“You tied my wrists, locked me in a storage room, and partnered with Karpov, whose criminal organization you were supposed to be investigating. That’s kidnapping, conspiracy, and obstruction at minimum.” I hold his stare. “You threw away your badge, your career, and your freedom for the chance to lock me in a room and tell me you’re protecting me. Does that sound rational to you?”
The question reaches a part of him that the rest of my words didn’t. He wavers for one second, uncertainty breaking through. Then he hardens again, the mask resettling, but I saw the crack. He knows what he’s done. He just can’t afford to admit it because that would mean accepting everything he’s told himself since I left him was a lie.
“Karpov is temporary,” he says. “He’s leverage. Once Adrian’s operation is exposed and his organization is dismantled, Karpov’s value disappears, and we leave Miami together. I have enough saved for a year, and after that, we’ll build something real.”
I snort, though regret it when the pain in my head flares. “You and I building something real?” Shaking my head, I say, “You kidnapped me, partnered with a criminal syndicate, abandoned your career, and locked me in a storage room. You’re sitting here describing a future where we live together? You’re either on drugs or out of your mind.”
He stiffens. “I did what I had to do.”
“You did what you wanted to do. The difference is the entire reason I left you.” I lean forward. “I am never going with you. There is no version of my life that includes you, and every second you spend in this room trying to convince me otherwise is a second Adrian gets closer to finding us.”
He stands abruptly, and the crouch-to-standing transition is the same one he used to make when a conversation stopped following his script. He paces two steps, turns, and looks at me with an expression I haven’t seen before. The concern is still there, but underneath it is something rawer and less guarded from the frustration of having dismantled his entire life around a plan that requires my cooperation, only to realize I will never give it.
“You’re carrying his children.” He says it flatly. “Twins. Karpov told me.”
That makes me freeze. Karpov knows about the pregnancy, so Eric knows about the pregnancy and it’s twins. The babies are now intelligence in the hands of two men who want to destroy their father. “How does Karpov know?”
“Does it matter?”
I let out a sound of exasperation. “It matters because someone in Adrian’s circle leaked it, and that person put my babies at risk.”
Eric’s expression flickers. The word “babies” makes him flinch, and then his expression hardens. It’s a brief, involuntary recognition the woman he’s trying to reclaim is pregnant with another man’s children, and the children make the reclamation messier and more unlikely than he planned.
“He won’t protect them.” Eric leans forward. “He can’t. His world is built on violence, and violence always finds the people closest to the source. You know that. You saw what happened to Dominic.”
“Dominic was a traitor who recorded his own clients and sold the information to Karpov. He sold me out too, so don’t expect me to have any sympathy for that man. Adrian stopped himwhile you partnered with the same organization Dominic was feeding.”
He grabs my arm above the elbow and squeezes hard enough that I’ll bruise. The grip is possessive and stripped of every pretense he’s maintained since walking through the door. This is Eric without the performance, and the man underneath is exactly what I always feared he was.
“You don’t get to choose him.” He says it through clenched teeth, and the sound of his voice, pressurized and vibrating with the effort of restraint, is one I remember from the worst nights of our relationship, the nights when his corrections became loud enough that the neighbors heard. “You don’t get to carry his children, live in his houses, and pretend he’s different from every other man who’s ever controlled you. He’s worse, and you can’t see it because he’s better at hiding it.”
“Let go of my arm.”
“Not until you listen…”
The door opens. A heavyset guard steps in, with a shaved head and a tattoo on his neck that I can’t clearly make out in the dim light. He looks at Eric’s hand on my arm and speaks with a thick accent. “Karpov says she stays undamaged for now. You want to talk, talk. You touch her again, I call him.”
Eric releases my arm and steps back. The transition from aggression to compliance is instant and humiliating. He accepted a subordinate position when he made this deal, and he’s only now discovering what that entails. He traded his badge for a leash, and Karpov is holding the other end. “We’re not finished,” Eric says to me.
“We’ve been finished for two years. You just refused to accept that.”
He walks out. The guard gives me a cold, professional look I recognize from Adrian’s operatives. This man has a job. Hurting me isn’t part of it, at least not yet. The “for now” in Karpov’s directive tells me my undamaged status has an expiration date that depends on whatever leverage I represent.
He closes the door, and the lock clicks from the outside.
I sit in the silence and let the adrenaline drain. I ache where Eric gripped my arm, my wrists still sting from the cord, and the concussion keeps up a steady pulse behind my right eye. I inventory the damage because counting hurts less than screaming.
When the pain starts to fade, I look at the room differently. Not as a prison, but as a workspace.
The industrial shelving along the wall is bolted to the concrete, but the brackets connecting the shelves to the uprights are individually mounted with standard hex bolts. Most of them are corroded from the salt air and moisture. The third bracket from the bottom on the nearest unit is the worst, and the bolt holding it has worked loose; I can see a gap between the metal and the wall. If I can work that bracket free, I’ll have a piece of metal approximately six inches long with a sharp edge where the corrosion has eaten through the coating.
I shift my position until my back is against the shelving unit and my bound hands can reach the bracket. The cord bites into my wrists as I stretch, and the angle forces my shoulders into a position that makes my injured side scream, but I grip the bracket with my fingers and twist. The metal groans softly,and I freeze, listening for any reaction from outside the door. Footsteps pass in the corridor, pause, and continue, but nothing more.
I count to thirty before trying again. I go slower this time, working the bolt back and forth with a steady rhythm that minimizes noise. The corrosion helps. Each rotation loosens the threading a fraction more, and rust flakes fall onto my fingers as the bolt gives way millimeter by millimeter. The work is painful and essential. I lose track of time. Five minutes pass, or maybe ten. I cramp twice and have to stop to flex my fingers against the cord before continuing.
Adrian will come because he will tear the world apart to find me. Viktor is already hunting, Grigor is already tracking, and every man in Adrian’s organization is mobilizing because I’m now the mission.
If I get a chance to hurt Eric before they reach me, I’ll take it. Eric grabbed my arm while I’m carrying twins, looked me in the face, and told me I don’t get to choose to be with the father of my children. He made this personal in a way that went beyond kidnapping or control, into the territory where I stop being careful and start being dangerous.
