Bea woke up not knowing where she was.

Consciousness came gradually, as if her body had been pushed back inside herself against her will. First, the light – weak, yellowish, unstable. It didn’t come from a window. It came from lamps hanging too high, swaying slightly, as if the air were never truly still there. They flickered at irregular intervals, confusing the notion of time. Day, night. Before, after. Everything seemed wrong.

She tried to move.

The pain came before the thought.

Her wrists were bound behind her back. Her ankles were tied together. The rough rope bit into her sensitive skin, burning with the slightest movement. Something was pressing against her mouth – a thick, damp cloth, tied too tightly. Bea breathed through her nose, short, rapid breaths, as if air were being granted in small, insufficient portions.

Warehouse.

The word formed effortlessly. The smell betrayed everything: rust, old dust, old oil, cigarette smoke. A space too big, too empty. The cold concrete beneath the body contrasted with the stuffy, heavy air, as if the entire place were always on the verge of suffocation.

She was on the ground.

Her head throbbed from the inside, as if something were hammering her skull in a familiar rhythm. Ancient. Every attempt to organize her thoughts was interrupted by that insistent pulsing behind her eyes. Her body knew that pain. She knew how to endure it better than her mind.

Then came the voices.

Low laughter. The dry sound of cards being shuffled. Something heavy being thrown onto a metal table.

Bea turned her face away as far as she could.

He was there.

Nico sat in a crooked chair, leaning back carelessly, a cigarette between his fingers. The smoke rose slowly, lazily, as if it wasn’t in a hurry in that place. He was laughing at something one of the men at the table had said – two, three… Bea didn’t count. She didn’t want to count. She didn’t want to know how many there were.

He seemed comfortable.

And that was what hurt the most.

There was no urgency in Nico. No rush. No outburst of anger. Just that dirty calm of someone who believes that time works in their favor. As if she were something left there for later. An object forgotten in the corner of a room.

Bea’s stomach clenched.

She tried to pull her hands away again, a futile reflex. The rope wouldn’t budge. It only burned more, drawing a muffled sound from it against the gag.

Nico turned his face towards her.

His eyes met hers all too easily, as if he had sensed the movement before he even heard it. He didn’t seem surprised that she was awake.

“Look at that…” he said, blowing the smoke aside. “Sleeping Beauty has decided to return.”

The others laughed. A low, knowing sound. Like men who had seen this before. Many times.

Bea closed her eyes for a second.

Not to run away. To avoid giving him what he wanted.

Her body trembled, but it wasn’t just fear. It was that strange state where everything hurts, everything weighs heavily, and yet a part of her watches from afar, as if it were happening to someone else. A version of herself that no longer deserved defending. That had already accepted too much.

Nico stood up slowly.

Each footstep echoed in the empty shed, too heavy for such a large space. He stopped a few feet from her and crouched down with calculated slowness, bringing himself to her face level.

“I told you that you were going to get screwed because of your father, Bea.”

Hearing her own name come from his own mouth sounded wrong. Dirty. As if it had been stolen.

The cigarette smoke stung her eyes. Bea breathed through her nose again, trying to keep up the pace, trying not to cry. Not out of sheer willpower, but out of exhaustion. She was too drained to break down right there.

Nico tilted his head, studying her.

“Your father owes a lot of money,” she said, as if commenting on the weather. “And he disappeared. Guess who took his place?”

He smiled.

And in that instant, with her hands bound, her body aching, and the cold floor beneath her, Bea understood something with cruel clarity: this was not a warning. Nor a demand. It was confirmation that some debts were never meant to be paid with money.

He moved closer.

She felt it before she saw it – the displacement of air, the stronger smell of cigarettes and sweat, that presence that invades without asking permission. Nico crouched down again, now too close. His knee almost touched her thigh. Her skin recoiled completely, as if it wanted to escape from its own body.

He extended his hand.

Fingers touched her face with a sickly slowness. It wasn’t a caress. It never was. It was something that mimicked an intimate gesture only to corrupt it. The thumb traced her temple, descended along her jawline, assessing her. Like someone selecting merchandise. Like someone testing her resistance.

Bea’s stomach turned.

The gag muffled the involuntary sound that escaped her throat—a low, ugly groan, closer to nausea than pain. Nico smiled at that. He always smiled.

“Look at you…” he murmured. “You lasted longer than I thought.”

His hand moved down to her neck – he didn’t squeeze. Not yet. It just stayed there. Present. Reminding her that he could do more at any second.

Then it happened.

A loud bang.

Not nearby. Outside.

The sound ripped through the shed like a dry thud, followed by another – metal against metal, something heavy being forced open. Gate. Chain. The lamps above swung violently, casting distorted shadows on the peeling walls.

Nico froze.

The hand moved away from her instantly.

Another bang. Louder. Closer.

The men at the table stood up almost simultaneously. Cards forgotten. Chairs scraping on the floor. One of them put his hand on his hip. Another cursed under his breath. The atmosphere changed—no longer amusement, but alertness.

“What the hell is this?” someone muttered.

Nico did not respond.

He stood up slowly, his eyes fixed on the door. He didn’t run to Bea. He didn’t try to silence her. He simply took two steps back, assessing the space, the exits.

Prepared. To flee, if necessary. But there was something else there… curiosity.

Bea saw it in the way he tilted his head. Nico wanted to know who had come. And if it was for her… or for him.

Bea’s heart was beating so hard it hurt.

Every sound from outside – footsteps, creaking metal, muffled voices, falling bodies – seeped into her like thin blades. She didn’t move. She didn’t dare make a sound. Her body seemed trapped not only by the ropes, but by the fear of existing too loudly.

Nico smiled slightly.

“It seems someone missed you.”

He took another step back. Now, she was no longer the center of attention. She had become a secondary risk.

Another bang, closer.

The door slammed shut with a force that sent a sharp edge through Bea, as if it had been opened from within her.

The yellow lamp swayed violently. The wire groaned. The shed seemed to shrink. The light changed its mood. The air grew heavy.

He appeared at the opening.

There was no rush. Nor any hesitation.

Just one solid, absolute presence that pushed everything off balance.

The voice came later. Low. Too controlled.

“Good evening, gentlemen.”

Bea’s heart skipped a beat.

She recognized it before she understood it. The body always knows first. It always betrays.

The men reacted too late. Shouts were cut off. Weapons were raised. Confused footsteps.

Time shattered into pieces.

🞗⬩⬥◆⬥⬩🞗

The junkyard stood before Rhodes like a dead territory. A graveyard of twisted steel, carcasses piled at impossible angles, illuminated by dim lamps hanging from bare wires that swayed in the wind. The light didn’t reach everything. It created pockets of shadow where anything could hide.

The smell came before the sight – burnt oil, old rust, oxidized metal. There was something else there too. A dry, almost imperceptible residue that didn’t need to be seen to be recognized. Blood.

Rhodes felt his body react before he could even think.

He advanced with firm, measured steps, each movement calculated so as not to announce his presence. He was no longer wearing his jacket. His dress shirt was wrinkled, clinging to his body with sweat. The open collar left his neck exposed, the tie tucked into his pocket like something disposable. His hair had been ruined by his haste. It didn’t matter.

Nothing else mattered except reaching her.

Fists were clenched, muscles tense, ready to explode. There was fury there, but not a lack of control. What burned inside was something else. Something colder. More dense. A silent certainty that anyone in that place was already dead. They just didn’t know it yet.

Rhodes wasn’t seeking dialogue. He wasn’t considering bargaining. Whoever had laid hands on Bea, whoever had decided to drag her to that place, had crossed a line from which there was no return.

The urge to run was constant. A pressure in his chest, almost physical. Her image surfaced against his will – the video, the blood on the counter, the barely contained fear on the face he knew better than anyone else. Each memory was a blade pressed against the back of his neck.

But there was another side to Rhodes.

The side that learned early on that haste kills. That anger misused is costly. That effective violence requires patience.

That side took control.

He pushed the gate open slowly, controlling the creaking, letting the metal protest just enough to sound like wind. He went inside.

Inside, the world was worse.

Mountains of scrap metal rose on both sides, forming narrow, uneven corridors full of blind spots. Destroyed cars piled up, engines ripped open like entrails, burnt tires, loose parts scattered across the ground. Lighting came from makeshift lamps, held together by crooked wires, trembling as if they were always on the verge of bursting.

Rhodes advanced in silence.

Each step was carefully placed, the weight distributed, the body slightly leaning forward. The environment was hostile, but predictable. He read the space like someone reading an old map – recognizing risks, calculating distances, marking escape routes he didn’t intend to use.

The anger grew nonetheless.

Not like a wildfire – like a second heart, beating at the wrong rhythm inside your chest.

It didn’t matter how many were there. It didn’t matter who. If Nico had touched her… if he had gone too far… Rhodes wouldn’t be content with just killing. There were things worse than death. He knew them all.

It wasn’t heroism, it was necessity.

Bea was his responsibility. An anchor. The center. The only fixed point in a world he had learned to treat as disposable. He would protect her even if it meant turning that junkyard into a field of ruins.

A metallic clang echoed ahead.

Rhodes paused for half a second – enough time to register the direction, the pitch of the sound, the likely mistake of someone distracted. A slight smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

Cold. Humorless. The kind of smile that promised nothing but pain.

He kept moving forward.

His eyes moved tirelessly, capturing shadows that stretched between the carcasses, narrow corridors that seemed tailor-made for ambushes. But Rhodes did not fear ambushes.

He was the ambush.

The mantra returned, silent, repeated like an irrevocable sentence: touch her again… and I will destroy you .

He was unarmed. That had never been a problem. Weapons were circumstantial. Intention was permanent. Rhodes had always known how to turn anything into an instrument – glass, metal, chain, his own fists. Cruelty didn’t require a blade. It required decisiveness.

A dry thud exploded to the right.

Hurried footsteps on loose metal.

Rhodes turned his head too quickly to appear human. His body was already ready before his mind had even completed the movement. His eyes found a silhouette among the carcasses – a man, awkwardly positioned, breathing too loudly.

One of Nico’s.

Rhodes didn’t rush. He didn’t hesitate. He simply adjusted his course.

And he moved forward.

The smile returned, wider this time. There was no humor there. No pleasure. Just the silent anticipation of what was to come.

Rhodes thought that man had made the wrong choice the moment he decided to breathe in that place. He said nothing. He didn’t need to. Some sentences don’t require a voice.

The first henchman emerged from between two piles of twisted iron, too fast for someone who trusted in their own luck. He held a metal bar as if it were an extension of his arm, as if that gave him some advantage.

Rhodes did not slow down.

When the blow came, he was already within the correct distance. He deflected the attack with his forearm, took a half-step forward, and struck the man’s throat with surgical precision. The sound was low – a muffled, dry, off-kilter crack. The body immediately gave way, knees hitting the ground unceremoniously.

Rhodes held the man’s head for a second longer than necessary and twisted his neck. The end was almost clean.

He didn’t look back. But he registered the detail: the body was leaning to the left. The origin of the movement. A trace left unintentionally.

He followed him.

Further ahead, hurried footsteps. Low, barely disguised voices. Two men. Nervous. Trying to appear attentive.

Rhodes blended into the shadows.

As they approached the bend, he lunged at the first man without slowing down, his shoulder crushing the man’s abdomen and throwing him against the body of an old car. The impact knocked the air from his lungs. The second man tried to react, his hand reaching for his waist, but Rhodes had already caught his arm, twisting it back until the tendons screamed beneath the skin.

The gun changed hands in a single movement. A short, direct shot to the chest.

The second one fell without time to understand; the first one was still trying to get up, choking, his hands slipping on the rusty metal. Rhodes grabbed his head and slammed it against the metal once, twice, three times, until the sound changed. Until it gave way.

Silence returned to fill the space.

Rhodes went deeper.

The next attack came without warning.

A shot ricocheted too close, shattering a windshield. He ducked instantly, rolling behind an abandoned chassis. His breathing remained controlled. He counted his steps. He calculated his approach.

When the man appeared at the wrong angle, Rhodes jumped.

The impact was brutal. A punch to the stomach to knock out the air. Another to the chin to disorient him. The weapon was ripped from his opponent’s hands before he could react. Rhodes twisted his fist and fired into the man’s face.

The blood spread across the metal sheeting, hot and thick, marking the iron.

More traces.

That man wasn’t wandering around. He was on guard duty.

Bea was nearby.