And when Brad’s upper lip curls into a sneer before he turns and stomps away, I realize I have no idea how long Yulian’s name will be able to protect us.
Time is running out.
“—known Bradley long?”
I snap out of my memories. Belatedly, I realize someone’s been talking to me. One of Brad’s investors, I think.
I give a polite smile and nod. “A lifetime and a half.”
The investor laughs. “It can feel like that, can’t it? Young love. Funny thing.”
Brad’s hand tightens on my wrist, telling me to do a better job of this: smiling, nodding, arm candying.
It makes me sick. All of it. The thought of playing house with a monster, of compromising every principle I’ve ever had just to buy myself another day—it’s all too much.
And I still don’t have a single piece of ammo to show for it.
“Excuse me,” I mutter.
I free myself from Brad’s grasp and head for the bathroom. The complex’s lobby is huge, enough to lose yourself twice over, but if books and movies have taught me anything, it’s that it’s always the last door on the right.
As I walk, I scroll the secret folder on my phone. I called it “Baby Pictures”—the last place Brad would ever think to look.
Inside is everything I’ve risked my life to get.
Documents I’ve scraped together from Brad’s laptop blink back at me, filled with names I can’t make sense of. Initials, likeD.B. of P.or whatever. If there’s dirt anywhere—if there’s anything I can use to free myself and my children from this hell we’re living in—I haven’t found it yet.
But I have to keep looking. I have to keep our hopes fed.
It’s the only way I’ll survive.
After all, who’s left to help me?
Just as I’m having that thought, something firm and heavy collides against me from around the corner. A chest. A man.
The scent of cologne overpowers me. Cedarwood, amber, and something achingly familiar.
“Watch where you’re—” he starts saying, annoyed, but then he stops.
I know that voice.
I know that cologne.
And I definitely know those cheesegrater abs.
My heart starts racing.It can’t be.
But it is.
Because, as I lift my eyes, gray meets them like the winter sea.
“… Yulian.”
2
MIA
My heart won’t stop pounding.
