Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 47961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
We lay there in silence for a long stretch of time. My instincts stayed sharp out of habit, listening for sounds that didn’t exist, mapping exits I already knew by heart, but my hand never left her body. I moved my thumb once, slow and absent, tracing the small line of her hip. I felt possession, plain and undeniable.
She hummed softly, already drifting, her trust heavy in the way she leaned into me without hesitation. That trust hit harder than anything else ever had in my life. I lowered my head and brushed my mouth against her hair.
As her breathing evened out and sleep took her. I stayed awake, staring into nothing, but guarding everything, especially the most important thing to me.
Because whatever line I’d crossed tonight, whatever claim I’d made, I knew one thing with absolute certainty… this wasn’t over.
And no one was taking her from me.
Chapter 15
Zoya
Ididn’t hear or see anything while I was inside the panic room. That was the point of it. Concrete walls thick enough to swallow sound. Reinforced steel doors. Layers meant to keep danger out and secrets buried deep.
Whatever Dmitry did when he left this space stayed on the other side of those walls. It didn’t bleed through. It didn’t reach me.
When he came back, I knew without a word that something had shifted.
He didn’t rush. Didn’t scan the room. He shut the door, secured it, and stood there for a moment as if he were deciding where to place the weight of what he carried. His face was closed off, carved into that icy stillness I’d learned meant control—not calm.
Something had changed.
“I got a call,” he said.
He finally looked at me then. Fully. Dark eyes steady, jaw locked down hard enough to hurt.
I already knew the answer, but I asked anyway. “My father?”
For a fraction of a second, I saw him consider lying. Not to protect himself, but to protect me.
“Da,” he said.
The word landed clean and sharp. I straightened instinctively, as if my body remembered this kind of moment. Moments when my father reached through distance and reminded me who he believed I belonged to.
“What did he say?”
Dmitry exhaled slowly through his nose. “He says the deal is complete.”
My stomach twisted, but I didn’t look away. I nodded once, and could feel the shape of what was coming before he said it.
“And he wants you returned.”
Returned.
Not asked for. Not requested, but given back like property that had been loaned out and was now overdue.
I waited for fear to rise. It didn’t. What came instead was cold and sharp and furious. Something clean and burning.
“I was currency,” I whispered, not phrasing it as a question.
Dmitry didn’t soften it. “Yes. You always were to him.”
That should have hurt more than it did. Instead, it clarified everything. I stood, my hands shaking only slightly, my voice steady when I spoke again.
“And what am I to you?”
He didn’t hesitate. Not even for a breath. “Everything. And I’m not giving you back.”
The finality in his voice was absolute. Not a promise, but a decision already made. The kind that didn’t get revisited.
Something in my chest loosened at the sound of it. I stepped closer, close enough to feel the gravity of him… of a man who had already chosen his line in the sand and was waiting to see if I’d cross it with him.
“You traded for information,” I said. “You got what you needed. And now he thinks he gets me back.”
“Yes.”
No apology. No justification. Just the truth. And somehow, that mattered more than anything else.
A short, bitter laugh slipped out of me. “My father trained me well,” I said. “Smile. Be useful. Don’t ask questions.”
Dmitry didn’t interrupt. He watched me like this moment mattered. Like I mattered.
“They all thought I was ignorant,” I continued. “Quiet. Sheltered. But most of all obedient and decorative.” I lifted my chin, meeting his gaze. “I’m none of those things anymore.”
Something flickered in his eyes. Recognition and respect.
“I didn’t see the machinery,” I said. “They made sure I didn’t. But I saw enough to know that something was wrong. Conversations that stopped when I entered a room. Staff who disappeared and were never spoken of again. Doors I was told never to ask about.”
His attention sharpened, lethal and precise.
“You can feel rot even when you’re kept clean,” I breathed.
Dmitry’s jaw tightened.
“My father wasn’t the top of it,” I went on carefully. “He ran what he was told to run. He handled what was put in front of him. But he answered to someone else.”
“Yes,” Dmitry said. “Your father is a broker. A supplier. Not the source.”
The silence that followed wasn’t confusion. It was an alignment of two people finally naming the same evil.
“I don’t know how deep it goes,” I said. “I don’t know who’s really in control. But I know this… I’m done being used. Done being protected by silence until I can be traded again. Whatever this world is, it keeps hurting people while everyone pretends not to see it. I don’t want to be spared anymore. I want it to stop.”