Chapter 216 Burying The Hatchet

• The smell hit first, so thick, rancid, and cloying it felt like a swarm pressing into my throat until bile nearly rose. I swallowed hard, willing my face to stay impassive even as my stomach lurched. The guards dragged them forward, chains scraping the marble like nails down bone.
• The first figure to emerge was Joe.
• Behind him, the rest shuffled in, those men who had once turned cruelty into a game, who carved laughter from screams, who wore my suffering as though it were a medal. Now their wrists clinked under iron, and their heads bowed beneath the weight of their own ruin.