Page 24

GUNNAR

Silence is a poor defense.

The man tied to the iron chair in front of me didn't seem to know that yet. Corin Petrakis kept his jaw locked, his teeth grinding together so hard I heard the enamel squeaking. His glare was fixed on the concrete floor between my boots. He thought if he didn't give me a sound, he wouldn't give me a foothold.

He was wrong. Silence just gave me space to work.

I took my time with the leather straps, pulling them taut around his wrists and ankles. I wasn't rough. In fact, I was gentle about it, sliding the heavy brass buckles through their notches with a quiet clack.

Positioning was everything. Most brutes just cranked a strap down over a man's forearms and called it a day. But I knew better. I placed the upper cuffs precisely two inches below the lateral epicondyle—the bony knob on the outside of the elbow—ensuring the leather pressed directly against the radial nerve without crushing the soft tissue above it. I rested his wrists against the armrests at an exact fifteen-degree angle, exposing the vulnerable inner flexor tendons while keeping his radial artery completely clear.

I didn't want him to bleed out. I wanted him awake, responsive, and uncomfortable.

"People make a lot of assumptions about me," I said casually, my voice low and conversational in the damp basement. I smoothed a thick leather strap over his knee, aligning it perfectly with the patellar tendon. "They see six-foot-four of muscle, they see my knuckles, and they think my father keeps me around because I can hit things hard."

Petrakis’s eyes flicked up to mine. A flash of defiance burned behind his sweat-streaked forehead. He still hadn't spoken.

"I do, though. Hit hard. But strength is overrated."

I stepped around to the back of the chair. I reached out, my fingers lightly tracing the ridge of his collarbone, feeling the rapid pulse in his carotid artery.

"A falling rock is strong. But strength without a plan is just wasted kinetic energy. It isn't muscle that breaks a man. It’s the brain."

That was a truth that my brother Vidar always forgot. Even though we were in the same classes in school, he thought he was smarter because he sat up front while I preferred the back. The back of the class was where all the fast girls were.

"Did you know the average human brain only weighs about three pounds? It has the consistency of soft tofu or warm jelly. It's completely fragile, floating in a little bath of cerebrospinal fluid inside a vault of bone. But inside that soft, useless jelly is every memory, every secret, and every threshold of pain you possess."

Petrakis's breathing hitched. I could feel the sudden spike in his heart rate beneath my fingertips.

"Bones, on the other hand, are fascinating," I mused, pulling a small, silver-handled mallet from my bag. I tapped it lightly against my own palm; the steel was cold and solid. "Take the acromioclavicular joint right here on your shoulder. It only takes about eight pounds of pressure per square inch to dislocate it if you hit it at the correct angle. Most men try to crush the collarbone. Takes nearly four hundred pounds of force to do so. Too messy. Too noisy. But the joint? The joint is a lock waiting for a key."

I stepped back into his line of sight, meeting his glaring eyes with a deadpan, polite smile.

"You don't have to talk." I shifted my weight. "Your body is going to speak for you in just a few moments."

Before the thought could even form in his mind to flinch, I drove the butt of the heavy silver mallet straight into the precise, vulnerable pocket of the brachial plexus beneath his collarbone. A wet pop echoed through the room, followed instantly by a sound that wasn't silent at all: a raw, agonized groan that tore straight out of his chest as his entire left arm went dead.

He shut his eyes as though he could contain the pain. He shut his mouth, but the air went in and out through his nose in harsh pants.

I’ve seen this reaction a hundred times. The body goes into shock; the brain scrambles to comprehend the sudden failure of its own anatomy. The bravado evaporates like spit on a hot stove. Most men think they can tough it out through brute strength. They're always wrong. Pain delivered with medical precision isn't something you can muscle through.

Usually, it takes five strikes to break a man’s resolve completely. Five calculated reminders that I control every pain receptor in their body.

I didn't wait for him to catch his breath. I shifted my stance and brought the butt of the mallet down onto the anterior nerve cluster of his right thigh. Strike two. A choked, strangled gurgle erupted from his throat. His heels rattled wildly against the concrete floor as his leg convulsed.

I brought the mallet around, catching the radial nerve along his right forearm. Strike three. His fingers curled into claws. His eyes rolled back in his head.

I raised the mallet for the fourth.

"I'll tell you! I'll tell you anything! Just stop! Please, Goddess, stop!" He shrieked, his voice cracking into a pathetic sob before the blow even landed.

He broke earlier than I expected. That was disappointing. "I haven't asked a question yet."

I drove the butt of the hammer squarely into his left patellar tendon. Strike four… then five. What can I say? I was a completionist.

His high-pitched scream tore through the basement, echoing off the damp concrete walls as tears streamed down his face. He sagged against the leather straps, blubbering and gasping for air, completely destroyed.

I stepped back and wiped a stray speck of dust off the handle of the silver mallet. I slipped the tool back into my bag, pulled a folding wooden chair from the corner of the room, and set it down two feet in front of him. I sat down, casually crossing one heavy leg over the other, making sure not to get any blood on my thousand-dollar sneakers, and rested my hands on my knees.