, granting her a merciful escape from the pain.

If there was one prayer Khalani needed answered…it was to never wake up.

29

Ruin waits for no one.

Takeshi

They had her.

Khalani.

Kanes.

His reason.

When Khalani was carried away from him, a blanket of shadows covered Takeshi’s vision, his fury igniting to levels few had ever lived to witness.

The electric pain tearing through his body felt like molten wires clenching around his spine. Even then, it took the highest voltage possible to knock him unconscious and keep Takeshi from murdering every last Dealer beneath the surface.

When Takeshi finally awakened, both his hands were chained around a metal bar in the open cavern.

A Dealer kept a close eye on him, barking orders for him to stay seated with his legs stretched out. The guard’s hand coiled tight around his gun, holding it for dear life.

As if that would save him.

The second Takeshi was free of these chains, he’d sprint to the black building and eviscerate any guard in his path.

In another part of his mind, he mused over various torture techniques.

The Dealers would merely die for their involvement. But Dr. Strauss would receive a special version of hell so painful that bathing in fire would be considered a respite.

His gaze flickered again to the building where she was taken, and he discreetly tugged on the chains, searching for a weak point. His shoulders strained tight, but the pain was inconsequential.

All that mattered to him was taken away.

Before Khalani, Takeshi had resigned himself to a life without love. His unspent torment, regret, and fury were channeled into locking criminals behind bars each dark night.

But then, a lonely girl, whose head barely reached his chest, walked into prison.

At first, he dismissed her as an insignificant nuisance, no different from the countless other prisoners in Braderhelm.

The fragile figure before him seemed ready to shatter under the weight of a single breath, and he doubted that she’d survive one week in Braderhelm Prison.

But when Khalani wasn’t looking, his attention unconsciously drifted to her. There was something in her expression that caught him off guard.