Page 74 of Scarred in Silence

“My gut says half-truth.”

“Time to bleed answers,” Dante smiles.

“Phones on the table,” I command. Silas obeys, shaky.

I nod at Dante. He stands, moves behind Silas, grips his jaw, forces it open with a technician’s precision. Dante’s other hand slips a slim steel blade from his pocket.

Silas jolts. “Wait—”

“Tongue,” Dante murmurs. “Lie again, lose an inch.”

Silas freezes. Dante pricks the blade against Silas’s taste buds. A bead of blood blossoms.

“Last chance,” I say. “Who else is in this chain?”

“Enrique Martinez!” Silas blurts. “He brokers the Utah route. That’s all I know, I swear. The girl—she was listed as Lot Forty-Seven. They said she was damaged goods.”

Dante’s eyes spark like flint. “Damaged goods?” His blade presses into Silas’s tongue once more. Silas whimpers.

I tap Dante’s shoulder. Enough. We need him alive—for now.

We hogtie Silas’s wrists with zip cuffs, march him out like a trophy. The club’s patrons avert their eyes. Money and fear make people blind.

In the hall, Dante’s phone buzzes—Evelyn. He ignores it. Priorities.

We drag Silas to the freight elevator. He babbles half-apologies, half-threats. I pistol-whip him once; he quiets.

Outside, we approach Dante’s Mercedes. Night air tastes of rain and neon. Dante shoves Silas inside. I climb in after, the door slamming shut behind me.

“You’re making a mistake,” Silas croaks.

Dante straps him to a seat with a cable. “We can fix mistakes. Corpses are harder.”

Silas’s pulse flutters in his throat. Good. Fear is an honest God.

* * *

I sit opposite Silas, pistol resting on my knee. Dante pilots the Mercedes, calm, humming some old Metallica riff under his breath.

Silas trembles. “I told you everything.”

“No,” Dante says. “You told us enough to buy time.”

He swallows. “What else do you want?”

“The name of the man who sold my sister,” Dante’s bitter words ice over the car.

“I don’t know.”

Bang. I shoot the floor near his left boot. The metal rings like achurch bell. Silas screams, jumps. The cable is biting his wrists.

“Try again,” I say.

He pants, eyes wide. “I swear—bids are anonymous. Password-locked. There are too many sex traffickers. You’ll never find which one sold your sister.”

“Either way, Holloway’s a dead man,” Dante calls from the front. “You’re a maybe.”

Silas’s tears run clean tracks through the smear of sweat on his cheeks. “Please, Dante. Lucien. I’m not your enemy.”