"Seig, keep the team moving," Lorenzo said firmly through the comm.
"Where to?" Seig asked, the tension in his voice like coiled wire.
"I have to find her."
With that, Lorenzo cut the line, determination hardening his jaw. He gripped the gear stick of his BMW M5 CS, the engine snarling as he slammed the accelerator down. The world blurred past him at 200mph, but in his mind—only her face, bloodied and breathless, flickered in focus.
Back in that dim, iron-scented room, Tesmee lay shackled in chains that dug into her skin like teeth. The three men were still at her, their presence heavy, their methods relentless.
"FUCK!" she screamed, her voice hoarse as she spat out blood, coughing sharply. Her body trembled, not from fear—but fury.
She leaned back, chest rising and falling as her breath returned in sharp gasps. She looked up at them with narrowed, unyielding eyes.
"I wonder," she growled through blood-stained teeth, "where the fuck your boss got the guts to finally take me this far."
Her voice was venom laced with fire.
"He's a weak bastard after all."
"He may be a weak bastard," one of the men said in a thick Russian accent, stepping closer, his voice like gravel on steel, "but he's never been stuck in a chair, tortured by his enemies."
Tesmee chuckled, the sound dry and defiant despite the blood in her mouth. "Of course he hasn't," she spat, her gaze never leaving his. "But he'll be the first to fall to his knees in front of them."
That was the final nerve.
A hard punch crashed into her stomach, sharp and brutal. The force drove the air from her lungs and bent her forward in the chains. A raw, guttural gasp tore from her throat.
But she didn't cry. She didn't plead.
She lifted her head, lips trembling but still curved into something close to a smile. A silent vow burning behind her bruised eyes.
"You may twist me, bend me, hurt me..." Tesmee growled through clenched teeth, her voice strained but unwavering as blood dripped from her mouth. "...but you'll never break me. I'll never stop."
She lifted her head again, slow like a storm building behind her bruised skin, eyes glinting with something terrifying—unyielding fire.
The man stared at her for a moment, almost uncertain whether he was torturing a person or a force of nature wearing skin.
He pulled the jar from the table slowly, the glass cool and trembling slightly in his grip—not from fear, but from the anticipation of power. He hadn't known before. But earlier, when Tyson casually toyed with this very jar, he saw something shift in her. The flicker in her eyes. The stillness in her breath. A quiet betrayal of her steel. It was fear—not of pain, not of death—but of what crawled behind glass.
"Say that again," he muttered, his voice almost mocking as he began twisting the lid.
Tesmee's chest rose, then fell, the air in the room thickening.
And then—he threw it.
The jar shattered like a gunshot against the floor. Black spiders scattered like living shadows, crawling in frantic, deliberate purpose toward the heat of her skin. One reached her thigh, another her collarbone, another disappearing beneath the soaked neckline of her dress.
Her scream tore through the air—raw, cracking, more than pain—it was something primal. Something ancient. She thrashed as if the chains were fire. The spiders weren't just crawling—they were claiming. Her body, her breath, her control.
This wasn't waterboarding. This wasn't fists or bats.
This was breaking.
And they saw it.Just in that moment—when fear crawled under her skin and her scream echoed like the crack of breaking will—the doors flung open with violent force.
Three shots. Clean. Precise.
Three men dropped like felled statues, heads snapped by bullets before they could register a single thought.
Silence.
Tesmee's dazed eyes lifted—then widened. A sliver of light in the dark. A hole torn in the fabric of her nightmare. Lorenzo stormed through the smoke of death, a loaded weapon still hot in his hands.
Without a word, he shot the chains—metal shattering like brittle bone.
Tesmee sprang to her feet with the last of her strength, her broken ribs screaming beneath her skin, but her terror screamed louder. Her hands flew across her body in furious desperation, swiping, clawing, trembling. Her hair was shaken violently, her neck flung side to side. She twisted, slapped her arms and legs, as if peeling away fire.
The spiders. The fear. The ghosts of it all.
Everything had to come off.