Sidney Sheldon’s The Silent Widow. Тилли Бэгшоу

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       PROLOGUE

      ‘No! Please no! I can’t …’

      The old man’s eyes widened in terror as he stared at the drill, straining against the ropes that bound him. He imagined the spiral metal bit grinding into his flesh, splintering his bones like shrapnel as they nailed him to the wooden beam.

      As they crucified him.

      Surely they knew he was good for the money? He would give them what they wanted – everything they wanted! He was no good to them dead.

      How long had he been in the warehouse now? Days? Or only hours? Slipping in and out of consciousness between the beatings, he’d lost track, aware only of the pain in his body: the screaming burns on his skin, thin and creased with age like crepe paper. The fractured ribs and swollen eyes and lips. The tiny razor cuts to his genitals. They had tortured and humiliated him in every sadistic way imaginable, while the young woman stood in the corner impassively and filmed on her mobile phone. Hateful bitch. He despised her most of all, more even than his tormentors.

      They appeared to be reaching a crescendo, some sort of grand finale with the drill. Or at least he did. Their boss. The ringmaster at this circus of terror.

      The man with the brown eyes.

      The devil incarnate.

      ‘Please!’

      The old man’s sobs turned to screams as his torturers switched on the drill, passing it laughingly between them as they revved it louder and louder.

      ‘I’ll do anything! Oh God, no!’ A warm river of liquid excrement exploded out of his bowels СКАЧАТЬ