These land with purpose, echoing up the stairwell like a countdown.
My breath catches in my throat as my body goes utterly still, every muscle locking as if I’ve suddenly been turned to stone.
I don’t move.
I can’t.
All that exists is the sound of those footsteps climbing closer and closer until they reach my floor, and then they stop right outside my door.
The silence that follows is worse.
It stretches, heavy and oppressive, filling every corner of the apartment until it feels like I’m breathing it in instead of air.
I stand there in the middle of my kitchen, fear coiled tight in my chest, knowing that whatever I’ve been running from has finally caught up, just as I feared.
I should’ve run last night. I should’ve packed up our things the second that SUV pulled away from the curb because my gut has never truly been wrong. I should’ve taken Luca and disappeared before dawn, before whoever that man was climbing out of that SUV decided I was worth coming back for.
A sound breaks the silence.
It’s the unmistakable twist of the lock at the front door.
The noise moves through the apartment, ricocheting off the walls like a gunshot going off inside my skull.
I hear the chain catch as the door begins to open slowly, pausing before it’s rattled to test the chain’s strength.
For half a second, my body betrays me. I’m frozen in place with my hands curled uselessly at my sides.
Every nerve in my body screamsmove,run,hide, while my muscles remain locked in place, unresponsive as if fear itself has turned me to stone.
Then the door explodes inward.
The chain snaps with a violent crack, the force of it rattling the walls.
The sound is deafening, chaos crashing into the apartment in a rush of motion and noise that I barely have time to register before masked men appear.
My fragile illusion of safety shatters in an instant.
I scream and lunge for the first thing within reach—the pan still hot from the stove—and swing with everything I have at the man who enters the kitchen first. It catches him square in the shoulder, the impact hard enough to jar my arm down to the bone.
He barely flinches.
Another man barrels into the kitchen from behind him and is on me instantly, fingers like steel bands around my arm as he wrenches me down and pries the pan out of my hand, tossing it away from me.
My knees slam into the floor, but I don’t give in. I fight anyway, kicking and clawing and twisting in his grip as pure instinct takes over.
“Let go!” I scream.
Luca’s cry rips through me, echoing from the bedroom. “Mama!”
Something feral breaks loose inside me.
I don’t think, I just move.
Tearing myself free with a scream, my skin burns as I wrench out of the grip trying to pin me to the floor.
I land a solid punch against his jaw and sprint for the bedroom.
A third man has Luca by the front of his shirt, holding him up like a bomb about to detonate.
