Sophie was curled against the far wall, arms wrapped around her knees, her whole body engaged in a rocking motion that looked more like seizure than comfort. Even in the dim light, I could see how wrong she was—the Sophie I knew moved like a dancer, all grace and deliberate precision. This Sophie was broken. Something fundamental had snapped.
Maya sat beside her.
One hand pressed to her own forehead, where dark liquid had dried in a streak down her temple. Blood. The clinical part of my brain assessed it automatically—not spurting, not actively flowing, probably not life-threatening. Her other hand gripped Sophie's arm, holding on, trying to anchor.
They were alive.
All three of us, alive and together.
The relief was short-lived. I tried to move—to sit up, to crawl toward them—and discovered the weight around my ankle.
Metal. Cold and heavy, biting into the skin just above my foot. I reached down with shaking fingers and found a cuff. It was thick and heavy. A chain ran from it to a pipe against the wall, maybe three feet of slack. Enough to move, to sit up, to lie down. Not enough to reach the door I could now make out across the room.
Professional.
The word kept surfacing. Professional restraints. Professional attack. Professional planning that had known exactly when to strike, exactly how to draw the brothers away, exactly how to take three women from one of the most secure compounds in Brooklyn.
"You're awake."
Maya's voice carried across the basement. Steady—that was the first thing I noticed. Drawing on her bedside manner. But underneath the steadiness, I could hear the strain. The fractures in her composure that she was holding together through sheer will.
"They took us from the compound." She shifted, and I heard the clink of her own chain. Another cuff, another pipe. We were all tethered. "Two hours ago, maybe three. It's hard to tell."
Two hours. Maybe three.
That meant the brothers knew by now. Maks knew. Had he found the empty rooms, the overturned furniture, the book I'd left face-down on the floor? Had he stood in the wreckage of everything he'd promised to protect and—
I couldn't think about that. Couldn't afford to.
My brain was still working, still fizzing despite the fear that wanted to shut everything down. The hum I'd noticed earlier—traffic, distant but present. We were underground but not deep. The echo when Maya spoke suggested high ceilings somewhere beyond this room. And there was something else, something my eye had snagged on without consciously processing.
A painting on the wall.
Just visible in the dim light filtering from under the door. Oil on canvas, traditional frame, the particular subject matter that my professional training could identify even in these conditions. Still life with flowers. Dutch influence, probably nineteenth century, possibly earlier.
Why would there be a painting in a prison basement?
Sophie made a sound.
Not quite a sob. Something worse—a wounded animal noise, the particular keening of someone whose pain had gone beyond tears. Her rocking intensified, and Maya pulled her closer, murmuring words I still couldn't make out. Comfort sounds. The particular medicine of human contact when nothing else could help.
I understood, then, what was missing.
Not something. Someone.
Katerina.
The baby who'd reached for me at the dinner table, who'd gripped my finger with that startling infant strength. The daughter Sophie had fought through hell to have, who represented everything she and Nikolai had built together, who was the beating heart of that impossible family I'd only just been welcomed into.
Sophie had been taken from her child.
The horror of it landed somewhere deep—deeper than my own fear, deeper than the pain still throbbing behind my ear. I didn't have children. Couldn't fully comprehend the specific devastation of being ripped from your baby, of knowing she would wake and cry and reach for a mother who wasn't there.
But I understood loss.
Understood the particular cruelty of having something precious exist outside your protection, vulnerable and alone.
The collar sat heavy against my throat.
