“How?”
“You do everything I ask. Not one hesitation. Not one complaint,” I said, my voice hardening to the register that communicated finality rather than negotiation.“Everything. Without question.”
Her eyes found mine.
Her lips parted.
The pause before she answered told me everything about what it cost her.
“I agree,” she said.
“This is a trial run,” I said, walking toward the door.
I knocked.
“Clean yourself up before you see Runa. I’ll be waiting in the car.” I paused with my hand on the frame.“Collect your things and get outside.”
I didn’t look back as the door opened.
Behind me I could hear her scrambling—the blanket, the movement, the urgency of someone who had been waiting for days for this and was not wasting a single second of it.
It was only then that I smiled.
This is what they called two birds with one stone.
I whistled all the way to my car.
Chapter 63
Iskra
The journey was silent. Bogdan and Tikhon barely moved, let alone talked. Vadim was on his phone for most of it, his voice low and clipped, the business of Chernograd continuing regardless of what had just happened in a police cell.
As we drew closer to the house, hope welled up inside me—unwanted and unstoppable, the way hope always was. Yes, I had bargained with the devil. But I was about to see my baby.
I held my breath as the iron gates opened.
Through my peripheral vision I glanced at Vadim, but he was still on his phone, his attention elsewhere, his profile giving nothing away.
“Shower in your old room and come into mine,” he said as the car came to a stop.
I almost gasped.
His lip curled in disgust.
“Get your mind out of the gutter. Runa’s cot is in my room.”
My cheeks burned. I nodded and clawed at the door handle. Bogdan opened it before I could manage it and I climbed out and didn’t stop.
I didn’t look at anyone. Didn’t speak to anyone. My only concern was Runa—and getting the stench of that cell off me before I held her.
The west wing was exactly as I had left it. The ostentatious chandelier. The rich red and gold. The room that had been my cage and was now—what? I didn’t know yet. I wasn’t going to think about that yet.
My eyes went to the nightstand.
The rings were gone.
I stood there for a moment with that fact. This wasn’t about him or me. It was about our daughter. Only that. Only Runa.
