Page 9 of A Lady’s Handbook of Espionage

The ropes bit into Isabel’s wrists. She’d lost track of how many hours she’d been bound to this chair, locked away in some forgotten corner of London’s underbelly.

Her captor knew his knots.

She’d made a mistake, letting down her guard enough to sleep. A fatal, foolish error born of desperation and exhaustion and the kind of weariness that came from always looking over her shoulder. One of Favreau’s men had broken into her little bolthole and tied her up.

Across the room, the Butcher stood by the door. She’d heard all about this man. That he liked to cut his victims up into small pieces and send them to loved ones over weeks and months. A finger. A toe. A foot. Each gift more gruesome than the last.

By the time he sent the head, his marks went insane.

Favreau loved the Butcher’s methods. D’une manière animale, he’d said.

In an animal way.

The Butcher looked almost bored as he cleaned his nails with the point of a blade. His eyes, when they sliced towards her, were flat. Empty. Twin grey stones plucked from the bed of a river that had drowned its share of screaming victims.

Shark eyes. Dead and cold and utterly without mercy.

“Comfortable?”

Isabel gave her most dazzling smile. The one that had charmed tidbits of information from tight-lipped marks and made Favreau’s face gleam with hunger.

“Exceedingly. I especially appreciate the ropes. You’re very good at knotwork.”

But not better than her.

She flexed her aching fingers behind her back, testing her bonds. She’d started to slip her wrist out millimetre by painful millimetre.

“I confess,” she continued, “I wouldn’t have thought playing watchdog was quite your style. Don’t you have some fingernails to pull out somewhere? Kneecaps to shatter? Is being a nursemaid truly the best use of your prodigious skills?”

She’d known men like him before. Had the scars to prove it, written on her body in a brutal cipher.

“Keeps my knife sharp,” he said. “Been a while since I had a live one to practise on. And you?” His stare raked over her, taking in her coat and men’s trousers. “Oh, I’ve heard you’re a thing of beauty when you bleed.”

Isabel’s heart tripped over itself. Cold sweat prickled along her nape and the small of her back.

Cold hands, cold voice, cold blade on her skin, and she wants to scream, but her throat won’t make a sound—

She held back a flinch as the Butcher pushed off the wall. He stalked towards her, each thudding footfall echoing like a drumbeat.

Somewhere, in a distant corner of her mind walled away behind steel and ice, a younger version of her started to cry.

Weakness , Favreau would croon as he fucked her. It has no place in our line of work, ma petite. Even monsters have standards.

For an instant, she was back in his bed, his dagger tracing idle patterns over her skin. Leaving the ugly latticework of scars he’d loved to make.

Take it, ma petite. Let the hurt shape you. Better a weapon than a woman, non? Weapons don’t flinch when you use them.

Ruthlessly, she shoved the memory down deep. Isabel had learned long ago how to smile through her hurts and wear her scars like armour. All those inconvenient human things that had no room in this life she’d made.

She was a blade, and blades didn’t break.

“If you think,” she said, holding the Butcher’s dead gaze, “that Favreau will let you take liberties with his property before he’s done with it, you’re more of an idiot than you look. And that, quite frankly, strains the bounds of credulity.”

It was dangerous to play with a man like this.

A fine line between restraint and provocation.

Too little, and she’d never get what she needed from him.

Too much, and, well . . . men like the Butcher seldom required more than the flimsiest excuse to indulge their baser instincts.

She was not afraid of pain, had made an art of smiling through torments that would crush another woman.

But she did so hate wasting her time.

His face darkened, fingers tightening around his knife. “What makes you think he’s got any use for you now? You’re damaged goods. Maybe he’s planning to put you down. Cut his losses now that you’ve gone and grown a conscience.”

The cold certainty of it knifed between her ribs. Because there was truth in the Butcher’s words.

She’d betrayed Favreau. Betrayed the Syndicate. Committed the unforgivable sin of killing his men, escaping Hong Kong, and sending him on a chase for six months. Now, the devil was on his way to collect his due.

She’d be damned if she made it easy for him.

Isabel pushed her wrist out of the rope by another degree.

“Oh, I’m certain Favreau would love nothing more than to put me in the ground at the right moment.” She leaned forward as much as her bonds allowed until the blade kissed her cheek. “But since you bound me to this chair in one piece, I assume he wants me breathing.”

“Breathing don’t mean I can’t make you sing,” he said softly. Dangerously. “Reckon the famous Spectre screams just as pretty as any dumb pigeon when she’s getting bits sliced off.”

A rough scrape of his thumbnail along her jaw. She breathed through her nose, willing herself still. She’d endured worse at the hands of better.

She pushed the rope down her wrist again, holding back a flinch as it rubbed her raw skin.

“You’re right,” she mused. “It has been a while since I had a proper scream. Better men than you have tried and failed to inspire one. Although not for lack of trying.”

He moved suddenly, the edge of his weapon pressing to her jugular. Old terror rose. The helpless animal part of her remembered every hand pinning her down. Every violation written on her skin.

“Shut it,” the Butcher hissed. “Keep that tongue behind your teeth, girl, or I’ll carve it out and feed it to you.”

Isabel’s smile never wavered. “You’re welcome to try if you’re that eager for a gelding.”

The Butcher went still. She tracked the ripple of rage, the clenching of that brutal jaw – a fracture in his control. And with it came a warning of a hundred other women he’d killed. The ones who’d screamed and begged. The ones who hadn’t been able to keep their skin intact.

Isabel had no intention of joining their ranks.

“Go ahead,” she purred, tilting her head to expose her throat. “Slice me open and let me bleed. See how loudly you squeal when Favreau puts you on your knees for it.”

Isabel’s heart slammed against her ribs. Silence stretched. And then—

The bright, blooming sting of parting flesh. But she never flinched. Never shied from the blade, even when a thin trail of blood slid down her chest.

She’d die before she’d scream for him. The pain at her wrist as she wrenched the rope down the heel of her hand grounded her. Blood pooled in her palm.

“Women who don’t know when to shut their mouths get cut,” he said, almost gently. The flat of his blade scraped her skin, smearing blood in its wake. “Final warning, dove. Keep that” – a flick of steel towards her lips – “quiet, or I’ll take my chances with Favreau’s temper.”

“I don’t think so, monsieur . Because you’re not just a killer; you’re a dog. And dogs don’t bite the hand holding their lead.”

Then she burst from her bonds in an explosion of movement. She threw herself at him, her hands clamped to either side of his head.

And she sank her thumbs into his eyes.

The Butcher bellowed, trying to fling her off. His blade clattered to the floor as he reared back.

It wasn’t enough. She smashed her forehead into his nose, satisfaction surging through her veins at the sharp crunch.

Ah, there it was. His turn to scream. And it was every bit as pathetic as she’d expected from a man who only ever took lives. Who thought that gave him power.

“Where are your threats now?” She dug her fingers harder into his eye sockets. “Where’s that swagger?”

Isabel drove her knee into his groin. The Butcher crashed to the floor, and she followed him down. Merciless. Her thighs clamped around his neck as she cut off his air. Squeezed and squeezed until he scrabbled weakly at her hips, her waist. Trying to pry her loose as she choked the life from him.

“I’ve made men more dangerous than you piss themselves and beg for their mums,” she hissed. “Men who can take pain, who don’t flinch easy. And do you know what I did to them?”

He made a wheezing sound, and she tightened her thighs around his neck.

“I broke them. Took them apart an inch at a time until there was nothing left. But you? You aren’t worth the effort it would take to make you scream.”

Then she rolled off him, grabbed his knife, and slit his throat.

He convulsed once, twice. A long, rattling exhalation. Somewhere nearby, a rusted pipe dripped. One. Two. Three.

And then he went limp.

She knelt over him, chest heaving. The din of her pulse crashed through her skull. From some distant corner of her mind, she could feel the girl reeling back, hands pressed to her mouth.

The crack of a hand across a tear-streaked face, pale eyes like sleet—

Take it, ma petite, fold it up and tuck it away.

Isabel pushed to her feet. She made herself look at the corpse sprawled before her, the ruin of his throat. Her handiwork.

Sloppy , Favreau would’ve said, clucking his tongue. Too much wasted energy. Killing is a precise art. Like surgery.

Her torn wrists screamed as she flexed them, but the pain grounded her. Sharpened her resolve. She’d leave her kill for Favreau to find – a message from the servant to her master.

So she kicked the Butcher’s limp hand out of her path and left the flat.