Page 103 of Twisted Violet

Rome steps forward with a pair of medical gloves and a tray Ezra left out earlier filled with scalpels, clamps, and bone spreaders. The kind of shit you'd find in a trauma ward.

Rome selects a scalpel with a narrow tip, then crouches beside the bastard’s right leg.

“Hold him,” he says quietly.

Tristan obliges, and the asshole shakes again.

“Wha- what are you doing?” the man stammers, words slurring through pain and blood.

Rome doesn’t answer.

He makes a small incision just below the kneecap.

Then another.

And another.

He’s flaying skin now. Slow, controlled, and clinical. Peeling it back like layers of something rotten. There’s no anger in his expression, just focus.

“This is what it feels like,” he says, voice low. “To be exposed. To have someone strip you down and decide what parts of you are worth keeping.”

The man sobs.

Rome doesn’t flinch.

He just continues. Steady. Detached. A surgeon dismantling something he never considered human.

When the tendon twitches beneath the steel, he finally sets the scalpel down.

“You made her feel powerless,” he says. “So now you don’t get to feel human.”

Then he peels off the gloves and backs away without a word.

Ezra watches from the corner, arms folded, eyes sharp.He’s the conductor of this fucked-up symphony. Every tool here has a story. Every scream, a purpose.

Cyrus paces like a caged beast, tension vibrating off of him. And when he finally steps forward, he doesn’t waste time. Just grabs the bolt cutters and stalks toward his fingers.

“S… start with the thumbs,” Tristan offers, smirking from across the room. “Since the fucker likes to text so much.”

The pop is sickening. The scream? Worse.

But it’s nothing compared to what she lived through.

So we take turns.

Each of us pushing harder than the last.

Because pain like this shouldn’t be clean.

It should stain.

And it should come fromallof us.

A shared reckoning for the bastard who shattered her.

THIRTY-NINE

VIOLET