Mine.
'Why are you grinning?' Rillman demands.
'What do I know of love? I got her back. I got her back, you prick.'
There's another couple of punches. More pain. A knife is jammed into my spine and left there.
When the pain dulls, and I can breathe again, I lift my head. 'What do you want, Rillman?'
'Agony, isn't it? And with the way you heal I don't need to be delicate.'
He pulls out another knife, pale as moonlight, and as narrow as a regular dinner knife. He grabs my left pinkie finger. I struggle against him, but he is stronger than I am, and the ropes that bind me are tight. 'This knife isn't steel,' he says, 'but something I picked up in the Deepest Dark. Let's see how it works.'
He pushes the blade over, and then into, my pinkie finger, hard. Skin and bone part in a swift and agonising jolt. I feel the cracking of that bone through my entire body. I scream. And I scream. And I scream until something tears in my throat.
'Oh, we have so much more fun ahead, believe me.' I struggle, my bonds tighten, and Rillman lets me; so confident that I can't escape.
He brings the knife towards my cheek.
But this time I'm ready for him. I swing my head up against his skull. Bone cracks into bone. Rillman goes down hard.
He groans. I rock backwards and forwards in my chair, and then I'm tipping over, landing on Rillman. I crack my skull into his head, again and again. His knife is next to him on the floor. I slide over towards it, grab it with a hand sticky with blood and cut at my bindings.
The knife's damn sharp. I'm free in a moment and I stagger to my feet. Rillman groans again. And I kick him in the head. Once. Twice. I bend down and rest the knife against his face. There's a rather large part of me taking too much delight in this.
'Oh, we have so much fun ahead, believe me.' I try and reach the other knife in my back, but can't.
I find my finger on the floor. The little thing's twitching. I wonder whether, if I left it alone long enough, it would grow a new me. I push it against my wound and finger and hand begin to reconnect. It's agony, but I'll be whole again soon.
I need to get out of this tiny room. The walls are closing in.
I stumble over to the door, swing it open and stagger outside. Rillman is on the floor behind me. He isn't going anywhere.
Laughter and music echo down from the floor above. I stagger to the stairs and climb up to the fourth floor. The nearer I get the more I can make out. Christmas carols? Worse than that – contemporised Christmas carols doof doof doofing.
I kick open the door. And there are my staff having their Christmas party. A big Christmas tree is in one corner, someone is giggling by the photocopying machine. Tim is talking to some bigwigs from the state government. For all this, everything seems so forced; a party going through the motions. The door slams shut behind me.
Everyone, glasses in hand, spins around, and there I am. Me with my blood staining my shirt. Me with a bloody knife in one hand. Me with the torn and gore-stained pants. Me with blood squelching in my shoes with every step.
I walk over to the bar and pour myself a Bundy – a tall glass, neat. My pinkie finger still dangles a little. I down the rum in one gulp. No one has moved, not even Tim.
'Oh, and merry fucking Christmas,' I say, waving the glass in the air. If it weren't for the bar I'm leaning on I'd drop to the floor in a heap. I nearly do, and whatever shock my presence created is broken. The whole room seems to move towards me.
'What the hell happened to you?' Tim asks, rushing from where the two government guys stand: both of them looking at me curiously. What are they going to write in their reports tomorrow?
I lift up the mess that is my left hand – though it's not nearly as messy as it was – and point at the door. 'Downstairs. Broom cupboard. Francis Rillman. The fucker tried – well, more than tried – to torture me.'
Tim's out of there, running back the way I've come. I look around me. Where's Lissa? Then I'm swaying. The rest of my staff aren't sure what they should be doing. I don't blame them. I can hear their elevated heartbeats. And then there's one I recognise.
'Steven! Oh, Steven.'
Lissa's there, she's found me, she's holding me up. I've never been so happy to be held up, to be bound up in her arms. There's stuff we need to discuss. Not here, not now, but as soon as we can.
'Where were you?' I ask.
'Your office. Jesus, Steve, I've been trying to call you. I was getting worried, but I thought… Well, you've been all over the place lately.' She touches my face. 'Oh, my darling.'
'Francis Rillman just tortured me.' I grin at her. 'I've never been tortured before. I think I did I all right.'
She walks me to a chair. The staff are all looking on. The poor green bastards, I really should say something, but the breath is out of me.
'Could you get the knife out of my back?' I manage at last.
She pulls, then reconsiders. 'Maybe we should wait for Dr Brooker. It seems to be lodged in your spine.'
'Might explain why it hurts so much.'
'It's going to be OK,' she says, wiping blood from my face. And while I don't seem to be bleeding, there's a lot of it.
'Yeah, absolutely.'
No one else seems sure what to do. I get the feeling that I'm letting them all down. I don't want to do that. After all, Rillman's taken care of. My wounds will heal and no one else has been hurt.
I get out of the chair, with a little help from Lissa.
'Sorry,' I say to my crew. 'You all party on. Really, it's OK. Someone turn up the music.'
As inspirational speeches go it really doesn't cut it.
Lissa wipes some more blood from my face. 'Steven, most bosses just get drunk and flirt with their staff at Christmas parties.'
Tim belts back up the stairs, panting. Oscar's behind him looking very pissed off. Tim passes me my phone. It's whole again. I blink at it. I can see where the glass front is finishing healing itself: the tiniest tracework of cracks. Must be a cracker of a twenty-four month plan.
'Rillman's gone,' Tim says. 'There's just the chair, and blood.' He looks from me to Lissa and back. His eyes are frantic. I can tell he wants to hit something. 'You poor bastard.'
I don't have time or the energy to comfort him. 'The guy was out cold when I left him.'
'Well, he's not there now.'
I look up at Oscar he's only just getting off his mobile. 'What happened? How did he -'
'Rillman, it has to be him, he killed Jacob. Stabbed, in his own house.'
'So who was it that I was talking to in my office?'
'I don't know.'
'That's reassuring.'
'Look, someone died today,' Oscar says. 'I'm going to find the bastard who did this and there will be payback. No one does this to one of my crew.'
I nod, a bit woozy with lack of blood. I know how he feels. I'm mad enough about this as it is, but if Rillman had tortured anyone else I would not be able to express my rage. At least physical damage is only going to be a memory to me.
Poor Jacob is dead and gone and, for all I know, he wasn't even properly pomped. That's too high a price.
'He was working for me, too,' I say. 'We'll both make the bastard pay.'
A thought strikes me. A dark one. 'Do you have a photo of Jacob?'
Oscar nods, fiddles with his mobile and passes it to me. The face I'm staring at is the face of the man who hit me. This is not good.
'That's him, the man who attacked me.'
