That was when two men walked in, heading straight towards me.
“I’m to personally oversee your detention until your ‘problem’ is solved,” Damian told me.
“Hm-mm,” I muttered as the two men stood on either side of me.
“You’re coming with us,” the one on my right informed.
I nodded once and walked with them.
Just a few feet to the magnificent door, I turned my neck back towards Damian.
“You know, there’s really no need to sugarcoat. I know the Lobanov name. And I know what happens to loose hands.”
He tilted his head a fraction, but his expression remained unreadable.
Voice calm, I continued, “Killing me won’t end the lawsuit—it will detonate it.”
He didn’t say anything, but the shift in the atmosphere was palpable, to me at least.
The man dragged me forward, forcing me to look away from the man whose eyes were fixed on me.
We walked past a few doors along a dimly lit hallway until we stopped in front of one at the end. The one on my left unlocked the door with a key, and the other one released me, standing behind me. I stepped inside the room, and they shut the door immediately, the click of the lock sounding final.
I stood alone in the room, overlooking a city that suddenly felt very far away. My phone was gone. My freedom was gone.
I wasn't sure what would happen next, but I wasn't scared.
Not yet.
Chapter Two
Damian’s POV
The silence of the safe house, which was the closest thing to comfort most times, was a pressurized weight that sat heavily on my chest. This time, it was a physical presence that seemed to pulse in time with the hum of the cooling fans in the server rack.
The reason wasn’t far-fetched. Even if I would never admit it out loud, I couldn’t not acknowledge it in my head.
I looked down at the faint, jagged scar across my knuckles. It was a map of a decade spent in the shadows. I had overseen kidnappings before. I knew the smell of terror. I also knew that hostages were usually predictable, that they had a predictable rhythm. I had spent fifteen years studying that rhythm and perfecting the art of breaking it. They pace until their feet ache and their soles bleed, sob into thin pillows, or call out to a God they only remember when the bolt turns.
I remembered a sniveling accountant from three years ago who had offered me five million dollars in a secure account to let him walk; he’d died with the password still on his lips. I remembered a rival soldier who had spat on my shoes to prove his bravado; he’d died with a look of pure, childlike shock when I didn’t even blink. It was almost always fear, hysteria, or desperate bargaining.
Elena Vasiliev did none of that. She fit into none of the patterns.
I leaned against the doorframe of the monitoring room, the blue light of the surveillance monitors washing over my face in cold, flickering waves. My eyes were fixed on her folded hands. Through the grain of the feed, she remained a statue of composure, seated on the edge of the bed as if she were waiting for a board meeting in a glass-walled skyscraper rather than an executioner in a room that might as well be a prison.
The way those icy-blue eyes looked fearlessly into mine replayed in my mind. I thought of how composed she was even as her annoyance seeped out. It was like she was so sure that the end wasn’t coming for her today.
I was walking down the hallway to the room where she was kept before I could think twice.
I entered the room without announcing myself, a deliberate assertion of dominance designed to jar the nerves of anyone who thought they were safe. Elena’s posture did not indicate that my entrance had such an effect. She didn’t even flinch when the heavy steel door locked behind me with a definitive, echoing thud.
She didn’t look up immediately; she waited until I was standing in the center of the room, my shadow falling over her. When she finally raised her head, her gaze didn’t hold fear. It held a clinical curiosity. There were no tears or signs of panic. She looked like she was measuring me and not the other way around.
“Damian,” she uttered, her voice as smooth as her expression. “Hi.”
I didn’t acknowledge her greeting. I couldn’t. Instead, I mentally cataloged everything from her breathing to her posture. Her calm was a result of either arrogance or training—and I was experienced enough to know which was actually dangerous.
I noticed her body before I wanted to. My eyes caught the curve of her hips beneath her conservative, office skirt and shirt. I noticed how she filled the space with her presence and how her quiet confidence felt like deliberate provocation. Attraction rose within me, but years of practice helped me automatically register it not as heat but as irritation. I shut it down immediately.
