Outside, distant sirens begin to thread through the city air, our cue to get moving before we’re caught. I cradle Leo against my chest again, keeping him close to prevent him from seeing any of the other horrors still surrounding us.
“Let’s go find her,” I tell him.
He nuzzles his face into the crook of my neck, murmuring softly, “Okay.”
18
IVY
The second the car door slams shut behind me, something inside me snaps.
I lunge for the handle, twisting hard until my fingers ache, then slam the heel of my hand against the frame and the glass until my body stings. Heat rushes up my arms, my whole body shaking with the effort.
It doesn’t budge. The lock is firmly in place, a child-safety switch triggered to trap me inside the back of the cab.
“Open the fucking door!” My voice comes out ragged and high, tearing out of my throat.
I whip toward the opposite side and kick, legs braced against the opposite door. When that doesn’t work, I slam my shoulder into the panel behind me again and again, hoping sheer force of will might make it give.
Nothing happens.
On the other side of the metal cage-like partition separating us, Andrey slides into the driver’s seat. He doesn’t evenglance at me while he starts the engine. The partition’s narrow slots make it impossible to reach through, impossible to grab him by the collar or the hair and demand he let me out.
I could hurl myself at it with all of my body weight and still not touch him.
His hands stay steady on the wheel, eyes pinned to the road as he pulls us out of the alleyway.
I slam my fists against the window until my knuckles throb. “Let me out! We have to go back! They’re going to kill him! Andrey, please!”
He doesn’t answer at first. Only a quick flicker of his gaze in the rearview mirror betrays that he’s even listening to me. Then he looks back at the road, taking the next corner with deliberate care. Buildings streak by in smeared beiges and pedestrians don’t even glance up at the tinted windows of a car carrying me away.
I press my forehead to the glass, the chill of it shocking against my overheated skin. My breath clouds the window instantly, fogging my reflection until I can’t even see my own face staring back. Just a blurred outline, lost in a haze of panic and helplessness.
I don’t know how long I stay like that, seconds or minutes, but it’s long enough to feel the ache in my chest bloom into a hollow and endless dread.
By the time the car jerks into the cracked parking lot behind the safehouse, all the fight has drained from my limbs. My throat is raw from screaming, my fists ache. I muster one lastdesperate attempt to slam my shoulder against the door with a dull, bruising thud that reverberates through my bones, but it’s no use.
The engine cuts off with a dull rumble.
Andrey steps out without a word, slamming the driver’s side door hard enough to make the entire frame rattle. Gravel crunches beneath his boots as he circles to my side. The door unlocks with a click, but before I can react, his hand closes around my upper arm in a bruising grip to pull me out.
“Let me go, take me back! They’re going to kill him! I—he’s—please! Don’t you give a shit about him?” I shout, my heels skidding across the pavement as I dig them in, struggling against his hold.
“Stop it, Ivy,” he snaps.
He doesn’t let go, not even when I twist in his grasp. Not until he’s dragged me through the side entrance of the safehouse and up the stairs to the third floor. He shoves me across the threshold with enough force to make me stumble. I trip over the edge of the rug in the entryway and collapse into the couch, my shoulder hitting the armrest as I fall sideways in a heap.
The cushions absorb the impact but the humiliation burns all the same.
My eyes sting with tears that haven’t yet fallen. The room spins slightly, though whether that’s from panic or vertigo, I can’t tell.
Andrey is already on the far side of the room, moving with single-minded focus. He leans over Matvey who’s hunchedbehind his wall of monitors, fingers flying across his keyboard. The screens flicker with live CCTV footage. The angles change every few seconds, scanning through the exterior and interior of the restaurant like security sentinels.
I choke on a sob and stagger to my feet, drawn forward by a gravitational pull I can’t fight. My fingers clench around the arm of the couch as I lean forward, desperate to see what they’re looking at.
One of the camera angles, taken from a diagonal high corner, shows the inside of the restaurant. The tables are overturned, glass shattered everywhere, chairs flung across the floor like an invisible hurricane ripped through the space. In the center of it all stands Maksim, his silhouette rigid and braced in front of a man holding onto a smaller figure.
Leo.
