Boris hadn’t just miscalculated.
He’d planned this.
Sofia wasn’t collateral. She was the point.
I pulled out my phone and dialed Archer.
“Move her again,” I snapped the second he answered. “Immediately. No known locations. No patterns. Message me your location on the burner.” I paused and took a deep breath. “How is she?”
“She’s shaken,” Archer explained. “But she’s strong.”
“She has to be,” I replied. “More now than ever. Because Boris just signed his death warrant.”
I ended the call and leaned against the car, staring up at the snow-choked sky. Fluffy flakes fell thick and heavy around me, sticking to my lashes and my hair.
Boris wanted my loyalty. No… he expected it. I’d known him practically my whole life. Yet he would do this to me?
He thought if he took her from me, I’d return to the man I was before—cold, empty, obedient.
He was wrong.
He hadn’t weakened me and neither has Sofia.
He’d given me purpose.
And now?
Now I was going to make him truly understand what it meant to touch what was mine.
Chapter 8
Sofia
Unknown Location — Before Dawn
The safe house, if that’s what Archer called this, didn’t feel safe.
It felt like a bunker—thick walls, minimal windows, locks that whispered instead of clicked. The air smelled faintly of metal and old secrets, like the building remembered the other people who had hidden here before me.
People who’d survived.
At least I hoped they had.
In the clothes Archer had given me at the last safe house, I sat on the edge of the bed. Archer had insisted I try to rest. Instead, I perched there, my coat still on, boots still laced. I hadn’t been able to make myself undress. Taking off armor—even borrowed armor—felt like tempting fate.
My shoulder throbbed where I’d hit the pavement outside the hospital. Every little ache was a reminder of how close it had been. Inches. Seconds. A different angle and?—
Taking a shuddering inhale, I stopped the thought before it finished. I wouldn’t do that to myself.
My hand drifted to my stomach, fingers splayed, protective and reverent all at once. It was still very early. There was no movement yet. No flutter. Just the quiet, undeniable truth that I was no longer only surviving for myself. Yet I knew this early, it was a fragile existence that could easily be lost.
The stress, the attempt on my life—all of it chipped away at the protective cocoon that my little bean floated in.
“I’ve got you,” I whispered again with more confidence than I actually had, like it was becoming a mantra. “I will not let them take you.”
The words didn’t shake as I spoke. They settled.
Something inside me had shifted since the hospital. Not fear—something denser. Heavier.
