Page 68 of Gilded in Blood

“I…” My voice catches. “I don’t understand. How did you get in here?”

“I was kidnapped," the man pleads. “Please. Just don’t leave me here.”

I stare at him. His face is bruised beyond recognition. His clothes hang loosely from his body. He looks broken and exhausted.

But appearances can lie. I’ve seen Artyom and Mikhail interrogate people who looked just as pitiful.

Those men weren’t innocent. They were traffickers. Murderers. Men who’d destroyed countless lives without losing a second of sleep.

What if this man is one of them? What if he deserves every bruise on his body?

What if I free him… and he turns around and hurts someone else?

Or worse…

Hurts me. My fingers curl into my palms.

Does Ilya know he’s here? The thought is almost laughable. Of course, he knows. He’d lied to me. Which means, he put him here.

The man lets out another broken sob.

“I have a family,” he says hoarsely. “Please… I don’t want to die.”

My heart twists painfully. Maybe he’s lying. But what if he isn’t? What if he’s telling the truth?

What if I walk away… and he dies because I was too afraid to help?

I think of Maria. Of wishing I’d done more.

I grab a heavy hammer, the weight strange in my hands.

If I’m wrong… I’ll deal with the consequences later.

But if he’s innocent… I don’t think I could ever forgive myself.

I draw a shaky breath and walk toward the table. My hand hovers over the scattered tools before settling on a heavy pair of bolt cutters and walk over to him.

“I need you to stay as still as you can.”

The man nods frantically.

I kneel beside him, my heart hammering against my ribs. Up close, the smell hits me immediately.

Stale sweat, dried blood, urine. The sour, sickly odor of someone who’s been trapped in the same place for far too long without a chance to wash.

My stomach lurches. I have to fight the instinct to recoil.

His lips are cracked, his skin clammy, and his wrists are rubbed raw beneath the thick steel cuffs. How long has he been down here?

I swallow hard and force myself to focus, and grip the bolt cutters with both hands.

Careful not to jostle his swollen wrists, I slide the jaws of the bolt cutters around the first length of chain, and squeeze.

Nothing. The chain doesn’t even budge. I grit my teeth and reposition the cutters.

One more time. I throw my weight into the handles until my forearms burn. The metal groans, and then snaps.

The broken chain crashes onto the concrete floor, the sharp clang echoing through the room.