Mosen had been starved for an entire day, then interrogated by Byron and the others for another twenty-four hours straight.
For two whole days, he had eaten nothing, surviving on just a little water.
Mosen had never been healthy and routinely overtaxed himself. His stomach felt glued to his spine, and his mental exhaustion left his head aching, his eyes throbbing, and him constantly dry-heaving.
An ordinary person might have endured two days without food. Mosen could not. Under the combined assault on his body and mind, his psychological defenses soon crumbled.
Rowan did not make things difficult for them either. As long as they surrendered all their assets, the matter would be over.
With no way out and his mind on the verge of collapse, Mosen agreed to Leonard's demands in a daze and wrote him a check drawn on the local bank.
Seeing that Mosen had not resisted, the others followed suit.
Fewer than twenty people from the Northflow Town Council Hall administration and the local merchants' guilds had been arrested. Yet the gold confiscated exceeded a hundred thousand coins.
Several ordinary administrative officials had substantial savings, which truly opened Rowan's eyes.
Even Mosen, the mayor, earned only two hundred gold coins a year.
Damned bloodsuckers!
After Mosen and the others confessed in exchange for leniency, Rowan provided them with several reasonably clean bedrooms. Once they had eaten and drunk their fill, they all went to sleep.
When Mosen rose around noon the next day, his head still heavy and muddled, he realized he had made a foolish decision.
How could I have handed my entire fortune over to those bastards?
What have I done?
The thought that he now had nothing, not even any certainty about tomorrow's lunch, made Mosen want to slap himself twice. The fall