“I am.”
“Boris will raise hell.”
“Let him.”
Bogdan’s mouth tightens. “If she disappears, we’ll lose her.”
I glance at him. “Do you think she can disappear from me?”
He pauses, and I enjoy the way he thinks before he answers, because Bogdan isn’t an idiot, and he has kept me alive for years by telling me the truth.
“No,” he says finally. “But she might try.”
“That’s the whole point.”
The point is the chase. The point is the spark in her blood that makes her brave enough to steal from her own uncle. The point is the way she moves through a place built to cage her, and she does it with her head high, like she would rather die than stay small.
I want to see how far she runs. How well she can handle a situation when it one-eighties right beneath her feet.
I want to see what she does when she thinks she has won and the world shifts to throw her off balance.
Because women like this don’t exist in our world. They are forged. Sharpened until they become weapons. And so fucking rare, my gut feels tight at the anticipation of having her. Claiming her.
I have always had a weakness for rare things.
Victoria turns to leave.
I could end it now. One call to Boris, even at this time of night, and he would be there in seconds.
But I don’t.
I let her reach the door. I let her step into the corridor. Then I trigger the alarm.
The sound screams through the compound, ripping the quiet apart. On the screen, Victoria freezes for a fraction of a second,then she bolts, fast and clean. She doesn’t stumble or hesitate. She already has her escape route mapped, likely a secondary one for back-up in case of this exact event.
Bogdan watches her disappear into the maintenance hatch. “She knew where that was.”
“I told you,” I say softly. “She’s not improvising. She has planned this every possible way.”
The guards flood the stairwell. Voices shout. Boots thunder. Chaos blooms exactly the way I want it to. I can already imagine Boris upstairs, waking in anger, barking orders, convinced he is the center of the universe being attacked from all sides by his enemies.
Enemies from the outside. Not his own niece.
I watch her throw the bag into the duct and then shimmy into the tight space. The feed changes with a press of my finger on the touch pad, and I cycle through the images until I see her appear through the top of a vent and drop down to the floor, swinging her backpack onto her shoulders.
She is beautiful like this. Not dressed up. Not curated. Not quiet for other people.
She is vibrant and alive. Moving like a dancer in the darkness. Trusting that the steps she has planned will be there to catch her before she falls.
“She has a motorcycle,” Bogdan says, the faintest edge of surprise in his voice.
I smile. “Of course she does.”
Victoria yanks on a helmet and starts the engine. A guard bursts through the doors and shouts her name, but she doesn’t even turn her head. She rockets into the night like the city owes her a way out.
She thinks she is escaping Boris. She doesn’t know yet she has just stepped into my line of sight.
And I’m never letting her escape it.
