The house in the suburbs of Heartless appeared perfectly ordinary from the outside, but the scene inside told a very different story.Aunt Francine lay on the living room floor, unable to get back to her feet after the beating she had endured. The furniture had been overturned during the struggle, and several picture frames lay shattered across the room. Despite her condition, her eyes remained fixed on the men standing around her. There were five of them in total, all carrying themselves with the confidence of people who believed nobody would ever hold them accountable for their actions.The leader of the group was a heavyset man with a scar running across his upper lip. He slowly paced around the room with a metal club resting on his shoulder, occasionally glancing at Francine as though she were nothing more than a piece of entertainment."You know, I've been trying to understand something ever since we got here," he said with a faint smile. "What exactly was the point of all this?

Marcus Reed stood at the doorway and looked at the terrible mess in Aunt Francine’s living room. His shiny Italian shoes stepped on broken teeth and pieces of bone as he walked inside. A big pool of blood covered the wooden floor.Behind him, six armed men spread out. Their hands stayed close to their guns. When they saw the twisted arms and broken skulls on the floor, some of them stopped and looked scared.“Well, well, well,” Marcus said with a mean smile. “The brother who ran away is finally back. Bran Navine, I must say I’m impressed. We tortured your dear aunt for many hours. We broke her legs into tiny pieces. We made her scream until she could not scream anymore. All because we wanted her to tell us where you were hiding.”He pointed at Aunt Francine, who lay unconscious on the floor.“That old woman did not say one word,” Marcus laughed. “She is very tough. And your little sister…” His smile became even crueler. “We hit her many times. We told her all the bad things we would d