His innocent wife is a dangerous hacker.-Chapter 477 Torture (1)

The following morning, the basement was cold and quiet. Only the low, quiet sound of electricity running through the overhead lights broke the silence.

Leo stood a few feet away, his hands tucked casually in his pockets, his posture relaxed in a way that felt all wrong. It was the calm of a predator that had already cornered its prey. A faint, unreadable smirk rested on his lips as his eyes moved slowly between the two figures bound to metal chairs in the center of the room.

Jessica and Sam were shadows of the people they’d been just a day before.

Jessica’s expensive blouse was wrinkled and smudged, one sleeve torn at the shoulder. Her hair was matted to her forehead, her makeup a mess of smeared mascara and dried tears. Her eyes were wide, bloodshot, and darting around the room, never settling, always circling back to him in pure dread. She kept swallowing convulsively, like she was trying not to be sick.

Sam looked worse, somehow. He seemed to have shrunk. His shoulders slumped forward against the ropes binding his chest, and his face was a sickly gray. His lips were cracked, and a faint tremor ran through his entire body every few seconds. He wasn’t trying to look brave anymore. He just looked hollowed out by fear.

They hadn’t slept. They hadn’t had a drop of water. The stink of their own sweat and terror filled the small space.

Leo breathed it in, and the cruelty in his smile deepened.

"My hands," he said, his voice a low, pleasant rumble in the quiet, "have been itching since yesterday."

He took a slow, deliberate step forward. The soft sound of his shoe on the concrete made Jessica flinch violently.

"I find it funny," he continued, his tone almost conversational. "You really believed you could lay your hands on what’s mine, play your little games with tears and cameras, and just... walk away. You thought there would be consequences you could talk your way out of. Consequences softened by pity."

He leaned down slowly, bringing his face level with Jessica’s. Her breath hitched, a tiny, pathetic sound. His smile was a knife.

"But you didn’t just hurt Bella," he whispered, the words meant for her alone. "You insulted me. You came into my house and tried to break something I treasure. That was your first and last mistake."

Jessica began to shake her head, a frantic, jerky motion. "Leo, I swear... I was desperate. I wasn’t thinking. Please, you have to understand—"

"I don’t."

The two words cut her off cleanly. His voice didn’t rise. It simply went flat and final.

He straightened, rolling his shoulders once in a slow, casual stretch. Then, with a ritualistic slowness that was more frightening than any shout, he reached inside his suit jacket.

He pulled out a pair of gloves.

They were a stark, surgical white.

He didn’t look at the prisoners. He looked at the gloves. He began to put them on, one finger at a time, pulling the soft leather taut over his knuckles, smoothing out every minute wrinkle. The sound of the material stretching was the only sound in the room.

It was a promise.

A preparation.

Jessica’s controlled panic shattered. A high, thin whine escaped her throat. Her eyes were glued to his hands, to that blinding white. "No... no, no, no, please, God, no..." she babbled, her words dissolving into choked sobs. She jerked against the ropes, not to escape, but in pure, animal reflex.

Sam made a guttural sound. He had squeezed his eyes shut, but now he forced them open, staring at Leo’s hands as if hypnotized. All the color left in his face vanished. His chest heaved, and for a second, it seemed he had forgotten how to breathe. A dark stain began to spread slowly across the front of his trousers.

Leo saw it all. The begging, the crying, the loss of control. He drank it in, his expression one of serene, focused attention.

"This," he said calmly, flexing his fingers and admiring the flawless fit, "is usually the moment people understand the nature of their error."

He took another step closer. The air grew colder.

Jessica’s whimpers became a continuous, broken stream of despair.

Sam just stared, mouth slack, tears of sheer terror now mixing with the sweat on his face.

Leo tilted his head, his dark eyes gleaming with a chilling, almost intellectual curiosity. He wasn’t angry. He was interested. He was about to conduct an experiment, and they were the variables.

"You should have stopped," he said softly, his voice like velvet wrapped around steel. "When you had the chance. Now..."

He lifted his gloved hands, letting them hang in the space between them for a long, suspended moment.

"Now, just sit still."

His shadow fell across them, long and consuming in the bare basement light.

Then he moved.

He closed the final step to Sam, his gloved hand coming to rest almost gently on the man’s shoulder. Sam flinched as if burned, a full-body shudder wracking his frame.

"Look at me," Leo said, his voice soft.

Sam couldn’t. His eyes were screwed shut, tears leaking from the corners.

Leo’s thumb pressed down just above Sam’s collarbone. It wasn’t a hard press, but it was targeted. A nerve cluster. Sam’s eyes flew open with a sharp gasp that wasn’t quite a scream, it was the sound of pain too sudden and too deep for sound to properly follow.

"You listened to her," Leo murmured, his face close to Sam’s ear, as if sharing a secret. "You believed her lies, and you helped her break what is mine. You don’t get to hide from this."

His other hand came up, two fingers pressing firmly against a specific point just behind Sam’s jaw. It was a clinical, almost academic pressure.

The effect was not academic at all. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Sam’s back arched against the restraints, a choked, gurgling cry tearing from his throat. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated agony—short and sharp—before it was cut off as Leo adjusted the pressure, not relieving it, but redirecting it. The pain became a silent, screaming current inside Sam’s body, his mouth wide open in a soundless howl, veins standing out on his temples and neck.

Jessica screamed.

It was raw and piercing, a sound that shattered the damp basement air. "STOP! PLEASE, STOP! I’LL DO ANYTHING!"

Leo didn’t even glance at her. He kept his eyes on Sam’s contorted face, watching the play of suffering with detached interest. He held the pressure for a slow count of ten. Sam’s body trembled violently, his eyes rolling back.

Then Leo released him.

Sam slumped in the chair, drool and tears mingling on his chin, his breath coming in wet, wheezing rasps. A low, broken moan seeped from him, the only sound he seemed capable of.

Finally, Leo turned to Jessica.

She was thrashing against her bonds now, her earlier desperation transformed into frenzied, animal terror. "Mercy! Please, God, have mercy! I’m sorry! I’M SORRY!"