A/N: I feel like a broken record at this point, but I'm sorry for missing Wednesday's update. My week was insane and I didn't have much time to relax or even get online. This week should be better, though. Thank you for reading and commenting on chapter 11. It's still going to be rough going for a while, but I hope you'll continue to bear with me. Trigger Warning on this chapter for gang rape and sexual violence.


Chapter 12.

The Jackal

. . .

Amanda had seen some fucked up shit in her day, but watching a group of grown men egging on a special-ed kid as he tried to rape the woman they were holding down was just about the worst. Olivia wasn't fighting them, though they pinned her as if she were, hands at her wrists and shoulders, spreading her thighs. When they weren't thumping the boy on the back and tugging the jeans and boxers from his skinny hips, chanting for him to "put it in, put it in, put it in" Olivia, that is.

They sounded like frat boys gathered around a beer bong, cheering on a buddy whose thirst was flagging. Amanda used to participate in those same activities, often finding she was the loudest and rowdiest of the bunch. She had coaxed plenty of her friends into drinking past their limit and knew all too well the persuasive power of a noisy crowd. Olivia knew it too, her face turned away in anticipation of the boy's approach.

The goateed man took her by the temples, his span wide enough to pinch both sides between the fingers on one hand, and turned her head sharply back into place like he was popping the lid on a jar. "Eyes front, capitana," he said, and nodded to the boy, who was nudging his penis fruitlessly into Olivia's pubic hair. "Little Man needs some help. Tell him where to stick it."

He can stick it up your ass, you disgusting piece of shit, Amanda thought, but couldn't say it out loud. Not after what had just happened to Olivia. What was still happening.

"Louder," said the man, when Olivia mouthed something indiscernible. He slapped at the side of her head with his fingertips, making her flinch and give a small birdlike caw. "Come on, puta, speak up so everyone can hear."

Everyone. Amanda bit down on the side of the hand still covering her mouth. Christ, how many people were watching this? Recording it, even? How many times had Amanda explained to devastated young women that the worst moments of their lives would be forever commemorated online, because nothing ever really went away on the Internet? Now, Olivia would be one of those women. Olivia who had only disclosed most of her assaults, extending as far back as childhood, within the past couple of years. That was how great her shame had been; how little she had trusted anyone besides Amanda to hear the full details of her most painful and traumatic experiences.

Men might watch this for years to come, getting off on seeing Olivia—beautiful, loving, kind Olivia—degraded and so afraid. The thought was beyond Amanda's comprehension or what her broken heart could withstand. At first, Olivia's response, weak and tearful, sounded as if it were coming from inside Amanda herself:

"I— I can't." The captain gazed at each of the men above her in turn, searching for someone who would be merciful and excuse her from participating in her own rape. No one stepped forward. "I can't. Please—"

Angel yanked the wrist he'd been pinning down, jerking Olivia's left arm and shoulder off the desk with a sharpness that drew a yelp from Olivia and an indignant cry from Amanda. Sometimes that shoulder still gave out or locked when Olivia lifted her arm too suddenly. She had almost dropped Jesse once when the little girl launched off a jungle gym and into her arms, accompanied by Matilda, who took the right side. The girls knew unexpected leaps into Mommy's arms weren't allowed now, a rule Amanda had imposed. But I want them to know I'll always be there to catch them, Olivia had argued. They should have that security.

It had been Amanda's opinion that her wife needed the security more than their daughters did—needed to know she would be able to be there for them, arms open wide, no matter what the danger or the physical toll. That determination to keep her family safe had earned her the shoulder injury in the first place, when she rescued Amanda from plunging off a cliff. They hadn't even been dating yet, and Olivia had risked her life for Amanda.

So sorry so sorry so sorry, she repeated silently, as Angel wrapped Olivia's fingers around the shaft of the Sandberg boy's penis and forced her to guide it into herself. Olivia groaned as if she were about to be sick again, but she couldn't turn away to do it. "Stop," she said, gazing past the boy at the ceiling, almost too breathless to be heard. "You don't h-have to do—"

Cupping a hand beneath Olivia's left breast, Angel leaned in and bit the top of the fleshy mound, near the scar left by Lewis' cigarette. Olivia's eyes went wide, first with surprise and then intense pain, a distinction measurable by her intake of breath—the soft gasp ended in a sharp upsurge of air, like a reverse scream. She clamped her eyes and lips shut rather than exhale the scream, and for a moment she looked like a woman drowning, fighting her way to the surface before time ran out.

"Oh." Amanda found no other words to say, just that choked little cry she breathed into her hands again and again. Oh.

The sound of someone clearing their throat behind her startled Amanda so badly she flinched and ducked down as if she were being fired upon. "Fuck," she snapped, recovering almost at once and scrubbing at her damp cheeks and snotty nose with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Olivia's sweatshirt. She turned a nasty sidelong glare on Kat, who hesitated in the doorway, a stack of files in her hands. "What do you want, Tamin?"

"Sorry, I—" Kat glanced to the laptop screen, where the boy was heaving himself fitfully against Olivia, making a sound like squeaky bed springs, while Angel gnashed at one breast and the goateed man groped the other. When Amanda twitched the MacBook aside, the officer remembered herself and stepped forward with the files outstretched. "Got some hits in facial recognition. We ID'd the two big guys. The youngest one doesn't have a record that I can find—"

"He does now." Amanda snatched at the manila folders and slapped them onto the tabletop. She was aware of being an outright bitch, but couldn't bring herself to care. When the love of Kat's life was being gang raped for going on a full hour, no signs of the perps or their erections slowing down (sick fucks had to be on something), then she could talk to Amanda.

"Yeah, um. This year's school records didn't turn up anything, either, but I did a quick search of the past few semesters. Found a Xander Bergström who graduated last year from a special needs school in the Bronx." Kat, a native of the Bronx herself, delivered the news with distaste. Her gaze kept darting toward the laptop and the godawful noises that issued from it. "Bergström is one of Sandberg's known aliases, so I think it's probably his kid. He'd be, uh . . . eighteen now."

Amanda could have read every bit of that in the file she had peeled open, or at least she would have been able to under normal circumstances. Now the words jumbled up and snarled in her vision as she glanced convulsively from page to screen and back again. God, those sounds. She couldn't even think straight with that playing in her head. "Least he's not underage," she said vaguely, watching from the corner of her eye as Xander Bergström jerked above Olivia like he was having a seizure. The other men howled with laughter at his efforts. "Little fucker can be tried as an adult."

And Olivia wouldn't have to live with the added burden of knowing she'd been raped by a minor. Just someone with the brain of one.

"Yeah." Gingerly, Kat took the other two files from under the one Amanda stared blankly at, when she wasn't staring blankly at the screen. "The guy with the teardrop tattoo is Nicholas Angelov. Goes by the name Angel. Career criminal, mostly controlled substances. But . . . he's got a lot of sexual assault charges in his jacket."

"You think?" Amanda asked, without much bite behind it. She scanned the mugshot inside the open folder Kat placed in front of her. Sure enough, it was the same man whose teeth marks stood out in bright red dashes on Olivia's breasts—he'd moved on to the right side, tugging the nipple with his front teeth, then sucking it vigorously. Amanda felt a jolt in her own breasts, and glanced down, expecting to find them leaking again.

Her sweatshirt was dry, but oh God, Sammie. Olivia loved breastfeeding their baby girl, approaching the task with such reverence it bordered on the sacred; sometimes she just liked to snuggle up at Amanda's side and watch the ritual performed by another, always with the rapt expression of someone witnessing the miraculous.

Now, Amanda found herself thanking a god she no longer believed in that Olivia wasn't actually lactating. The fucking animals didn't get to take that away from the captain, like they were taking everything else. Although, how Olivia would ever be able to find joy in using the SNS again, Amanda couldn't imagine. She still avoided letting anyone other than Amanda put things in her mouth, because of a past oral assault—even the kids. What if the same thing happened with breastfeeding?

"He did ten years for a murder too," Kat said quietly, underlining the charges on Angel's rap sheet with her fingertip. "Been out since 2018. Guess that explains the tat."

"Yeah."

It explained nothing. There was no sufficient explanation for how Olivia, who had woken Amanda that morning with sleepy smiles and tender kisses—who smiled most days lately, sometimes for no apparent reason—was now being violated by a murderer and repeat rapist that should be rotting in a jail cell. Whoever had let the sonuvabitch out was partly responsible for this whole thing, as far as Amanda was concerned.

But try as she might to decipher his rap sheet and find a connection in his priors to herself or Olivia, there was nothing. He had never even been charged in Manhattan, and most of his life outside prison walls appeared to have been spent on the streets of Brooklyn.

"The guy with the ugly-ass goatee is Carlos Riva," Kat said, shuffling his folder to the top of the pile. She tapped his mugshot, as if there were another five-foot-ten bald man, two hundred and twenty pounds of solid muscle, to confuse him with. "Former driver to some big art gallery. Priors for assault, including rape. He just got out last year for laundering and—"

"Holy shit," Amanda whispered, putting her hand up to silence Kat. She skimmed over the criminal history on Riva's sheet, her eyes going too fast for her brain to keep up. But she got the gist: possession of an unregistered firearm (charges dropped), misdemeanor stalking fourth-degree (plead down from domestic assault), rape one and grand larceny (found guilty, sentenced to twenty years). "Oh, holy fucking shit, Tamin. I know this guy."

"What? What do you mean you know him?" Kat bent over with her knuckles on the table, looking hard at Amanda like she suspected her of brain damage or delusion.

"I fucking know him." Amanda shot to her feet, launching the chair out behind her. It collided with the cabinet against the wall, clanging loudly, but she was too shaken to notice. She thwapped the backs of her fingers on the edge of the paper she held up. "Son of a bitch. It was, like, eight years ago . . . " She checked the most recent date of incarceration below Riva's mugshot: 03/26/2014. "Yeah, I was— I was undercover in a gambling club. He was the bouncer. He raped this guy's poor wife as payback for— oh my God."

Kat's eyes widened and she reached quickly for Amanda's elbow, as if expecting her to keel over backwards. Amanda had felt the blood drain from her cheeks, and the paper she was brandishing did quiver in her hands, but she wouldn't allow herself to pass out right now. Not while Olivia needed her. And not while the pieces were falling into place with such impact, she felt like the wind had been knocked out of her.

"Oh my God," Amanda groaned, the sound weak and despairing to her own ears. "I think I know who's doing this. It has to be— oh God, Liv."

She peered tentatively at the laptop screen, hoping beyond hope that the men had finished in the half-second since she'd looked away; knowing that they hadn't. While Angel and the younger Sandberg boy continued working Olivia over, Carlos Riva had placed his dick in her hand, stroking it up and down the length of the fat, pulsing shaft. Olivia herself was gone. She was nowhere.

"—hear me, Rollins? Hey, Rollins." Kat was shaking Amanda's arm and gazing at her with a deeply troubled expression. She kept glancing back at the plate glass window, to the squad room beyond, as if debating whether or not to call for help. "Who's doing it? Riva? I don't think he's been out long enough to set up something this—"

"No." Amanda's voice returned to her slowly and she swallowed with effort, shaking her head in the meantime. "Riva's just a pissant, bootlicking flunky." Yeah, the pissant, bootlicking flunky who's sexually assaulting your wife. "He couldn't arrange something like this, even if he had ten years to plan it." Or eight . . .

She could barely think with the internal commentary echoing in her ears. But she had to, she had to get it all out—even if it meant admitting she was to blame—because if her suspicions were correct, they might be the key to finding Olivia. Bringing her home. That was all Amanda wanted.

"The club he worked in was run by this woman, Sondra Vaughn. Her lover . . . Anton-something was the real boss, but she was his baby mama and had a lot of sway." Amanda closed her eyes as, on the screen, the kid Xander pulled out too soon in his excitement and came in Olivia's pubic hair. His brother laughed wildly and gave him a noogie on top of his baseball cap.

"I befriended her to get to— Nadari, that was his name. She ended up turning state's evidence on him. Got herself a lighter sentence, but had to send her kid off to live with family."

Amanda left out the part where she had taken Sondra hostage by pointing a gun at the woman's pregnant belly, in order to get to Nadari. If you don't think I'll shoot, you don't know me at all, she'd warned Sondra and Declan Murphy. And in the moment, to their horror as well as her own, she meant every word. In the years since, she had told herself it had to be believable, that was the only reason she could so vividly imagine pulling the trigger. It was long before Jesse, so Amanda hadn't had the same motherly instincts back then. At the time she was just a desperate gambling junkie in danger of losing everything.

It was a good story.

"I, uh, haven't really kept tabs on her since then," Amanda said, guiltily. She had wanted to put the whole experience behind her, and threw herself into meetings, work, and earning back the trust she had pissed away with her sergeant, Olivia Benson. She didn't have time to check up on every criminal she helped put away, she'd reasoned—even the ones who gave birth in prison and had to pawn the kid off on relatives.

"But this is her MO. She's the one who ordered Riva to rape that guy's wife back then. Just to send a message." Oh Jesus, what had Amanda done? She longed to look away from the livestream, where Carlos Riva was still manually masturbating himself with her wife's hand and Liam Sandberg was teaching his brother how to finger a woman, using Olivia's privates as a guide. But this torture was meant for Amanda. Because of Amanda. She didn't fucking get to look away.

"You think this is to send you a message?" Kat sounded doubtful. She eased the crumpled rap sheet from Amanda's fist, smoothed it inside the folder, and leaned over Riva's mugshot. "That seems kind of . . . extreme, even if you did arrest her. Most people who make threats when they go down never follow through, right? Would she even still be in contact with this guy? Is her sentence up or—"

"I don't know," Amanda said, at a volume her children—and wife—would describe as yelling. She checked it immediately, more for their sake than Tamin's. They hated when she raised her voice. "I betrayed her, Kat. I made her turn on her lover. Took her kid away from her. I know you don't get it 'cause you don't have kids, but a mother will do whatever it takes to defend her child. And female criminals are always more vindictive."

"Okay, but . . . eight years after the fact? Wouldn't she be out by now and back with her kid? Why wait so long?"

It was possible that Sondra had gotten out on parole before her twelve-year sentence was up; apparently Riva had managed it, and he didn't have half the brains or beauty of his one-time boss. The parole board probably got one look at Sondra Vaughn's big brown eyes and doe-like demeanor, not to mention her art history degree from Columbia, and decided a mother should be with her child. Even if she was a snake in the grass.

But Kat had a point. Why wait till now to seek revenge, especially if Sondra had reunited with her kid? A little girl, if Amanda remembered correctly. She'd been a surprise before she was torn away from her mother; Sondra had been convinced she was having a boy. Someone to carry on his father's legacy, no doubt.

"I don't know," Amanda repeated, flatly this time. She gazed at the screen with the same hollow affect, unaware there were tears rolling down her cheeks, until they dripped onto the back of her hand. She didn't care if Kat saw. Olivia was writhing on the desk, her scuffed and battered body flush and arching stiffly at the spine, her eyes squeezed shut so tight it looked painful.

Amanda recognized the struggle, only now it was to ward off something, instead of bring it on. Her wife was fighting desperately against climax, while Liam Sandberg and his idiot brother tried to force it out of her. "Come on, Captain, give it up like a good little slut," Liam said, his fingers doing most of the work. Xander couldn't keep a steady rhythm.

"Rollins?"

"If she's out of prison, she's had time to rebuild a network." Amanda swabbed her tears half-heartedly with the cuff of Olivia's sweatshirt, and sniffed. "And even if she's not out, you know as well as I do that these people always have friends on the outside. Especially the rich—"

It occurred to Amanda, then. During her hostage negotiation with Anton Nadari and his baby mama, one of the demands she had made was a million dollars in cash. The same amount for which Olivia's buyer would be purchasing her.

Jesus Christ.

"It's her, Kat, I know it is. Sondra fucking Vaughn." Amanda cast a pleading look up at the officer, needing to be believed. It was the only thing she had right now, and she couldn't afford to be wrong about it. She couldn't let Olivia down yet again. "You gotta look into her for me. Check out Nadari too, just to be sure. Anton Nadari. Tell Fin, he'll remember the case. Please, Kat."

"Yeah, of course. Of course." Kat's gaze flicked to the turned aside MacBook, where Olivia sounded like she was hyperventilating, her chest heaving with the effort of trying to maintain control of her body. At the same time, Carlos Riva ejaculated without reservation or forewarning, his milky semen sliding down Olivia's arm with the consistency of snot.

"Go," Amanda said, too harshly. She shouldn't alienate herself from the people who were there to help, especially the ones she knew cared about Olivia too, but she needed Kat to get out. If the Sandberg bastard did force her wife to orgasm, Amanda didn't want anyone else in the room with her. It was bad enough they would be watching in the bullpen. That any number of viewers could be watching from anywhere in the world.

Amanda pushed the thought aside, as she had trained herself to do over the years (gambling and booze helped), afraid that if she considered it too long, she might start screaming and never stop. She felt it just beneath the surface of her skin, burning in her lungs, waiting to claw its way out. Ready to rip her to shreds, along with anyone else who got in the way.

"Tamin, get the hell . . . " Amanda looked up to an empty room, and part of her would have wondered if Kat had really been there at all—if she hadn't just cracked up and imagined the entire interaction—were it not for a glimpse of the officer talking solemnly to Fin in the outer office, pointing back in Amanda's direction.

Plus the criminal records fanned out on the table in front of her. She reached around, feeling behind herself blindly, until she caught hold of the chair and pulled it into the bends of her knees, dropping heavily onto the seat.

Riva's file was still open on top of the others, and Amanda tried to reconcile his mug shot, which she did recognize, to the man on the screen, whom she hadn't. Granted, he had put on another twenty or thirty pounds of muscle since she'd seen him last, probably pumping iron in Fishkill day after day; he'd aged considerably too, as did most who served hard time; and the few moments his face had been in frame on the livestream, she'd only had eyes for Olivia, whom he was raping.

But Amanda still should have recognized him. How much sooner could this have ended, if she had? How many more violations would Olivia suffer because Amanda hadn't done the basic duty of any decent cop and successfully identified the perp?

Her answer was a sharp gasp, followed by a muffled whine as Olivia gritted her teeth and fought her body's normal physiological response. That was how they always described it to victims who experienced involuntary orgasm during an assault—normal, physiological.

But there was nothing normal about seeing your wife struggle against herself with as much exertion as she had struggled against her attackers. And no amount of framing it as physiological would convince Olivia, who had only recently stopped apologizing for not reaching climax every time Amanda used her fingers, that she wasn't somehow to blame for how her body did or didn't react.

Luckily, it was over fast and there hadn't been anything too overt for the casual viewer. Just for the wife, who knew the captain's body and its responses like the back of her own hand. Amanda brought the hand to her mouth, making a fist and biting down hard on her knuckles. She didn't even feel it.

"That the best you got?" Liam Sandberg asked, gazing down on Olivia with disappointment. She barely seemed to register his voice, her eyes fixed on the ceiling as she panted shallowly, either too traumatized or in too much pain for anything deeper. She tried to cross her arms over her ravaged breasts, but that prick Angel pushed them away, leaving his handiwork exposed.

"I think you can do better," Liam continued, reaching toward Olivia again, with the hand he had just dried on his jeans. These men were covered in her DNA by now. And she in theirs. "Let's try again. What do they say in show biz? Once more, with feel—"

"Step back, son."

From out of his shadowy corner, the Sandman emerged. Amanda had almost forgotten he was there, just off camera, so still and quiet he might have been a statue presiding over the gang rape he had at least partly orchestrated. She wasn't sure what his connection might be to Sondra Vaughn, other than the bottom-feeder Riva, but even if they weren't in on this together, he was still a lowlife trafficker who raped for sport. He was still the one who had greenlit Olivia's abduction. Sondra had wielded a little power because of Anton Nadari, but by no means was she a big fish. Gus Sandberg was a great white.

He even approached Olivia in a sneaking, sharklike manner, as if he had scented blood in the water and was preparing to circle a kill. "You too, my boy," Sandberg said to his youngest, whom he patted on the cheek, fondly. The proud papa. "It's my turn to get acquainted with Ms. Benson. Go on. You'll all have plenty of time with her when I'm through."

"You don't want me to hold her for you?" asked Angel. With his face aimed down at Olivia, the teardrop tattoo made him look like one of those sad clown paintings. Then he sneered and shattered the illusion. "She's stronger than most of the others, I'll give her that."

"I don't think that will be necessary, will it, Olivia?" Gus gazed at the captain, who didn't acknowledge him and hadn't uttered a sound since the orgasm, with a mild expression that could have been mistaken for kindness. But the shark always smiled while it ate its prey. "We'll be fine," he told Angel, sending the man to wait with the others at the edge of the frame. "Alone at last."

And though he didn't speak directly to the camera—he kept his face mostly in profile, as a matter of fact—Amanda sensed that he was addressing her, more so than Olivia. "Kiss my ass, you piece of horseshit," she hissed, longing to reach through the screen and strangle him with her bare hands.

(Why had she thought that? Why couldn't she have thought anything besides that?)

"Are you having a good time so far?" Gus reached out to stroke Olivia's hair off her forehead, finally eliciting a reaction, albeit a small one—she shied from his touch, turning her face in the opposite direction. He took her by the chin and turned it back. "I know my boys are a little rough, but you're used to that, right?"

Amanda wasn't sure what Gus meant by that, and for a moment she was convinced he was talking about her. She had been rough with Olivia last year, while recovering from a gunshot wound and having a gambling relapse. She was still too afraid to examine their sexual encounter during that whole mess—it had been disrespectful and thoughtless at best. At worst, she feared it had been nonconsensual.

Olivia had sworn she'd been a willing participant in the angry, aggressive foreplay and sixty-nining, but that was almost as worrisome to Amanda. She knew all too well how easily women, especially the ones with histories of abuse and sexual violence, could convince themselves they had been complicit, had enjoyed it. What if Olivia was doing that every time they had sex?

Logically, Amanda knew that wasn't the case. Until about an hour ago, their sex life had been at the top of its game. But for the past couple of months, she'd considered mentioning her fears to her therapist, just to get a second opinion. Now she never would. She had blamed Serena Benson for allowing Olivia to be molested as a kid, but was Amanda any better, allowing this to happen? I'm never going to let anything else bad happen to her. Not ever. That's what she'd told Serena's headstone last January.

What a liar.

"That Lewis fellow and the Mangler weren't exactly known for their finesse, I imagine." A vague smile touched the Sandman's lips when Olivia shuddered at the names. He made no move to stop her from covering her breasts, arms crossed to cup one in each hand. "And that old partner of yours—what was his name? Stabler? Oh yes, I remember him too. An egotistical, hypocritical thug. He assaulted a few of my best paying customers over the years."

Any relief Amanda felt at not being the source of the violence Gus was referring to faded at the mention of the three men. Not only for the obvious distress it caused Olivia, but because the Sandberg fucker seemed to have been keeping tabs on her for quite a long time. The Lewis case and the Mangler were both well-publicized at the time of their attacks on the captain, and their subsequent demises, but Elliot Stabler predated Amanda herself—in almost every way. (Olivia seldom spoke of him; Amanda knew just enough to make her hate the guy.)

Was it possible none of this tied back to Sondra Vaughn after all? It had to, though . . . it was Amanda's only lead.

"Did he ever get physical with you?" Gus patted Olivia's cheek, much more briskly than he had done to his son, when she didn't answer. "Hm? Pin you to the wall and force himself on you, maybe? I saw the way he looked at you. Your little backside twitching in those snug jeans you used to wear. Can't say I'd blame him if he—"

"No." Olivia's voice crackled like long-dead autumn leaves. "Never."

Gus made a noncommittal sound, vaguely disappointed. He reached out and glided his hand up the thigh Olivia was trying to close against the other. The flesh there was smudged, but Amanda couldn't tell what the dark splotches were—blood, feces, bruises? Any were possible, all were likely. The Sandman passed them by, coasting his palm over the crest of one hip, into the valley of Olivia's side, and up the plain of her arm. He looked to be mapping her out, like a land surveyor deciding where to begin.

"That is a shame," he said, trailing his fingers back and forth along Olivia's collarbone. He rested his hand on her shoulder when she attempted to turn onto her side. After a weak shrug failed to shake him off, she gave up and was still. "You could have given him some lovely babies. Of course, he probably would have walked away from you regardless. And now you've got those four precious angels waiting for you at home, not even suspecting that it was their last morning with Mommy."

Tutting softly when Olivia began to cry, Gus petted her ratty braid, which hung over her shoulder like the head of a mink stole. "Do you think they'll feel like you abandoned them?" he asked in an idle tone. He pieced at something among the loose strands of hair at her neck. "Do you think they'll hate you for the rest of their lives, Olivia?"

"Goddamn sonuvabitch." Amanda bit her knuckles hard enough to draw blood. She was distantly aware that she should feel it, but she did not. This sadistic motherfucker was going straight for Olivia's weakest spots: her abandonment issues, her fear that the kids would stop loving her for some reason. How he knew her vulnerabilities so well was the scariest part.

No, that Olivia might believe him—that was the scariest part. She could withstand some of the most heinous tortures imaginable, but there was no way she would survive losing her children's love, trust, and devotion. Without it, she would probably give up completely.

Finally, Gus freed whatever it was he'd been digging for at the nape of Olivia's neck. He brought it forth pinched lengthwise between his thumb and forefinger like a gem to be studied in the light. Not quite, but close; it was the little pillar with each of the kids' names on all four sides, which hung from the necklace Amanda had given Olivia last Christmas. The captain hadn't taken it off since. Amanda often glanced into her office and saw her absently stroking the rose-gold pendant with a fingertip or two. Their babies always brought her such comfort.

"Sweet." Gus closed the pillar into his fist and yanked, snapping the chain from around Olivia's neck. Her body jerked as if she'd been shocked with defibrillator paddles. He dangled the glinting charm above her for a moment, making certain she focused on it before he tucked it away in his jacket pocket. "I'll hold onto this for safekeeping. You won't need it where you're going."

"Wh-where?" Olivia whispered. Still trying to ascertain what was to be done with her, probably in hopes of getting away or calling for help. Still doing her job, after everything she had already been through. "Where are you t-taking me?"

Something vivid and frightening flashed in the visible eye of Gus's profile. Olivia saw it too, and she drew in a sharp breath, as if she knew what was coming next. And maybe she did; it had happened to her before. So damn much of this had happened to her before.

His calm, almost pleasant exterior gone, the Sandman revealed his true face then: a hard, cruel sneer, the muscles twitching with an underlying rage so big and relentless it was terrifying. And it was focused entirely on Olivia. She cringed from the hands that reached for her, but they went around her neck and began to squeeze with a casual indifference Amanda couldn't reconcile to what she was seeing.

Seconds went by before she realized her wife was being strangled, that Olivia wasn't crying out because she couldn't.

. . .