I didn’t think.
I scrambled to my feet and ran.
Blind panic took the wheel. Not strategy. Not reason. Just the animal need for distance. For air. For time. If I could put space between us—if I could just breathe long enough for the vise around my throat to loosen—I could speak. I could explain.I could tell him the truth before he decided there was no point in listening.
My feet slapped against concrete, gown remnants tangling around my legs, lungs burning as I fled into the open yard.
I made it maybe twenty yards.
Men stepped out of the shadows as if summoned by my fear.
One. Two. Four.
Then more.
Six. Eight. Ten.
They emerged soundlessly, dressed in black, faces hard and impassive, weapons catching faint moonlight as they shifted position. Not rushed. Not frantic. Just efficient. They formed a loose circle with terrifying ease, cutting off every possible exit like a closing fist.
I skidded to a halt.
My breathing turned ragged, shallow, uncontrollable. Each inhale scraped my throat raw. Each exhale shook.
The pain there—inside my chest, inside my neck—spiked with every heartbeat.
They didn’t touch me.
They closed in slowly, boots scraping against cracked concrete in a steady rhythm that felt like a countdown. The sound echoed too loudly in my ears, drowning out everything else.
I backed away until my shoulders hit cold, rusted metal.
A shipping container.
The iron bit through my thin clothes, grounding me in reality with brutal clarity.
Nowhere left to run.
My vision tunneled. Black crept in at the edges. The moon hung overhead—huge, pale, indifferent—washing the scene in bone-white light.
And somewhere beyond the ring of men, somewhere just out of reach, Ruslan Baranov watched.
Waiting.
For me to break.
For me to finally understand the price of a crime I had never committed.
His voice cut through the darkness like a blade drawn across silk.
“It’s high time you realize,” he said calmly, “that you cannot—in this lifetime—leave me.”
The effect was immediate.
The men encircling me parted without hesitation, shadows peeling away as if repelled by an unseen force. A clear path opened, straight and deliberate.
Ruslan walked through it.
Each step was unhurried. Controlled. The full moon turned the edges of his black suit silver, casting sharp lines across his face and shoulders. He didn’t rush. He didn’t need to. There was nowhere for me to go.
