Voss denied it without hesitation.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Veins stood out on his forehead.

“Lucian Blackwood, I know you have connections everywhere. That doesn’t give you the right to torture people! I hold foreign citizenship. I’m an honorary professor at one of the best universities in the world!”

Lucian took out his cigarettes.

He lit one, inhaled deeply, and tipped back his head to exhale.

“I have very little patience,” he said softly. “I’ll ask once more.”

He caught Voss by the hair.

The force looked sufficient to tear away his scalp. His neck twisted at an awful angle.

Voss cried out, as though his head might be pulled from his body.

Lucian blew the next mouthful of smoke into his face.

Through the haze, his eyes were colder and sharper than a knife.

“Where. Is. Stella?”

He had already connected the operation to my disappearance.

Standing beside him, I could feel his fury growing.

He was doing all this for me.

But I no longer knew whether to be moved.

Perhaps I was simply prey he hadn’t finished playing with.

Perhaps he wasn’t angry because I had suffered.

He just couldn’t accept someone else killing what belonged to him.

Apart from my mother, nobody in this world truly cared whether I lived or died.

At my name, panic flashed through Voss’s eyes.

And surprise.

Everyone in Fairhaven knew Lucian and I were enemies. He couldn’t understand why Lucian cared what had happened to me.

“I don’t—”

Lucian released his hair before he finished the word.

He accepted a cloth from the man beside him and carefully cleaned every finger that had touched Voss.

Then he turned.

The crumpled cloth dropped to the floor in front of the doctor’s face.

“Knox.”

The scarred man stepped forward.

Lucian’s voice was casual.

“Since he won’t open his mouth, open his throat. Use a blunt knife. Let him bleed slowly.”

He could have been ordering livestock slaughtered.

Voss went white.

The man in black actually drew a knife and approached him.

Its serrated edge came toward his neck.

He began to shake so violently the chains rattled.

“I’ll talk! Mr. Blackwood! Lucian! I’ll tell you!”

Lucian kept walking.

One hand in his pocket. The unfinished cigarette in the other.

With every step toward the exit, Voss seemed closer to death.

Terror finally overwhelmed everything else.

He screamed.

“I did perform an operation that night! The night Stella disappeared!”

The blade touched his throat.

“It was Julian! I operated on Julian Whitmore!”

A thin cut opened beneath the knife. Blood welled out.

Lucian stopped in the warehouse doorway.

A bleak wind passed through, lifting the edge of his gray coat.

Something seemed to collapse inside that motionless figure.

The half-smoked cigarette fell from his fingers.

Slowly, he turned.

His face held no expression.

Yet the air around us seemed to grow thin.

He walked back, step by deliberate step.

About two feet from Voss, he stopped.

I followed his gaze.

The knife.

The blood on its edge.

Violence surged behind his eyes.

He closed them hard.

His lips moved.

Several seconds passed before he managed to speak.

There was a tremor in his voice I had never heard before.

“Go on.”