Maksim watches me struggle, and for a moment he looks almost sorry.
Almost.
Then he says, “Save your strength.”
“Don’t tell me that like you care.”
“I do care.”
“You kidnapped me.”
His eyes close briefly. When he opens them, the regret is gone.
“Yes,” he says. “I did.”
A sound escapes me then, half laugh, half sob, because the horror of it finally catches up. The calm admission. The plainness. The fact that Maksim, of all people, is standing in front of me with my blood probably still under his fingernails from saving my life hours ago.
“You helped deliver my baby,” I say.
His face tightens.
“And now you’re using me to hurt her father.”
“Viktor has taken enough from other people.”
“He didn’t take me from anyone.”
Maksim looks at me. Something in that look makes me wish I hadn’t said it.
“No,” he says quietly. “You gave yourself to him. That’s worse.”
I struggle harder the second he turns away from me. The restraints bite into my wrists, but I don’t stop. Pain is better than helplessness. Pain is at least something I can understand. The chair scrapes against the concrete, loud in the stale little room, and my breath comes too fast as I twist my hands, trying to find any slack, any weakness, any chance.
“Maksim,” I say, forcing my voice not to break. “Please.”
He looks back at me. For a moment, I almost see the man from the hospital again. The dry humor, the tired eyes, the doctor who told me to breathe when my body was tearing itself open.
Then that version of him disappears.
He comes closer, and I tense so hard the incision pulls and a sick wave of pain moves through me. I can’t stop my flinch. He sees it and, horribly, adjusts his grip before he touches me, as if some instinct in him still knows where not to press.
“It’s almost time,” he says.
“For what?”
He doesn’t answer, just leans down, hooks an arm around me, and lifts me out of the chair. My body screams in protest. I gasp, clutching at nothing because my hands are still tied together, and the room tilts around me.
“Put me down.”
He does, but not gently. He sets me on my feet and keeps one hand locked around my upper arm while I sway, dizzy and shaking. My legs barely hold me.
“Maksim, don’t do this.”
He starts dragging me toward the door.
I stumble after him because I have no choice. Every step sends pain through my body, hot and frightening. My hospital gown clings to my skin under the coat. My wrists are still bound behind my back, and the awkward pull of it makes my shoulders burn.
He opens the door. The hallway outside is narrow and dim, the floor cracked concrete, the walls stained with old damp. A strip of daylight shows at the far end where a metal door sits half open.
