608 Chapter 608: Building a Connection

Mina followed President Lee into his study. She had seen the physician scientist being dragged behind the bookshelf and she did not have to ask to know that he was a suspect. She felt bad because she did not know the man's name, but at the same time she felt relieved. If he was the person who was guilty of getting President Lee's family hurt and not Mr. Walsh, then she would be at least partially let off the hook.

"President Lee, I do not understand. What do you mean by 'show me how you interrogate people?'" Mina asked as the man quietly opened a laptop and started a security program.

"Stay here," he ordered, helping her to sit behind his desk before he disappeared. She could see the anger in his eyes, but she could also see that he was in control of it, unlike how he was back at the Lee facility.

Mina watched the laptop screen and saw President Lee walk into view. She followed his motions on the multiple cameras and her hand went to rest on her mouth when she realized it was the room she had once occupied. The space she had paraded naked around out of lack of options, and the same area where she had slept completely nude. She numbly watched President Lee take a seat before asking the physician questions about his role in the Lee facility, his clearances, and his actions.

The man, who had been stripped down to barely any clothing, did not speak, and President Lee nonchalantly pulled out a cigar. Mina did not know the man smoked, she had never seen him take tobacco and when he offered a puff of the cancer stick to the physician, Mina found her mind trailing back to the moment he had offered her the pillow mint. She tensed, feeling as though she would witness the man being drugged, but whereas she had been naïve enough to accept the chocolate given to her, the physician declined the cigar, and President Lee pretended to look for a place to extinguish it, before bringing it down on the man's arm.

Mina gagged; she did not know if it were her imagination, but she could swear she heard the man's skin sizzle. She looked away from the screen, not entirely sure why President Lee wanted her to see the way he interrogated people. She had experienced his cruelty firsthand, and even though she did not remember the bulk of it, the red marks all over her body were evidence enough that the man had tortured her at some point. She did not look at the screen, but she could hear President Lee threatening the doctor, who, other than a loud grunt while being burned, had become silent.

"I will give you some time to consider whether you have anything to say," Mina glanced at the screen long enough to see President Lee leave the room, and a few minutes later he was standing in front of her in person.

Ian had intended to show Mina that his method of torture, while violent, was not what she thought. He had a specific way he dealt with people, and if they had not been drugged, he likely would have tortured her using the method he had grown accustomed to. He wanted her to witness it for herself thinking it would help alleviate some of the fear she held toward him in that specific aspect, but when he walked into his study, the look on the woman's face was so ghastly that he intuitively knew he had made the wrong decision.

"Mina..." Ian called, and the woman stood up slowly. She walked away from the desk and in barely a whisper, asked the man a question he had not been expecting.

"President Lee; did you watch me?" Ian tensed, completely forgetting that Mina did not know she was under surveillance while she had been locked in the room. He had been expecting her to have questions, but that was not one of them.

"I never just watched you," he half lied, and the woman nodded in relief. In reality, he spent hours watching her, but he always cut the camera anytime she undressed or showered.

"Why did you want me to see this?" She questioned further, and Ian was honest, telling her that if she was going to view him a monster, he at least wanted to show her what kind of monster he was. "But you know that method will not work on him." Ian scoffed. "President Lee, I'm telling you; it will not. He is prepared to die, your family trained him to be that way." Ian's eyes darted across Mina's face, once again having that feeling that she really could have been a formidable force if she were born into the right circumstances. "Plus, he has nothing to lose." An idea suddenly came to Ian's mind. He only had vague hints toward the man's involvement, and that was only because Terrence flagged him as a threat.

Terrence had been working with Dr. Sancho on the project that Mina gave him the idea to pursue when he casually mentioned many of his colleagues being obsessed with Mina in a way he did not understand. He told the man that Doctor Harris, the physician that Ian had in interrogation, tracked the woman's whereabouts and he liked to bother the man by sabotaging the information he had. When Ian tried to confirm Terrence's story, there was no evidence for him to move forward, but Terrence was adamant, and knowing what the man was capable of, Ian went with his gut.

"Let me talk to him," Mina offered, and Ian smirked to himself because he had just been about to suggest the same thing.

Mina walked into the room that she thought she would never enter ever again and forced back the nausea that was starting to push forward. A chill went down her back as she approached the Doctor, who she now knew was surnamed Harris. She had ointment and a sterile cloth in her hand, something she had to negotiate hard for, but President Lee eventually caved when she reminded him that he withheld her medication, and he owed it to her.

"Doctor Harris?" she called out, and the man looked up, shocked to see her. Few of the men in the facility knew where she lived, and he was probably thinking she had been brought in just for him.

"Mina, what are you doing here? It is not safe." Now that she was up close, Mina could see that one of the man's eyes had lost focus, and she wondered if it were a new injury, or if it had already existed.

"I used to live in this room," Mina admitted. She could see the look of bewilderment cross the man's face. "Can I treat your wound?" she asked, but the man refused. Mina nodded, putting the cloth and ointment to the side, before sitting in the chair where President Lee sat. "I cannot help you, you know? The only reason I am not still sitting where you are is because I am useful to the Lee family." Ian listened in from his study rolling his eyes at Mina's attempt at an interrogation.

"If you were in here, how did you get out?" Doctor Harris asked sarcastically. He knew that Ian Lee was not likely to release a person from interrogation, even if they were innocent, the chances of survival were slim.

"I took a lie detector test and passed," Mina said with a shrug. "But there is a very real chance I'll be back in this room again." Mina knew, or rather she believed that her future was hanging in the balance with the man in front of her, and his admission or denial would seal her fate.

"He would not do that to you," Doctor Harris said, and Mina chuckled bitterly.

"Has he forced himself on you yet?" she asked, making Doctor Harris look up in shock.

"What do you mean?" the man asked, suddenly afraid.

"I mean president Lee, has he forced you to-" Mina was cut off when President Lee barged into the room and pulled her away with a look that was a mixture of embarrassment and anger. He instructed his men to close the doors, and he dragged her back to his study, clearly annoyed.

"What was that?" he whisper-shouted. "Why would you say that to him?" Mina shrugged, she actually had not thought out what she was going to say to the man, she just went in there with the intention of relating his experiences to her own.

"I was trying to build a connection with the hostage," Mina said as if it was the most common sentence that had ever been spoken.

"But that was not true," Ian said, staring at Mina in the way he usually did when he was trying to convince her of something.

"Does it matter? The point is that I had him talking and you pulled me away." Ian rubbed at his face, and Mina left his study, ready to enter the room again. "Sorry," she said to Doctor Harris. "I'm not allowed to talk about that." She watched the man's eyes go wide and he shifted uncomfortably.

"If he did that to you, then why haven't you run away?" The man asked, but Mina could tell he answered his own question in his mind. "You tried."

"Many times," Mina continued. "Why did you want to hurt me?" She asked the man, not forgetting why she had come into the room.

"You were not supposed to be hurt physically; just shaken up so that I could help you get better, and you could see my worth. As for his nanny and sisters." The man shrugged. "I have no regrets. That man robbed me of my right eye, and my left eye is as good as gone. He should have just let me die." Mina frowned and Doctor Harris started to laugh maniacally. "You want to know why I chose to hurt his family instead of him?" She nodded and the man shrugged. "It would not have been fun unless I killed people I knew he cared about. As for you, I was promised that you would be sent to me." The man shifted so that he could sit up in his chair, but his motion was limited by his binds. "Do you know why I am telling you this and not him?" Mina shook her head, almost afraid to hear the answer. "Because I do not want him to blame you when I'm dead. All of this is his fault, not yours." Mina's face contorted in surprise, thinking the man was being affectionate. "It would be a waste of genetic material," he continued, dashing her hopes.

Mina stood up and walked away from Doctor Harris, looking back at him with sad eyes before she apologized for not being able to help. He chuckled as if she were telling him a joke before he violently tugged at his bindings making her flinch. He started rambling about how much power she had, but before she could question him about what he meant, President Lee was already guiding her out of the room, which sparked the tied-up man into a rage-filled fit. He once again started to threaten the Lee family, with all manner of punishments, but the smile was wiped off his face when President Lee stepped forward and punched him in the jaw.

Doctor Harris' body slumped, and Mina rushed forward to stop the man from continuing his assault on the clearly deranged doctor. She begged President Lee to stop, as the doctor chuckled, promising his superior that even after he was dead, he would forever have to worry about his retribution. Not just on behalf of himself, but on behalf of all the people who had been condemned by the Lee family.