The man in front went sheet-white, his lips trembling. Before he could say another word, a bullet ripped right through his shoulder.
Clara didn’t even look up, just spun her pistol in her hand. “Think carefully before you open your mouth again. The cops will be here by morning. If you keep quiet, you might walk out of here alive. But if you piss me off, you’ll end up as dog food.”
Right on cue, Milo and Buddy barked—sharp, vicious, and in perfect harmony.
Everyone knew those two dogs were monsters. People said they could tear a man’s arm clean off, and nobody doubted it. No one had ever seen animals like them.
The man’s face turned even paler. He squeezed his eyes shut, jaw clenched tight.
“I don’t know much,” he stammered. “The guy in charge—he’s a ghost. The boss never comes himself. We just get orders. All I know is, this place is tied to the Warren family in the Capital. I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard the name from the crazy women. They say there’s a Mr. Schwaderer. That’s it. I swear, that’s all I know.”
The Warren family? In the Capital?
Clara’s eyebrows shot up. The Warrens were practically royalty—she never imagined they’d be mixed up in something this filthy.
“And those women—who are they?” she asked.
A handful of women wandered around the room, lost in their own worlds. Some crouched over the dead, trying to do CPR on corpses, the scene so eerie it made Clara’s skin crawl.
Their bodies were covered in whip marks and bruises—scars that told stories no one should ever have to live.
The man took a shaky breath. “They used to be rich. Most of them started companies with their husbands. But when the men wanted everything for themselves, they needed their wives gone. So they drugged them, made them unstable, then sent them here under the excuse of ‘treatment.’ That’s when we humiliated them. A lot of their husbands were social climbers—once the women were locked away, the men got everything.”
Clara had suspected this place was hiding secrets, but she never dreamed it would be this sick.
She let out a laugh—cold and humorless. Calling these people animals would be too kind.
She looked around at the broken women—at least fifty of them. Some had been here for years, others for more than a decade.
Nobody could survive this place with their sanity intact.
Betrayed by the men they loved. Tortured in every possible way.
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