He’ll rearrange my life again, except this time there will be another piece on his board with our shared blood.
“We do not know anything yet,” Anya counters gently. “And even if you are, we will figure out what that means, step by step. But guessing in your head will make you sick with fear. We can get you an answer.”
“How?” I ask because my practical brain needs something to hold onto. “I can’t exactly walk into a pharmacy.”
A hint of a smile touches her mouth. “This house contains more than guards and fancy art. We have a clinic on the lower level. Fully stocked with a doctor on call. It is easier to treat wounded men at home than explain bullet wounds at the hospital.”
“Of course you do,” I breathe, the words half laugh, half disbelief.
“I can bring a test up here myself,” she continues. “No one needs to know. Not Luka. Not Nikolay. Not Otets. Just you and me until you decide otherwise.”
Tears sting my eyes for the second time this morning, but for a different reason. Gratitude mixes with terror, thick and messy. “You would do that?”
“Of course,” she answers without hesitation. “You are under my brother’s protection and also my guest, and you are my friend whether you know how to accept that or not. It is simple.”
It doesn’t feel simple, but I nod anyway, because the alternative is sitting here in this bathroom thinking I might be pregnant with Luka Barinov’s child without doing anything about it.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Please.”
She squeezes my arm once. “Sit on the bed and drink some water. I will be right back.”
When she leaves the bathroom, the silence that follows feels heavier than before. I rinse my mouth, splash more water on my face, and move back into the bedroom. The bed looks huge and untouched. I perch on the edge and wrap my arms around my middle, rocking slightly without meaning to.
My phone presses against my hip, and the reminder hits like a cold hand.Hope.I pull it out with shaking fingers and check the screen again. No new messages.
As if I summoned him with the thought, a new notification slides across the top. Unknown number, even though I know exactly who it is. My lungs forget how to work as I unlock the phone with my thumb.
A video thumbnail fills the message thread. No text yet. Just the image of a door and a piece of a concrete wall. My heart stutters hard enough that my vision blurs. I tap it with a finger that barely feels connected to the rest of me. The video opens to asmall room with bare cinderblock walls painted a dirty off-white. The lighting is harsh and fluorescent. There are no windows. A metal cot sits against one wall, with a thin mattress and a gray blanket.
Hope sits on the edge of the cot. Her head tilts toward the door, her eyes tracking something I can’t see off-screen. For a moment, she looks straight into the camera, and I feel like she’s looking directly at me. A sound escapes her mouth, too soft to make out. The video doesn’t include audio loud enough to hear words, or maybe they muted it on purpose. She coughs once, her shoulders jerking. Then she curls in on herself, her arms wrapping around her ribs, shivering slightly. The video cuts off, and the screen jumps back to the message thread. Text bubbles appear one after another.
Still alive.
If you want that to continue, you stay exactly where you are.
Tell no one.
Do nothing until I contact you again.
My vision blurs, and I clutch the phone so hard my fingers hurt.Seattle doesn’t mean safety. It means I’m even more trapped. I’m in the heart of a Bratva fortress with a man who could storm any building in this city, and I can’t tell him about the one room that matters because my sister is locked inside it.
My stomach lurches again, but there’s nothing left to throw up. My thumb hovers over the keyboard, itching to type something, anything. Anger burns under the fear, strong enough that I want to demand he release Hope right now, even though I know it would only make things worse.
A knock sounds on my door, followed by Anya’s voice. “Sage? It is me.”
I jump so hard the phone nearly flies out of my grip. My heart slams against my ribs as I stab the side button and shut off the screen. I shove the device in my pocket and drag in a breath that does almost nothing.
“Come in,” I call, hoping my voice doesn’t betray everything.
The door opens, and Anya slips inside with a small white paper bag in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. She closes the door behind her carefully and walks over, her heels barely making a sound on the rug.
“How are you feeling?” she asks, her eyes scanning my face.
“Like someone tried to turn my stomach inside out,” I answer with a weak attempt at a joke. My hands knot together in my lap, hiding the tremor.
Her gaze lingers on me a second longer than feels comfortable, like she senses that my answer doesn’t cover the whole truth. But she doesn’t press. Instead, she sits beside me on the bed and places the bag between us.
“I grabbed two tests,” she explains, her fingers brushing the folded top. “In case the first one is unclear or you panic and drop it in the toilet.” She gives me a small smile.
