Chapter 7 Between suffering and pain
Twelve hours in darkness does something to a person. It strips away pretense, peels back layers of dignity, leaves you raw and exposed to every fear your mind can conjure. Nora had counted the seconds at first, trying to maintain some sense of time, some anchor to reality. But eventually, the numbers blurred together, and all that remained was the throbbing pain in her ribs, the taste of blood in her mouth, and the cold concrete beneath her.
When the door finally opened, flooding the room with harsh fluorescent light, Nora couldn’t even lift her head. She lay curled on the floor where the guards had dumped her twelve hours ago, every muscle screaming, every breath a reminder of broken ribs and bruised organs.
“Get up.” The guard’s voice was flat, bored. This was routine for him.
Nora tried to move and gasped at the pain that shot through her body. Her left eye was still swollen shut from the beating. Her lips were split and crusted with dried blood.
“I said get up.”
“I can’t,” Nora whispered, her voice hoarse from disuse and silent screaming during the long hours alone.
The guard sighed, annoyed, and gestured to his partner. They hauled her up by her arms, and Nora bit back a scream as her ribs protested violently. Her legs buckled, unable to support her weight.
They dragged her through the corridors of the compound, her feet scraping uselessly against the floor. Workers and other operatives stopped to watch as she passed, their faces carefully neutral. No one helped. No one ever helped.
When they reached her room, they dropped her unceremoniously on the floor just inside the doorway and left, locking the door behind them.
Nora lay there for several minutes, maybe longer, gathering the strength to move. Every inch of her body hurt. Her face felt swollen and hot. Her ribs were definitely broken, maybe more than one. And the bruises, God, the bruises covered her back, her sides, her arms, her legs.
Finally, moving in increments that would have been comical if they weren’t so pathetic, Nora crawled toward the bathroom. It took forever. By the time she reached the shower, she was crying from the pain, silent tears streaming down her battered face.
The hot water was agony at first, stinging every cut and bruise. But slowly, carefully, it began to wash away the blood, the sweat, the stench of fear and concrete. Nora stood under the spray, one hand braced against the tile wall to keep from collapsing, and let the water run over her.
She looked down at her body and barely recognized it. Purple and black bruises bloomed across her torso like grotesque flowers. Her knuckles were split from when she’d tried to fight back. Her knees were scraped raw from being knocked to the floor repeatedly.
This was her life now. This was what she had become.
After what felt like hours but was probably only twenty minutes, Nora turned off the water and dried herself as gently as possible. Even the soft towel felt like sandpaper against her battered skin. She pulled on loose sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt, the only clothes that didn’t hurt to wear, and limped to the bed.
She lay down carefully, positioning herself on her right side since her left ribs were the worst. The pillow felt like heaven. The mattress, despite being basic and institutional, was infinitely better than concrete.
Nora closed her one good eye and tried not to think about anything. Not the pain. Not the next job. Not the fact that she was trapped here forever. Not the twelve hours of darkness she’d just endured. Not the beating before that. Not anything.
She was drifting in that space between sleep and consciousness when there was a knock on the door.
A knock. Not pounding. Not the guards announcing themselves. An actual polite knock.
“Come in,” Nora said, her voice barely audible.
The door opened, and Noah stepped inside. He stopped immediately when he saw her, his expression shifting from professional to shocked to something that might have been anger, though not at her.
“Jesus,” he breathed, crossing the room quickly. “Nora.”
“I’m fine,” she lied automatically.
“You’re not fine.” Noah pulled the chair closer to the bed and sat down, his eyes scanning her visible injuries with a trained assessment. “Your eye is completely swollen shut. Your lips are split. And I can see the bruising even through your shirt.”
“It looks worse than it is.”
“Don’t.” Noah’s voice was sharp. “Don’t minimize what they did to you. I was there. I saw it.”
Nora looked away, focusing on the barred window. “Then you know there’s nothing to say about it.”
For a moment, Noah was silent. When he spoke again, his voice was gentler. “I came to tell you that the Mafia King has given you one day off. For training. Your next job is in two days.”
Nora’s head snapped toward him, and she immediately regretted the movement as pain shot through her neck. “Two days?” Her voice rose despite the pain it caused. “I haven’t even healed completely! Look at me! How am I supposed to seduce anyone looking like this?”
“The bruising will fade enough by then. Makeup can cover the rest.”
“That’s not the point!” Nora tried to sit up and gasped, clutching her ribs. “I’m not ready. I’m not prepared. The last job was a disaster because I wasn’t trained properly, and now you’re telling me I have two days? Two days to learn everything I clearly didn’t know before?”
“That’s how it works in Shadowveil,” Noah said, his tone matter-of-fact but not unkind. “You fail, you get punished, you get minimal recovery time, and then you go again. The Mafia King doesn’t believe in coddling his assets.”
“Assets.” Nora laughed bitterly, then winced at the pain it caused. “That’s what I am. An asset.”
“To him, yes.” Noah leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t survive this. You can learn. You can adapt. You’re smart, Nora. Smarter than most people who’ve come through here.”
“Clearly not smart enough, since I left a USB drive in the target’s laptop and got us all nearly caught.”
“That was a mistake. It happens. You’ll learn from it.”
“Will I?” Nora met his eyes, her voice dropping to almost a whisper. “Or will I just keep making mistakes until one of them gets me killed?”
Noah was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “Do you want my help?”
“What?”
“I have today and tomorrow to train you properly. Not the rushed overview I gave you before. Actual, comprehensive training. I can teach you from now until your next job. Cover everything I should have taught you the first time.” He paused. “But only if you want it. If you want to give up, I’ll walk out that door right now and leave you alone.”
Nora stared at him. Every part of her body hurt. Every thought in her head was telling her this was hopeless, that she should just give up, that she was going to fail again no matter what.
But there was something in Noah’s eyes. Something genuine. He actually wanted to help her. Not because the Mafia King ordered it, but because he cared whether she lived or died.
“Yes,” Nora said finally. “Teach me. Please.”
Noah nodded and settled back in his chair. “Okay. Let’s start with what went wrong with Holloway. You panicked when he asked about your employer. Why?”
“Because I forgot the name. Neon and Associates. It just flew out of my head when he put me on the spot.”
“That’s because you were trying to remember it instead of believing it. When you’re in character, you don’t remember your cover story. You live it. It’s not a lie you’re telling. It’s your truth.”
“How do I do that?”
“Practice. Repetition. Becoming the character so completely that there’s no separation between you and her.” Noah leaned forward again. “Let’s build your next identity from the ground up. Who are you? What’s your name?”
For the next two hours, Noah drilled her relentlessly. He created a complete background for her next assignment: name, job history, family details, likes, dislikes, habits, everything. He made her repeat it over and over until she could recite it without thinking. Then he started asking unexpected questions, trying to catch her off guard, teaching her to improvise within the framework of her character.
Nora’s head was spinning by the time they took a break, but it was starting to make sense. She was starting to understand how to inhabit someone else’s life so completely that the lies became truth.
“You’re getting it,” Noah said, a hint of approval in his voice. “You’re a fast learner when you’re not terrified.”
“I’m still terrified,” Nora admitted. “I’m just hiding it better.”
Noah smiled slightly. “That’s the first lesson of being a good con artist. Everyone’s terrified. The successful ones just don’t show it.”
They sat in comfortable silence for a moment. Then Noah asked, “Can I ask you something personal?”
Nora tensed slightly but nodded.
“What was your life like? Before all this. What did you do? Who were you?”
The question caught her off guard. No one had asked her about her past in years. Most people here didn’t care who you were before. Only who you were now.
“I was a banker,” Nora said slowly, her voice distant as she remembered. “I worked at a regional bank in the commercial lending department. It was boring, stable work. I wore business suits and had a desk with a nameplate. I drank coffee from the same mug every morning.”
“Sounds normal.”
“It was. Completely, wonderfully normal.” Nora’s throat tightened. “I had a husband. Ben. We’d been married for eight years. We had two children. A boy and a girl. Thomas was six. Gwen was four.”
She hadn’t said their names out loud in so long. Hearing them now, in her own voice, made them feel both more real and more impossibly distant.
“I had a house in the suburbs,” she continued. “A garden I never had time to maintain properly. A book club I attended once a month. A sister I didn’t speak to because of family drama. Parents who were…” She paused. “Dead.”
Noah listened without interrupting, letting her talk.
“Every morning, I’d make breakfast for the kids. Drop them at school. Go to work. Come home. Make dinner. Help with homework. Watch TV with Ben. Go to bed. Wake up and do it all again.” Nora’s voice cracked slightly. “It was routine. Predictable. Sometimes boring. But it was mine. It was my life.”
“And then they took it,” Noah said quietly.
“And then they took it,” Nora echoed. “I was on my way home from work. I stopped at a grocery store to pick up milk. When I came out, there was a van. Men in masks. They grabbed me, threw me inside, and that was it. My life just ended.”
“Your kids,” Noah asked gently. “Do you know what happened to them?”
Nora’s jaw tightened. “Ben remarried. I don’t know if the kids are even sick or in good health or are doing okay."
“I’m sorry.”
“Everyone’s sorry. No one does anything, but everyone’s sorry.” The bitterness in her voice was sharp enough to cut.
Before Noah could respond, the door flew open with a bang that made both of them jump.
Beverley stood in the doorway, her face hard and unreadable. She didn’t apologize for the dramatic entrance. She didn’t even acknowledge Nora’s presence.
“Noah,” she said curtly. “The Mafia King wants to see you. Now.”
Nora’s temper, already frayed from pain and exhaustion and reliving her past, snapped. “Have you ever heard of knocking?”
Beverley’s eyes slid to her, cold and dismissive. “Have you ever heard of not being a liability?”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” Beverley stepped into the room, her arms crossed. “You’ve been here for what, a few weeks? And you’ve already failed your first job, left evidence at the scene, compromised the entire operation, and gotten yourself beaten to a pulp. Meanwhile, I ran operations for two years without a single major failure.”
“Then maybe you should still be running them,” Nora shot back, pushing herself up despite the pain. “Since you’re so much better at it than me.”
“I would be, except the Mafia King decided you were more valuable. God knows why. You’re weak. You’re sloppy. And you’re going to get us all killed.”
“Beverley,” Noah said, his voice hard with warning. “That’s enough.”
“Is it?” Beverley turned on him. “You’re in here playing therapist while the rest of us are dealing with the fallout from her mistakes. Holloway’s already filed a report with his security company. They’re investigating. If they trace anything back to us—”
“They won’t,” Noah interrupted.
“You don’t know that.” Beverley’s voice rose. “All because she couldn’t keep her head together for one simple job.”
Nora forced herself to stand, swaying slightly but staying upright through sheer willpower. “Get out of my room.”
“It’s not your room. It’s the Mafia King’s room that he’s letting you use. Everything here belongs to him. Including you.”
“I said get out.”
Beverley smirked, cruel and satisfied at having gotten under Nora’s skin. “Noah. The Mafia King is waiting. He said it’s about the next operation.”
She turned and walked out, leaving the door open behind her in a final dismissive gesture.
Noah stood slowly, his jaw tight. He looked at Nora, who was still standing despite visibly trembling from the effort and pain.
“Don’t let her get to you,” he said quietly. “She’s just bitter about being replaced.”
“Is she wrong though?” Nora asked. “About me being a liability?”
Noah walked to the door but paused before leaving. He turned back to look at her, his expression serious.
“Listen to me, Nora. Whatever happens on your next job, whatever you have to do, you execute it properly. Not just for your sake. For all of ours. Because if you fail again…” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.
“The Dark Room,” Nora said.
“Or worse.” Noah’s eyes held hers. “The Mafia King is running out of patience. Another failure like the Holloway job, and there won’t be a third chance. Do you understand?”
Nora nodded slowly, the weight of his words settling over her like a shroud.
“Get some rest,” Noah said. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning to continue your training. We’ll go over everything again. Mock scenarios, role-playing, every detail until you can do it in your sleep.”
“Okay.”
Noah left, closing the door quietly behind him.
Nora stood alone in the middle of her room, her body screaming with pain, her mind racing with everything Noah had taught her, everything Beverley had said, everything that was riding on her next job.
Two days. She had two days to transform from a broken, battered woman into a convincing con artist who could seduce a target, steal his secrets, and escape without getting caught.
Two days to become someone else entirely.
Two days to prove she deserved to live.