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PROLOGUE
‘No! Please no! I can’t …’
The old man’s eyes widened in terror as he stared at the drill, straining against the ropes that bound hi into his flesh, splintering his bones like shrapnel as they nailed him to the wooden beam
As they crucified him
Surely they kneas good for thethey wanted! He was no good to them dead
How long had he been in the warehouse now? Days? Or only hours? Slipping in and out of consciousness between the beatings, he’d lost track, aware only of the pain in his body: the screae like crepe paper The fractured ribs and swollen eyes and lips The tiny razor cuts to his genitals They had tortured and hu woman stood in the corner impassively and filmed on her mobile phone Hateful bitch He despised her most of all, more even than his tormentors
They appeared to be reaching a crescendo, sorand finale with the drill Or at least he did Their boss The ringmaster at this circus of terror
The man with the brown eyes
The devil incarnate
‘Please!’
The old man’s sobs turned to screaly between them as they revved it louder and louder
‘I’ll do anything! Oh God, no!’ A warm river of liquid excre legs
The man with the brown eyes smiled
‘What’s that you say?’ he taunted, cupping a manicured hand to his ear ‘I’m sorry, my friend, with the sound of that drill I can’t hear you’
He looked on as hisand the shrieks and the blood, and finally by the silence, once the shoas over Aroused too by the young wo it all for his pleasure, as he’d co a life, any life, was a high like no other The ultimate expression of power
Once, the battered oldlifelessly from the beam in front of him had been rich and powerful More powerful than hiht
But look at him now Like a carcass in an abattoir
‘Should we cut hioons asked his master
‘No’ The man with the brown eyes stepped forward ‘Leave hi a wad of hundred-dollar bills from his inside jacket pocket, he stuffed them violently into the corpse’s mouth
The stupid old man had never understood
It was never about the money …
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
DR NIKKI ROBERTS