A hospital?
Or somewhere quieter—deeper in the Labyrinth—where screams dissolved into concrete and no one ever found the bodies?
I pressed my palm to my throat, feeling the raw, swollen tissue beneath the skin. Every swallow burned. Every breath scraped.
If it truly was a hospital... maybe they could explain.
Explain that the damage to my vocal cords was old. Permanent.
That extreme stress triggered laryngospasm—muscles seizing shut like a trap.
That forcing speech through trauma tore fragile scar tissue and caused bleeding.
Maybe then he would pause.
Maybe then he would give me time.
Time to calm down.
Time to breathe.
Time to finally speak when my body allowed it.
I didn’t do it.
I didn’t kill your wife.
I didn’t kill your child.
I don’t even know what you’re talking about.
The van moved smoothly into the night, tires whispering against concrete as the Labyrinth receded behind us.
I stared at my reflection in the darkened window.
Pale. Bruised. Blood-smeared. Wrapped in clothes that weren’t mine. A bride by force, a criminal by assumption.
And I prayed—desperately, foolishly—to any god who might still be listening that this was mercy.
Because if it wasn’t...
I didn’t want to imagine what awaited me when the van finally stopped.
Chapter 5
ELENA
The Mercedes-Benz Sprinter came to a smooth, almost silent stop.
The tires whispered against the asphalt. The tinted windows swallowed all light, giving the impression we had pulled up somewhere outside of reality—some abandoned stretch where no one ever came back, where echoes of life didn’t reach.
My pulse thundered in my ears, a drumbeat louder than the van’s purr, louder than my own ragged breathing, filling every inch of space inside me.
Every shadow seemed poised to move. Every sound—distant dog, fluttering tarp—set my nerves alight.
The rear door hissed open, the soft hydraulic sound cutting through the night like a blade.
Moonlight spilled across the threshold, outlining Ruslan in sharp, lethal relief.
