I let my head fall back against the couch cushions and try my best to think of happier times. There are so many to choose from, even in this latest, darkest chapter of our lives. Morning walks through the neighborhood, Bastian describing every mundane detail—the color of a mailbox, sunlight caught in a sprinkler’s arc—as if he were narrating a love letter to the world. Tome.The nights spooning together in sheets that smelled like him, his hand always finding my belly in sleep, fingers spread wide like he was trying to hold everything together at once.
We’d beenhappy.
For the first time since this nightmare began, I’d let myself believe we might actually get that little house with the yard. The refrigerator covered in crayon drawings. The gloriously mundane future I want more than my next breath.
Then Baby kicks again and I remember that all of that is currently dangling by a thread.
Where are you, Bastian?As if answering my question, the doorbell rings.
My heart leapfrogs into my throat. Could it really be him? Back so soon? Is that a good sign or a bad one? Are we gonna make it or are we all?—
No. Can’t think like that. Good thoughts only.
“I’ll get it,” Zeke barks as we all start to stir at once. “Everyone stay put.”
His footsteps thud toward the door. I hear the deadbolt and the hinges creak as he pulls it open.
Then Zeke’s sharp intake of breath.
A strangled “What the f?—”
Something wet and heavy thuds against flesh.
Yasmin screams.
The sound of a body hitting the floor sends me springing to my feet. My fingers close around the familiar grip of my cane just as chaos erupts around me—Mom shouting, Sage’s wheelchair scraping against the floor, more footsteps pouring through the doorway, heavy boots on hardwood.
An unfamiliar voice fills the room. It’s smooth and cultured, adorned with the faintest trace of a Russian accent. “Please, everyone stay calm. I’m not here to hurt anyone who cooperates.”
I know without having to ask:
Aleksei is here.
55
ELIANA
overworked /?ov?r'w?rkt/: adjective
1: dough handled until gluten toughens and the structure fails.
2: beaten past the point of no return.
It’s Yasmin’s reaction that guts me. I hear her drop to the floor beside what must be Zeke’s body, her sobs tearing through the room as she repeats his name over and over again. “Zeke.Zeke!Oh, God, oh, God, please?—”
Aleksei tsks with disappointment. “No need to fret, darling. He’ll live, assuming someone applies pressure to that wound.” He pauses. “Though I wouldn’t dawdle, if I were you.”
Then a second set of footsteps enters behind Aleksei.
I recognize it instantly. Axe body spray. Stale beer. The exact same combination that was seared into my memory the night I found Yasmin with Brandon’s hands around her throat, when I cracked a lamp across his skull and we fled into the dark.
“Hey there, Eliana,” Brandon sneers. “Miss me?”
Yasmin’s sobbing cuts off into horrified silence. The absence of her screams is somehow worse than the sound of them.
I feel lost, and nauseous, and terrified, and a million other things that don’t have names because no one has ever been in this situation before. It’s like all my nightmares linked up and became friends behind my back.
How does Brandon know Aleksei? How do either of them know we’re here? Where is Bastian? What is happening?
