It turns.
The door opens onto a narrow path between the main house and the garage structures, barely visible in the ambientlighting from security floods positioned at intervals along the perimeter. I pause in the doorway, listening for voices or movement.
Nothing.
I step outside and pull the door closed behind me, leaving it unlatched the way I found it. The cold air hits sharp and immediate, stealing my breath. I didn’t think to grab gloves, and my fingers are already numbing as I shove my hands into the coat pockets.
The tree line sits two hundred yards across open lawn, dark and dense enough to provide cover once I reach it. Getting there means crossing exposed ground where cameras sweep on timed rotations. I’ve watched the pattern enough to know there’s a twelve-second gap when both nearest cameras pivot away simultaneously.
I wait, counting heartbeats, until the lenses turn. Then I run.
The grass is wet and slippery beneath my sneakers, the ground uneven enough that I stumble twice before reaching the trees. Branches close around me, shadows swallowing the estate lights. I push deeper into the woods, breathing hard, adrenaline screaming through my veins.
The fence runs parallel to the tree line about half a mile in, marking the outer boundary of Felix’s property. I’ve studied the perimeter enough through windows to know the fencing thins near the eastern edge where the terrain gets too rocky for proper installation. If I can reach that section, if the gap is wide enough—
There are footsteps behind me.
I freeze, pulse hammering.
Panic spikes cold and sharp. Lorenzo Sartore wants me dead. Felix said it explicitly—there are men waiting for me to make a mistake. If Sartore has people positioned outside the estate perimeter, if they’ve been watching for an opportunity—
I run harder, branches whipping across my face and arms, cutting skin I can’t stop to assess. The forest floor is uneven, roots and rocks threatening to trip me with every step. My breath comes in ragged gasps, lungs burning.
The footsteps behind me don’t falter. They maintain the same steady pace, closing distance incrementally.
I burst into a small clearing near what I hope is the outer fence line and stumble to a halt.
A man stands blocking my path. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a black mask that covers everything below his eyes. He doesn’t speak. He just advances toward me with the controlled precision of someone who’s done this before.
The knife appears in his hand—long blade catching moonlight filtering through the trees.
My scream tears out raw and desperate. I scramble backward, my heel catching on a root, and go down hard. Pain shoots through my tailbone but I barely register it.
The masked man keeps coming, closing the distance with terrible inevitability.
“Felix!” His name rips from my throat before I can stop it, instinct overriding the furious knowledge that he won’t come, that he’s probably back at the estate completely unaware I’ve even left. “Felix, please—”
The man reaches me. He grabs my arm and hauls me to my knees, forcing my head down with a hand wrapped in my hair. The knife presses cold against my throat—not cutting, butpresent enough that I feel every breath move my skin against the blade.
This is it. This is how I die—in the woods half a mile from captivity that might have kept me alive, killed by men who were waiting for exactly this mistake.
I close my eyes, tears streaming hot against the freezing air.
The knife withdraws, and the hand in my hair releases.
I collapse forward onto my hands, gasping, waiting for the blade to return and finish what it started.
Instead, fabric rustles. The mask comes off.
I look up slowly, vision blurred with tears and terror.
Felix stands over me, completely calm, holding the mask in one hand and the knife in the other. His pale eyes assess me with clinical detachment, expression giving away nothing.
“This is what would have happened,” he says quietly, voice steady and controlled, “if it wasn’t me.”
The words don’t process immediately. I stare at him, breathing hard, trying to reconcile the man who just held a knife to my throat with the one who’s been feeding me dinner and apologizing for letting my brother die.
“You…” My voice breaks. “You were following me.”
