I watch his shoulders move with each strike. Methodical. Without apparent anger — that’s the thing that fixes itself in my mind, the absence of visible rage. He’s not doing this in the heat of rage. My hand covers my mouth involuntarily.
He steps back.
Now I can see.
The man in the chair is — I look, and my mind refuses the image for a moment. But the image remains, insistent and undeniable. His face is wrong, swollen and split in places thatmake it difficult to parse as a face at all. He’s conscious — his eyes are open, tracking the space — but the movement is sluggish.
He doesn’t make another sound.
Rolan speaks again, still in Russian, and waits.
The man in the chair says nothing.
Rolan turns slightly, murmuring toward Alexei, and I see his hands.
The gasp I make is not loud. It’s barely a sound — a small, involuntary intake. But the room is quiet, and I am at the bottom of a stone staircase. Every head turns.
Four faces register my presence. Alexei, the two guards, and Rolan.
He turns fully. His eyes find mine across the room, and the look in them is — he had the same look on the day of the attack.
His hands are dark at the knuckles. He doesn’t lower them.
I turn around and run.
I flee up the stairs faster than I came down them, and behind me, the basement is silent.
I don’t look back as my legs carry me up and through the door. I don’t stop moving until I’m in the bedroom with the door closed and my back against it, breathing heavily.
I slide down the door until I’m sitting on the floor, and I think about Maren in her hotel room.
I can only think of one thing:I have to leave.
This time, the thought doesn’t have a question mark.
It’s hard to tell how long I sit there before my phone vibrates against the floor beside me.
Maren.
I open it with hands that haven’t entirely stopped shaking.
MARE
He found me. I had to switch hotels. Running out of options, Ellie. Running out of time. Please, I need you.
A sharp, hollow ache opens in the center of my chest. I failed to protect the one person who never asked for protection, never asked for anything besides the truth and a real friendship. For eight years, Maren has been the person I call, and she has never once failed to show up.
But I can’t help her on my own. I need Rolan, no matter what just happened.
Yet the question that refuses to leave my head remains the same.Can I trust him?
The thought sits in my chest alongside the ache. I press my back harder against the door and answer honestly,I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know anymore.
But Maren is running out of time, and I have no one else.
I get up off the floor.
His office is empty when I arrive. The desk lamp is on, so he must intend to return. I move around the desk, sit in his chair, and wait.
