His voice drops ongrateful— a half-tone, maybe less. A shift in register so subtle it could be accidental except nothing about this man is accidental. And the wordconsequencecomes out shaped differently than it should.
A tremor runs through me. Starting at the base of my spine and climbing, vertebra by vertebra, until it reaches the back of my neck and raises every hair on my arms. My skin goes hot, sweat beading at my hairline despite the fact that the room isn’t exactly warm.
My mind is afraid. My body doesn’t get the memo.
I step back, turn, and walk toward the door with steps that are too fast and too uneven. Completely without the dignity I entered with.
I reach my bedroom, slip inside, press my back against the door, and slide down until I’m sitting on the floor with my knees drawn up and my hands over my face.
My heart is hammering. My breath is coming in shallow, rapid pulls that I can’t slow down. My skin is still reacting, tingling and hypersensitive, as if the nerve endings have been turned up to maximum and every sensation is amplified.
I’m trapped in a house with a man who told me I should begrateful he didn’t do worse, and my body responded not with fear but with a feeling that speaks a different language, and I don’t know which one scares me more.
The fear I understand. Fear is Landon. Fear is a debt that grows in the night, alive.
This — whatever this is — I don’t understand. This is a man’s voice dropping half a tone on a word that means punishment. This is proximity that feels electric.
I press my forehead against my knees.
I am trapped in this house. I can’t leave. I can’t talk about why. I can’t fight the contract. I can’t afford to lose the job. I can’t afford to lose Anya. I can’t afford to feel what I’m feeling about the man who is keeping me here.
And I don’t know, sitting on the floor of my beautiful room in my beautiful prison, whether the pounding in my chest is because I’m locked in, or because of who I’m locked in with.
Both.
The answer is both.
And both terrifies me more than either one alone.
15
ROLAN
Mikhail arrives in the afternoon with the monthly report.
He sits across from me and places the folder on the desk. I don’t open it. I already know what’s inside.
“Just give me the numbers,” I demand.
“Fourteen. Six dead. Three hospitalized, critical but stable. Two relocated to the safe house in Milwaukee. Three pulled from field assignments due to injuries that compromise operational capacity.”
Fourteen men in thirty days.
“Replacements?”
“I’ve contacted our people in Detroit. They can send eight within the week, but they’re not our guys, Rolan. They don’t know the streets, the protocols, the chain of command. There’s a learning curve.”
“Then they learn fast or they go home.”
Mikhail nods. He opens the folder himself, spreading three pages across the desk. Maps, incident reports, timelines marked in his precise handwriting.
“Walk me through the targets,” I say.
He points to the first mark on the map. “The portwarehouse. Hit two days after the dinner. Coordinated breach, twelve men, heavy firepower. They came in through the loading dock and the service entrance simultaneously.”
“Casualties?”
“Two of ours. Four of theirs. We held the position.”
