I don’t pretend to misunderstand the question. “Yes, he did.”
Maria’s mouth presses into a thin line. “I never trusted him.”
Lila and I exchange a glance. Maria steps closer and lowers her voice even further. “Do you want to get out of here?”
Up close, the signs of strain are easier to see. There are shadows beneath her eyes that weren’t as noticeable before, and the skin around her mouth has drawn thin with the kind of fear people have when they’ve already crossed a line and know there’s no way back across it.
Lila is the first to speak. “Absolutely,” she says.
The word comes out too fast, edged with desperation, and Maria’s eyes dart toward the door again before returning to us.
“You need to keep your voices down,” she murmurs. “They’re moving people and checking vehicles. Everyone is watching everyone else right now.”
That matches what I’ve been hearing through the walls. The corridor has been full of restless motion ever since Ivan walked out and left us here with the knowledge that Arkady was dead and everything inside this building had started rearranging itself around the hole he left behind.
Maria unscrews one of the bottles and pushes it toward me. “Drink.”
I hesitate, and she notices.
“It’s water,” she says, almost impatiently. “If I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t be standing in this room risking my life to do it quietly.”
There’s no softness in the remark, but there doesn’t need to be. Fear has stripped whatever caution she was still holding onto.
I take the bottle. The plastic is cold against my fingers. The water tastes faintly metallic, probably from old pipes, but it’s still water, and my mouth is dry enough that I drink more quickly than I meant to. Beside me, Lila unscrews the second bottle and takes a long swallow without taking her eyes off Maria.
“Why now?” I ask.
Maria looks at me longer than she has before, and something in her face changes when her eyes drop again, briefly, toward my stomach.
“Because I heard what happened in the hall,” she replies. “I heard about Arkady, and I heard enough after that to understand he knew.” Her back teeth clench. “He knew you were carrying a baby, and he did this anyway.”
I look down at the bottle in my hand and feel the familiar mix of disbelief and protectiveness move through me all over again. Even now, even here, the fact of it still comes in strange, uneven waves. My child. Kiren’s child. A future that should have been private and quiet and ours before it became leverage in someone else’s hands.
Maria releases a deep breath and shakes her head once. “I never trusted Ivan. Men like Arkady, I understand. Men like Ivan smile while they decide whether they need you alive.”
Lila lets out a short breath that might have been a laugh in another room and another life. “That’s accurate.”
Maria doesn’t react to the comment. She’s already looking at the door again, measuring time.
“There’s a service corridor at the end of this hall,” she says, lowering her voice further. “It leads to a loading bay. They’re moving crates and paperwork. The guards are distracted, but they won’t stay that way long.”
“Can you get us there?” I ask.
“I can get you out of this room.” Her eyes meet mine directly. “After that, you move fast and you don’t hesitate.”
Lila’s spine stiffens. “What about outside?”
“There’s a side access door off the loading bay. It opens toward the freight lot behind the warehouse. If you reach the fencing, there’s a service gate the workers use.” Maria swallows. “It should still be unchained.”
Should.Notis.
Lila hears the same thing I do. “Should?”
Maria’s face hardens. “I don’t have better than that.”
Neither do we.
I cap the bottle and set it down on the table. My heart has started beating harder now from the sudden possibility taking form in the room. It feels dangerous to let hope grow too quickly. Hope makes your hands move faster than your judgment. It makes people sloppy.
