I shield my eyes, the sudden brightness painful after so long in darkness. When I can finally see properly, I notice a plastic bottle of water sitting by the door. It wasn’t there before.Someone came in while I was sleeping—or passed out?—and left it without waking me.
The realization that they can enter anytime, that I was unconscious and vulnerable, sends fresh terror through me. But the thirst is worse.
I crawl to the bottle, unscrew the cap with shaking hands, and drink half of it in desperate gulps before forcing myself to stop. Save some. Make it last. You don’t know when they’ll bring more.
The light stays on for maybe an hour, then cuts off again. Back to darkness.
The cycle repeats. Darkness. Light. Darkness. Sometimes water appears. Sometimes nothing. I lose count of how many times. Three? Five? Ten?
My body aches from sitting on concrete. My muscles cramp from staying in the same position too long. I try stretching, pacing the small space, but exhaustion keeps pulling me back down.
I scream again, but my voice is weaker now. Raw from previous screaming, from thirst, from fear.
No one comes.
The isolation is its own torture. No human contact. No sound except my own. No way to mark time’s passage. My mind starts playing tricks—I hear footsteps that aren’t there, see shadows moving in the corners that might be hallucinations.
I think about my family. Wonder if they’ve noticed I’m gone yet. If they’re looking for me. If they even care.
Probably not. The bastard daughter, always causing problems, finally got herself into trouble she can’t escape.
I think about Yusuf. He’ll know something is wrong when I don’t check in. But will he know where to look? Will he even know I went to Moscow?
I think about Aleksandr Sharov. About pale blue eyes watching me with that unsettling intensity. About the way he circled me in that conference room, testing, probing, looking for weakness.
He’s doing this deliberately. Breaking me down, stripping away defenses, making me desperate before he even asks questions.
It’s working.
By the time I hear footsteps approaching—real ones this time, not hallucinations—I’m ready to tell him anything. Give him anything. Just to get out of this room, away from the darkness and isolation and cold.
The footsteps are measured, unhurried. Confident. Someone who knows they have all the time in the world.
The lock disengages. The door opens, light spilling in from the corridor.
I scramble to my feet, legs unsteady, and face the doorway. Fear coils tightly in my chest. Whoever is coming isn’t in a rush.
Which means they’re certain I’m not going anywhere. The real interrogation is about to begin.
Chapter Eight - Aleksandr
I wait twenty-four hours before I go to her.
Not because I need the time. The interrogation could happen immediately, questions asked and answered while shock still keeps her compliant. Control requires patience, and patience requires her to understand exactly how powerless she is.
Twenty-four hours in the dark. Twenty-four hours of silence and cold and nothing but her own thoughts for company. Long enough to strip away bravado. Long enough to make her desperate.
Long enough to break most people.
The question is whether Elena Lawrence is most people. I already suspect she isn’t.
Viktor meets me outside the holding cells at midnight, exactly as planned. He hands me a tablet showing security footage from the room: Elena pacing, then sitting, then lying curled in the corner. No crying. No begging at the camera. Just exhaustion and stubborn refusal to completely break.
“She’s been quiet for the last six hours,” Viktor says. “Conserving energy.”
“Smart.”
“What do you want from her?”
