Chapter 9 Shattered
The guards didn’t drag Nora to her room this time. They didn’t need to. She walked on her own. She looked like a woman walking to her own execution.
And maybe she was.
“Conference room,” one guard said, gesturing down the familiar corridor.
Nora’s stomach dropped. Not again. She couldn’t endure another beating. Her body was still recovering from the last one. Her ribs still ached with every breath.
But she had no choice. She never had a choice.
The conference room door was already open. The Mafia King sat at the head of the long table, his silver-filigree mask catching the light from the chandelier. But this time, he wasn’t alone.
The Mafia Queen sat to his right.
Nora had only seen her a handful of times. She was always masked too, though hers was different—smaller, more delicate, with black lace patterns instead of silver filigree. She wore all black: a fitted dress that looked expensive, her dark hair pulled back in an elegant bun.
“Miss Carter,” the Mafia King said, his voice smooth and cold. “Please, sit.”
It wasn’t a request.
Nora sat in the chair across from them, her hands folded in her lap to hide their trembling. The silence stretched out, heavy and oppressive.
“Tell us,” the Mafia Queen said, her voice softer than the King’s but no less dangerous. “How did the operation go?”
They knew. Of course they knew. They just wanted to hear her say it.
“It failed,” Nora said quietly. “ He discovered the switch. I had to run."
“Left behind,” the Mafia King repeated. “So not only did you fail to acquire the data, you also left evidence of our operation in the hands of the target. Evidence that he will undoubtedly turn over to authorities.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Sorry.” The Mafia Queen leaned forward slightly. “You’ve been sorry before, Miss Carter. After the Holloway job. After your first beating. After every failure. But your apologies don’t fix the damage you’ve caused.”
“I tried,” Nora said, her voice cracking. “I did everything Noah taught me. I followed the plan exactly—”
“Clearly not exactly enough,” the Mafia King interrupted. “Because Yoshi saw through you almost immediately. A fifty-six-year-old venture capitalist with no special training outsmarted you in less than two hours.”
The words stung because they were true.
“Do you understand what you’ve cost us?” the Queen continued. “The Yoshi operation was worth potentially fifty million dollars. Fifty million. And you threw it away because you couldn’t handle basic pressure.”
“I was searched,” Nora said, her voice rising slightly. “The guards were going to find the phone. I had no choice but to run—”
“You had a choice at every step of that operation,” the Mafia King said coldly. “You chose to execute the switch poorly. You chose to freeze when Yoshi confronted you. You chose to panic instead of staying in character.”
“I did the switch right! The phone was—”
“Enough.” The King’s voice cracked like a whip. “I don’t want to hear excuses. I want to hear accountability. I want to hear that you understand the severity of what you’ve done.”
Nora’s jaw clenched. Her hands were shaking so badly now she couldn’t hide them anymore. “I understand.”
“Do you?” The Queen stood and walked around the table slowly. “Because from where I’m sitting, you seem to think you’re special. That the rules don’t apply to you. That you can fail repeatedly without consequences.”
She stopped behind Nora’s chair, and Nora felt her presence like ice down her spine.
“You’re not special, Miss Carter. You’re a tool. A broken tool that keeps malfunctioning. And broken tools get discarded.”
“Then discard me,” Nora said, the words escaping before she could stop them.
The room went deathly silent.
The Mafia Queen walked back around to face her. “What did you say?”
Something inside Nora snapped. All the fear, all the pain, all the exhaustion and trauma and endless horror of the past weeks—it all came pouring out.
“I said discard me!” Nora stood abruptly, her chair scraping back. “Kill me! Beat me to death! Throw me in that basement with the other bodies! I don’t care anymore!”
“Nora—” the King started.
“No!” Nora’s voice rose to a scream. “I’m tired! I’m so tired! You took five years of my life! You took my family! My children are nowhere to be found! My husband is gone! And now you want me to just keep pretending, keep performing, keep playing this sick game where I seduce strangers and steal from them!”
Tears streamed down her face, but she didn’t stop.
“I can’t do this anymore! I can’t! I’m not Beverley! I’m not some professional criminal! I’m just a woman who wanted to go home, and you won’t let me! You keep beating me and punishing me and breaking me, and then you send me out there to do it all over again!”
Her voice cracked completely.
“I want out. Please. I’m begging you. Just let me go. Or kill me. I don’t care which. But I can’t do this anymore.”
The silence that followed was absolute.
The Mafia King stood slowly, his movements deliberate and controlled. When he spoke, his voice was so cold it could freeze blood.
“You think you can make demands of me? You think you can scream at me and beg for mercy and I’ll just let you walk away?”
“I don’t care what you do—”
“You will care.” He walked toward her, and Nora instinctively took a step back. “You dare to speak to me that way? To raise your voice in my presence? To demand anything?”
He turned to the guards by the door. “Take her to the basement. The interrogation room.”
Nora’s blood turned to ice. “No—”
“You want to know what severe punishment looks like, Miss Carter? You’re about to learn.” His voice was deadly calm. “Twenty lashes. Then twelve hours in the Dark Room. No food. No water. And when you come out, if you can still walk, you’ll apologize on your knees for your disrespect.”
“Please—” Nora’s voice was barely a whisper now.
“And if you ever, ever speak to me that way again,” the Mafia King continued, stepping so close she could see her own terrified reflection in his mask, “I will make you wish I had killed you. Do you understand?”
Nora couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move.
The guards grabbed her arms.
“Do you understand?” he repeated.
“Yes,” Nora choked out. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. Take her.”
\-----
The basement was cold. Stone walls. Stone floor. A single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. In the center of the room was a metal frame with restraints.
Nora fought as they strapped her wrists to the frame, but it was useless. Two guards held her while a third secured the restraints. When they tore open the back of her dress, exposing her skin, she started crying.
“Please,” she sobbed. “Please don’t do this.”
They didn’t respond. Guards never did.
The first lash of the whip made her scream. The leather bit into her skin like fire, tearing through flesh. The second lash crossed the first, and Nora’s vision went white with pain.
By the fifth lash, she couldn’t scream anymore. Her throat was raw.
By the tenth, she was begging incoherently, promises and pleas running together.
By the fifteenth, she was silent, her body hanging limply from the restraints.
The twentieth lash fell, and Nora’s world dissolved into nothing but pain.
When they finally unstrapped her, she collapsed to the floor. They didn’t give her time to recover. They dragged her down the corridor to a door with no window, no light visible underneath.
The Dark Room.
They threw her inside, and the door slammed shut with a finality that echoed through the darkness.
Total. Complete. Absolute darkness.
Nora lay on the cold concrete floor, her back on fire, her whole body shaking. She tried to curl into a ball, but every movement made her back scream in agony.
Twelve hours. She had to survive twelve hours in this darkness with her back torn open and no medical attention.
She wasn’t sure she could.
Time lost all meaning. She drifted in and out of consciousness, each time waking to the same complete darkness and the same overwhelming pain. At some point, she stopped being able to tell if her eyes were open or closed.
Finally, after what felt like days but was exactly twelve hours, the door opened.
Light flooded in, and Nora couldn’t even lift her head. The guards hauled her up, and she cried out as her torn back stretched. They half-carried, half-dragged her through the corridors.
Workers and other operatives stopped to stare as she passed. Her dress was completely ruined, soaked with blood from her back. Her face was swollen from crying. Her bare feet left smears of blood on the floor.
They were almost to her room when Nora heard voices.
“—can’t keep doing this, Beverley.”
Noah’s voice. Coming from a room just ahead.
“Doing what?” Beverley’s voice was defensive. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t play stupid with me.” Noah sounded angrier than Nora had ever heard him. “The phone switch. Yoshi figured it out too fast. Way too fast. And I know Nora executed it perfectly because I watched her practice it fifty times.”
Nora’s head lifted slightly, despite the pain.
“So what?” Beverley said. “Maybe she just screwed up again. She’s good at that.”
“No. Something tipped Yoshi off. Something that shouldn’t have been there.”
“You’re paranoid.”
“Am I?” Noah’s voice was hard. “Because I pulled the security footage from the restaurant. And I saw you, Beverley. Outside the window. On your phone. Right before Yoshi picked up that phone and immediately knew something was wrong.”
Silence.
“You texted him,” Noah said, disbelief and fury mixing in his voice. “You anonymously warned him that someone might try to steal his phone. Didn’t you?”
“So what if I did?” Beverley’s voice rose, defensive and angry. “She doesn’t deserve to be here! Ever since she arrived, it’s been nothing but Nora this and Nora that! Extra training, special treatment, you spending every spare minute with her!”
“She needed the training—”
“I needed you!” Beverley shouted. “Me! I’ve been here for years! I’ve worked beside you, trusted you, and you never looked at me the way you look at her!”
“This isn’t about us—”
“Yes, it is! It’s always been about us, Noah! But you were too blind to see it! And then she shows up, this weak, pathetic, broken thing, and suddenly you can’t see anyone else!”
“So you sabotaged her,” Noah said quietly. “You deliberately set her up to fail. To get her killed.”
“I set up the operation to fail! I didn’t care what happened to her! She’s nothing! What does she have that I don’t? Why her, Noah? Why do you care so much about her?”
Nora wrenched free from the guards with a strength she didn’t know she still possessed. Ignoring the screaming pain in her back, she burst through the door where Noah and Beverley were standing.
“You,” Nora rasped, her voice raw. “You did this.”
Beverley spun around, her eyes widening at Nora’s appearance—bloody, broken, barely standing.
“You sabotaged me.” Nora’s voice was rising now, fueled by rage that momentarily overwhelmed the pain. “You’ve been sabotaging me from the beginning! The Holloway job—that was you too, wasn’t it? You told him to check my company information!”
“Nora—” Noah started.
But Nora wasn’t listening. She launched herself at Beverley with a scream of pure rage.
They crashed to the floor, Nora’s hands finding Beverley’s throat. Beverley fought back, her nails raking across Nora’s already battered face, but Nora didn’t feel it. Didn’t feel anything except the burning need to hurt the woman who had caused her so much suffering.
“You destroyed my life!” Nora screamed, slamming Beverley’s head against the floor. “They beat me! They tortured me! Because of you!”
“Get off me!” Beverley gasped, trying to push Nora away.
But Nora held on, her fingers tightening. “I was whipped! Twenty lashes! Because you couldn’t handle Noah caring about someone else!”
“Nora, stop!” Noah grabbed her shoulders and tried to pull her off, but she shook him off.
The guards rushed in and finally managed to pry Nora away. She fought them, kicking and screaming, still trying to get to Beverley.
“You ruined everything!” Nora sobbed, her rage dissolving into anguished tears. “Everything! You selfish, jealous—”
“That’s enough!” Noah positioned himself between them. “Guards, take Nora to her room. Now.”
They dragged Nora backward, but she kept screaming at Beverley.
“I hate you! I hate you!”
“The feeling’s mutual!” Beverley shouted back, wiping blood from her lip where Nora had struck her.
The guards hauled Nora out of the room and down the corridor. She stopped fighting, the adrenaline draining away as quickly as it had come. By the time they reached her room, she was barely conscious.
They dropped her on her bed and left, locking the door behind them.
Nora lay face down on the mattress, her torn back exposed to the air, and sobbed. Not the quiet, controlled crying she’d learned to do. Full, body-wracking sobs that made her back scream with pain but she couldn’t stop.
She was so tired. So broken. So completely done with all of it.
The door opened.
Nora didn’t look up. She didn’t care who it was anymore.
Footsteps approached. Then the bed dipped as someone sat beside her.
“Nora.”
Noah’s voice. Gentle. Concerned.
“Go away,” Nora said into the mattress, her voice muffled and thick with tears.
“I can’t do that.”
“I said go away!” She tried to push herself up, to tell him off properly, but the pain in her back made her gasp and collapse back down.
Noah was silent for a moment. Then she felt his hands, careful and gentle, examining her back.
“Jesus,” he breathed. “They really did twenty lashes.”
“What did you expect?” Nora’s voice cracked. “I yelled at the Mafia King. I told him I wanted out. I practically begged him to kill me.”
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“I know. I don’t care. I just… I can’t do this anymore, Noah. I can’t.”
More tears came, and she couldn’t stop them. Her whole body shook with sobs, and every sob made her back hurt worse, but she couldn’t stop.
Then she felt Noah’s arms carefully wrap around her, mindful of her injuries. He pulled her against his chest, one hand cradling her head while the other rested on her arm.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m so sorry. This is my fault. I should have caught what Beverley was doing sooner. I should have protected you better.”
Nora cried harder, her tears soaking into his shirt. “I’m so tired, Noah. I’m so tired of being hurt. Of failing. Of everything.”
“I know. I know.”
“I just want it to stop. I want all of it to stop.”
Noah held her tighter, his own voice thick with emotion. “You’re going to be okay. I promise. You’re going to make it through this.”
“How?” Nora pulled back slightly to look at him through swollen eyes. “How am I going to be okay? Beverley sabotaged me. The Mafia King wants me dead. I can’t do the jobs. I’m useless here.”
“You’re not useless. Beverley sabotaged you because she was threatened by you. Because you’re good at this, and she saw that before you did.”
“I’m not good at anything except getting beaten.”
“That’s not true.” Noah reached up and gently wiped tears from her bruised face. “You survived five years in captivity. You survived punishments that would have broken other people. You keep getting back up even when they knock you down. That’s not useless. That’s strength.”
“It doesn’t feel like strength.”
“Strength never does. Not when you’re in the middle of it.” Noah’s hand moved to cup her face gently. “But you’re still here. Still fighting. Still breathing. That matters.”
Nora closed her eyes, leaning into his touch. For just a moment, she let herself feel safe. Protected. Cared for.
“What happens now?” she asked quietly.
“Now you rest. Let your back heal. And then…” Noah paused. “Then we figure out what to do about Beverley.”
“The Mafia King won’t care that she sabotaged me.”
“Maybe not. But I care.” Noah’s voice hardened. “She put all of us at risk. Not just you. The whole team. The whole operation. That’s not something I’m going to let slide.”
Nora opened her eyes and looked at him. Really looked at him. At the anger in his expression. The protectiveness. The way he held her like she was something precious instead of broken.
“Why do you care so much?” she asked. “About me. Beverley was right. I’m nobody. Why do you care?”
Noah was quiet for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft.
“Because when I look at you, I see someone who refuses to give up even when giving up would be easier. I see someone who’s been through hell and still has fight left in them. And I see…” He paused, then continued. “I see someone worth saving.”
More tears spilled down Nora’s cheeks, but these felt different. Not tears of pain or despair. Something else.
“You’re going to be okay,” Noah said again, pulling her back into his arms. “Eventually. I promise you. You’re going to be okay.”
Nora let herself believe him. Just for this moment. Just for now.
She pressed her face against his chest and cried until she had no tears left, while Noah held her and whispered promises he probably couldn’t keep but she desperately needed to hear.