His innocent wife is a dangerous hacker.-Chapter 478 Torture (2)

Leo’s smile was a small, chilling thing. "Mercy," he repeated, as if tasting the word. "You showed Bella so much of that, didn’t you?"

He reached for her. Jessica jerked her head away, a frantic animal trying to avoid the predator’s touch. But his gloved hand was steady, inevitable. He didn’t grab her. His fingers moved slowly, almost tenderly, tracing a path from her temple down to the line of her jaw. She went completely still, her sobs catching in her throat. Her eyes were wide—not just with fear, but with a deeper horror. The horror of waiting. The horror of knowing what was coming.

His thumb settled in the delicate hollow just below her ear.

"This won’t leave a mark," he said quietly, his breath cool against her clammy skin. "But it will hurt. A lot."

He applied pressure.

Jessica’s scream tore through the basement. It was a high, sharp sound, strained to the point of breaking. This wasn’t just pain. It was a feeling of deep wrongness, as if her own body had become a prison of pure agony. A fire seemed to burn in the very core of her bones without ever touching her skin. Her spine arched violently against the chair, her heels hammering a frantic, useless rhythm against the concrete floor.

"Please... mercy... mercy..." she shrieked, the word twisting into a mangled plea between each ragged scream.

Leo leaned closer, his voice a dark whisper against her ear. "Scream it louder. Let the walls hear you beg for the kindness you never showed."

He increased the pressure, just a little. Jessica’s scream shattered into one long, endless wail of despair. It echoed off the cold walls, a raw soundtrack of utter suffering.

He held her there, suspended in that invisible, exquisite torment. Her cries broke down into ragged, hiccupping wails, then faded into weak, continuous sobs. "Stop... please stop..."

He did not stop.

His face was cold as ice. His eyes, which had been calculating, now showed something else entirely. A ruthless, killing intent. He looked at Jessica, and he did not see a crying woman. He saw the person who had plotted to harm his wife. His Bella. His bunny.

She planned to hurt her. To make her bleed.

The thought echoed in his mind, cold and sharp.

Unacceptable. She doesn’t deserve to live. She doesn’t deserve to breathe free air.

She is the reason. The cause of every wound, every tear, every moment of fear in Bella’s life.

A silent voice, dark and furious, rose inside him.

Kill her.

His eyes grew darker, more dangerous. The calm mask began to crack, revealing the raw, vicious promise beneath.

"Please...don’t kill her!!" Sam’s voice was a weak, broken shout from the other chair. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

The sound of Sam’s weak plea seemed to vanish before it even reached him. It was static, a meaningless insect buzz against the roaring silence in Leo’s own head. His entire world had narrowed to the woman trembling before him, to the pulse he could feel fluttering wildly beneath his gloved thumb.

He remembered Bella, small and trusting, curled against him in sleep. Bella, her eyes wide with a hurt she couldn’t voice. Bella, flinching at a raised voice...

The protective rage he always carried for her didn’t just boil over. It transformed. It didn’t heat his blood; it froze it into something clear, sharp, and absolutely lethal. Mercy was not just off the table. The very concept of it evaporated.

He leaned in, his face now inches from Jessica’s. The clinical precision was gone, replaced by something far more intimate and terrifying.

"You wanted to see her bleed," he whispered, his voice so low it was almost a vibration. It wasn’t a question. "You sat in your pretty house and you planned it. You picked the place. You imagined the sound she would make."

Jessica’s eyes were pools of pure terror. She tried to shake her head, but he held her fixed.

"I can see it," he continued, his tone conversational, as if discussing the weather. "You probably thought you could handle the mess. That you could play the hero after. But you never thought about the sound, did you? The real sound of pain. It’s not a scream. It’s a gasp. It’s the air leaving a body."

His thumb pressed down again, not in a search for pressure points, but with a crushing, grinding force against the hinge of her jaw. It was blunt. It was brutal. It was personal.

A sickening, wet pop echoed in the small space, followed by Jessica’s choked, guttural shriek. Her jaw was not broken, but it was violently dislocated, hanging slack and grotesque.

Leo didn’t flinch. He watched the drool and blood begin to seep from the corner of her distorted mouth with a deep, unnerving satisfaction. The pristine white of his glove was now smeared.

He finally released her jaw, letting her head loll forward. Her cries were now muffled, wet, and utterly hopeless.

He straightened up, looking down at his gloved hand. Slowly, deliberately, he peeled the soiled glove off and let it drop to the floor. It landed with a soft, final sound.

He turned his gaze to Sam, who was weeping silently, his own pain forgotten in the face of this monstrous display.

"You begged for her life," Leo stated, his eyes black and empty. "That was a mistake. You just tied your fate to hers."

He took a step toward Sam, and for the first time, a sound escaped him...a low, quiet hum that was somehow worse than any shout.

"Let me show you," Leo murmured, "what happens to people who touch what’s mine."

The darkness in the basement wasn’t just from the lack of windows anymore. It seemed to seep from Leo himself, swallowing the light, the hope, and any last pretense of humanity.

Finally, Leo walked out of the basement.

The heavy metal door clicked shut behind him, sealing the silence—and what was left inside—away. He stood for a moment in the clean, well-lit hallway of the house, his posture relaxed.

He rolled his shoulders once, a smooth, easy motion, and ran a hand through his dark hair. There was no tension in his jaw, no shadow in his eyes. His expression was one of mild, detached calm, like a man who had just finished reviewing a tedious report.

He could still hear the muffled, wet sounds from behind the door if he listened for them, a weak rhythmic scraping against the concrete floor. He didn’t listen. He simply turned and began walking down the hall, his polished shoes making no sound on the plush runner.

As he passed a mirror in the hallway, he caught his own reflection and paused. He adjusted the cuff of his sleeve. A small, satisfied smile touched his lips.