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“Then fucking hold them.”

“Chain his hands behind the chair.”

Metal knocked against wood. A lock clicked.

Then another.

“Secure his right ankle.”

“He won’t stop moving.”

“Then break his—”

“No,” a different man interrupted. “The boss wants him able to stand. We can’t kill him or make his pain obvious to a camera.”

A curse erupted below, followed by an impact hard enough to send the chair skidding across the floor.

“Hold him still and bolt the damn thing down.”

Boots shifted around him. The chair scraped several inches across the concrete, then stopped with a hard jolt.

Metal clanged against the floor.

A ratchet began clicking.

Once.

Twice.

Then again from the other side of the chair.

I knew that sound. I’d heard it too many times before. The men were fastening the chair to the steel anchors sunk into the cellar floor.

The prisoner continued to struggle, chains snapping taut while the men cursed and the wooden frame groaned beneath him.

Finally, something struck one of the chair legs.

It didn’t move.

“That’ll hold him.”

“Keep the hood on,” the same man ordered. “No one touches it until Señor Delgado gets here.”

None of the other prisoners had fought this hard. Drugged, hooded, and restrained, he should’ve been easy to control. Instead, he fought every man who laid hands on him.

Normally, the men locked to the chair were gang members who’d stolen money or drugs, cartel soldiers who’d failed an assignment, debtors, informants, or men accused of selling information to my father’s enemies.

They arrived shouting threats.

After the first hour, they offered money.

Then whatever else they might have.

By the end, most begged for death.

“Get your fucking hands off me.”

No one had ever spoken English from the chair beneath my room.