“Because you couldn’t watch me go through the first phase, right?” he asked.
Dare let out a heavy exhale. “If you asked for it to stop even once ... and they all ask ... I would have dragged you out of there myself. Because I was weak—love does that to you, Alessio, and I want you to remember that. It makes you weak. And so, when something is for the greater good when it comes to someone you love, even if it means hurting them, you have to take a step back and let it happen. Or in my case, be forced to do it.”
“What does that mean?”
Across the room, Dare waved the remote at the screens, saying, “Cree had the team go in on you for phase one, then he locked me in the office and wouldn’t let me out for that first night. It ... was not a good moment for me.”
Alessio frowned. “What?”
“You heard what I said.”
“Cree wasn’t in on my—”
“Not for phase one. He was too close to it, too.”
Alessio hadn’t known that, mostly because the team had been very careful not to speak to him during the first phase of his training. Other than a barked word here to there to give him an order, which he knew better than to defy them.
It only made shit worse.
“Did you ask for it to stop?” Dare asked.
Alessio watched the screens, another hallway ... the rooms were coming faster now. Soon, Corrado wouldn’t know what daylight was for a long fucking time.
“Not until the third round in the tank room,” Alessio said, scratching at the side of his arm because that memory made him anxious as fuck, and he knew better than to show it. That’s what training had taught him—he didn’t deal with any of that in the same way anymore. Fear, panic ... it was all secondary to everything else, now. “I couldn’t find the pocket to breathe, the water kept coming in my mouth, and—”
Dare made a dark noise.
“Sorry,” Alessio muttered.
“It’s what you wanted, no?”
“It was.”
Ten feet away, he watched Dare nod at the screens.
“And it’s what they want, too, Les. You’ll have to remember that for the next little while.”
“Where is the other one—Chris?”
“In his room, fine. That’s why we put them on opposite ends of the complex for living quarters. If we put them in the same corridor, it was likely one would panic and do something outlandish when the other was removed from their room. A risk Cree didn’t want to take, of course. It’ll be only once Corrado is situated—we knew he would be the more difficult one at first—that we’ll begin phase one for the other twin. Rotational trips between the rooms for them, of course. Instead of long spreads in each like we typically do. The one, he’s going to need a break in-between the tank.”
“Christopher, you mean.”
“Scared of water, yeah.”
“But even if he asks for it to stop—”
“We can’t stop it once it begins, that isn’t how training works.”
“What if he reacts really badly to the tank?” Alessio asked.
Dare chuckled dryly. “The best way to deal with a fear is head-on.”
“Except it’s more than a fear. Everybody is scared of things like the dark when it’s been too long, or of the unknown for something like the tank. But that might not be the same.”
“Then, he will break sooner than his twin because of it, won’t he? A healthy mind processes things like anxiety and fear, or pain and discomfort in a completely different way than a broken one does, Les. And so, we need them broken before we can begin to rebuild. You know this.”
“I guess.”
“You don’t like it, though,” Dare replied.
“Not this time.”
“Hmm.”
On the screens, a battered Corrado had finally made it to the basement. The team stood outside of the two large, metal doors on either side of them that would lead into the dark room, or the tank room.
“They’re about to begin,” Dare said. “You should probably leave.”
Alessio didn’t move.
“I think I better stay, actually.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
• • •
Safely behind one-way glass, Alessio watched the scene that seemed surreal happening beyond cement walls. The light from the hallway in the complex’s basement allowed him the ability to see inside the tank room, but no one in there could see him.
Well, the one person in there.
The straightjacket attached to a chain and cable keeping Corrado suspended over a square tank of water that was just big enough to drown a man when he was dropped into it—if he didn’t figure out how to save himself the first couple of dunks—was tight to his body. His eyes drifted closed, tiredness from the last few days of being rotated between the tank and the dark room finally getting to him.
It happened to everyone.
That was when this became most dangerous.
Alessio’s gaze darted to the chain as it jerked. At the same time, Corrado’s eyes flew wide open, and for a brief second, he swore the man was looking right at him though the small window he was able to watch through.
He knew it wasn’t possible, though.
It lasted all of a half of a second before Corrado was dropped. Like a sack of dead weight, really. Right into the tank, where freezing cold water awaited him, and a top attached to an automatic arm slammed closed right after.
Alessio dragged in a sharp breath and stared upward, knowing what was happening inside the tank room now. He didn’t have to watch it happen to know. Fuck, he knew it all too well as it was, honestly.
Corrado would struggle.
Under water.
Straight jacket on.
The top wouldn’t budge.
More water pumped in.
His body remained constantly cold, wet, and aching. From the rotational beatings, and the lack of food and water. His mind would be spinning and out of control—fear and panic welling and rushing like the waves of the water inside that tank, making sure he thought at all times, this was it. This was the moment he would die.
Every dunk became longer.
A second here.
Two there.
Until he was under water for up to three and half minutes, or so. Until his vision began to blacken, and he swallowed water because the body’s natural reaction was to try to breathe at that point, even if it meant no air would be waiting for him.
He’d fight against all of it—his own panic, the water, the need to breathe, and even the walls of the tank surrounding him.
And then the top would flip up, the chain would drag him out, and he would hang again ... waiting to be dropped into the water for another round of hell.
Over.
And over.
And over again.
Until the dark room.
Currently, that’s where Corrado’s twin was being held. He was about due for a beating, too, come to think of it, which meant he probably shouldn’t be down here. The rotational beatings and the occasional bit of food and water were the only markers of time passing down in these fucking rooms.
It seemed cruel.
Pointless, even.
Alessio, and every other person who had gone through this training, would be the first to say they came out better for it—physically, and mentally. They were the last to panic, and the first to face everything without fear.