This isn’t where Rowan is being held. This is where Ivan wants me standing.
He stands near the center of the warehouse floor, far enough from the crate rows to keep open space around him. Dark coat.Hands empty. He looks completely at ease. His men linger behind him and along the walls, half hidden in the shadows. The way they’re placed tells me this wasn’t thrown together. Ivan planned it carefully, and he looks confident enough to believe that planning alone wins the fight.
He smiles when he sees me, and there’s nothing warm about it. Just satisfaction.
“You came,” he remarks.
His voice carries easily through the warehouse, smooth and low, like this is just another conversation instead of the kind that usually ends with bodies on the floor.
I stop ten feet from him and let my eyes move past his shoulder once before returning to his face. “You asked for that.”
Ivan notices the glance. “Looking for her already?”
“Yes.”
He folds his hands loosely in front of him. “Then I should save you a few minutes. Rowan isn’t here.”
The confirmation hits exactly the way he wants it to, delivered calmly enough to see what I’ll do with it. I don’t react. At least not where he can see it. My pulse stays even, and my breathing doesn’t change. But my focus narrows around the words he just said.
Rowan isn’t here.
Which means one of two things. She’s alive somewhere else, or she’s valuable enough that he wants me to believe she is.
“Proof,” I instruct.
Ivan’s mouth curves slightly. “Straight to business.”
“You brought me to an empty warehouse in the middle of the night. Don’t act surprised.”
He studies me for a moment, as if checking whether the calm in my voice is real or performed. Then he laughs softly and reaches into his coat. Every gun in the room is suddenly more present. None of his men moves, but the room changes around the motion.
Ivan withdraws a phone. He taps the screen once and turns it toward me from where he stands. A live feed fills the display. Rowan is seated on a narrow cot under harsh fluorescent light, her hair pulled back, and her face pale but unmistakably hers.
Alive.
I take one step forward without meaning to. Ivan lowers the phone again.
“That’s the only free step you get,” he murmurs.
I force myself to stay where I am. The image stays with me anyway. Rowan’s face. The way her shoulders are set, trying to hold herself together. The room behind her comes back piece by piece as my mind replays it. A concrete wall, a vent near the ceiling, and a roll of bandages sitting on a small table in the corner. Lila is partly cut out of the frame, but there’s enough to see dark hair and one arm pressed against her side.
Lila is there with her. And she’s injured.
Ivan sees the change in my expression and smiles a little more openly now, pleased with himself.
“You understand,” he remarks, “why I asked you to come alone.”
I meet his eyes. “I understand that you want me here for a reason.”
“Yes,” Ivan replies. “And we’re finally close enough for you to hear it.”
He studies me with the quiet patience of a man who believes the next few minutes belong entirely to him. The industrial lights overhead give off a faint electrical hum that blends with the distant clatter of a train somewhere out in the yard and the slow mechanical sounds of the building.
I keep my attention on him. Not the men stationed behind the crate rows. Not the staircase along the far wall. Not the loading doors that could open or close in a heartbeat if someone outside decides the conversation has gone on long enough. My focus stays on Ivan. If the room turns violent, everything will pivot around him.
“You’ve seen enough to know she’s alive,” he remarks, slipping the phone back into the inside pocket of his coat with an easy motion. “That should make this conversation easier.”
My hands remain loose at my sides while I watch him. “Then stop wasting time,mudak.”
