Even though I knew—I knew—that leaving without telling him was breaking the unspoken rules we'd been dancing around all week. The rules about safety and trust and him needing to know where I was.
But maybe I wanted to break those rules. Wanted to see what would happen. Wanted to know if he'd come after me or if he'd let me go.
The thought made my breath catch. Made that buried, shameful part of me whisper that this was a test. That I was leaving partly to save my father's things and partly to see if Nikolai cared enough to track me down when I disappeared.
Stupid. Dangerous. The kind of bratty behavior that got people hurt.
I grabbed my bag anyway. Shoved the phone in my pocket. Left my notes spread across the library desk like I'd be coming right back.
The compound was quiet at this hour. Guards at their posts but not actively patrolling. Irina in the kitchen preparing dinner. Maks probably in his office doing tech things. Kostya out on some enforcement business. Nikolai in meetings until three, he'd said, which meant he might still be occupied.
I could slip out. Be back before anyone noticed.
I took the stairs instead of the elevator. Quieter. The ground floor exit led to a side street, one of the residential entrances that didn't have cameras pointed directly at it. I'd noticed it during one of my carefully supervised walks around the compound with Irina.
The door was heavy but unlocked. I pushed it open. Brooklyn afternoon air hit my face—cool, slightly humid, smelling like car exhaust and food from the restaurant down the block.
Freedom.
I stepped through before I could change my mind. Let the door close behind me with a soft click that felt like sealing my fate.
Then I walked to the subway, my father's storage unit address pulled up on my new phone, and tried not to think about what Nikolai would do when he realized I was gone.
I'dtakentheGtrain to the industrial district, then walked three blocks through streets that got progressively emptier, more warehouse-lined, less residential. The storage facility was a massive concrete building that looked like it had been a factory once, converted into hundreds of identical units with rolling metal doors and fluorescent lights that buzzed overhead.
Unit 237 was on the second floor. I'd used the code the email provided—they'd already changed it from my personal code, preparing for the auction—and the lock clicked open with mechanical indifference.
The door rolled up with that familiar metal screech. I stepped inside.
My boxes were still there but scattered now, contents disrupted, like someone had gone through them hastily. Which made sense. The Belyaev men had grabbed me here. Must have searched the space first, looking for what? Information? Proof of my father's debts? Evidence of the photographic memory they wanted to extract?
My backpack was on the floor where I'd dropped it. Or where they'd dropped it. The zipper was open, contents spilled—mywallet, keys to an apartment I didn't have anymore, a granola bar wrapper.
And my Polaroid camera.
I picked it up with shaking hands. I'd documented everything with it. My life with Sergei. My dance career. My father's final months. The storage unit contents when I was cataloging them for the estate sale. Every important moment captured in those square instant photographs that developed right in front of you.
I'd thought I'd lost it. Thought the Belyaevs had taken it or it had been destroyed in the struggle. But here it was. Waiting.
My vision blurred. I pressed the camera against my chest and let myself cry.
Stupid. Crying over a camera when I should be packing efficiently, choosing what mattered, getting out before the facility locked up for the night. But I couldn't stop. Three years of holding it together, of being strong every single minute, and I was breaking down in a storage unit over a piece of plastic and leather and glass.
I set the camera down carefully. Wiped my eyes with my sleeve. Started going through boxes.
Photographs. So many photographs. My parents on their wedding day, my mother young and beautiful and alive. Me as a baby. My father holding me at my ballet recital when I was twelve, both of us smiling.
I was crying again. Couldn't stop. Tears dripping onto cardboard and old books and the remnants of a life that used to mean family.
My father's reading glasses. I picked them up, felt the weight of them, remembered how he'd push them up his nose when he was concentrating on a card game or reading the paper. How he'd take them off and rub his eyes when he was tired.
How I'd held his hand in the hospital while he died and he'd been too weak to ask for his glasses so he could see me clearly one last time.
My phone rang. The sound was sharp in the quiet space, making me jump. I pulled it from my pocket. Nikolai's name on the screen.
My heart stopped. He knew. Of course he knew. Probably had been tracking the phone since I left. Probably knew the second I walked out the compound door.
I didn't answer. Couldn't answer. Didn't know what to say. Sorry I left? Sorry I didn't trust you enough to ask? Sorry I'm sitting in my dead father's storage unit having a breakdown?
