The Ex-Wife's Burning Elegance novel Chapter 1958

A wave of nausea crashed over Stella, stealing the breath right out of her lungs.

Leonard didn't draw out the suspense. His voice dropped to a grim register.

"They had him chained up in heavy-duty industrial shackles so he couldn't fight his way out.

He wanted his freedom so badly, he deliberately snapped the bones in his own hand to slip free from the cuffs."

What Leonard conveniently omitted was the detail from the official incident report: there had been a witness.

One of the mercenary guards doing the graveyard patrol had walked past the cell at the exact moment Joshua shattered his own bones.

The sickening, hollow crack of joints being forced out of their sockets had echoed loudly down the concrete corridor, yet Joshua hadn't so much as flinched.

The sheer, terrifying lack of human reaction sent a visceral chill down the guard's spine.

Then, the blood-soaked prisoner had slowly turned his head, locking eyes with the mercenary.

The look in Joshua's eyes—soulless, black, and radiating absolute slaughter—was like looking at a demon freshly crawled from the bowels of hell.

Terrified for his life and knowing the man's lethal combat skills, the guard didn't dare approach alone and sprinted away to call for heavily armed backup.

In that brief window of panic, Joshua vanished into the night.

All the color drained from Stella's face, leaving her looking as pale as a ghost.

She knew Laurel Quinn had hypnotized him to bury traumatic memories, but she had absolutely no idea he had endured six months of calculated, sadistic torture.

Laurel had never uttered a word about it.

Joshua had smoothly brushed off his past, claiming it was just violent gang business she wouldn't want to hear about.

She had never once fathomed he had been subjected to such a sickening, degrading nightmare.

Noting her chalk-white complexion and the violent trembling of her eyelashes, Leonard easily read her devastation.

"You spent all this time thinking he was some invincible god, didn't you?"

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