Chapter 95

Isabella

It was a video. I stared at the play button for a long moment, every instinct screaming at me not to press it, not to see whatever was waiting behind that innocent little triangle. But I had to know. I had to know what they’d done to him.

I pressed play, and the world I knew folded in on itself. Leo. My little brother. The boy who still asked me to check for monsters under his bed, who saved half his dessert for me even when I told him he didn’t have to, who looked at me like I could fix anything, solve any problem, make any hurt go away.

His head was shaved, his dark curls—the ones Mama used to run her fingers through when she tucked him in at night—gone completely. His face was bruised, purple and yellow marks blooming across his cheek, his left eye swollen nearly shut. Tear tracks cut clean lines through the dirt on his face, and his mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying over the sound of my own heartbeat.

He was tied to