I made it.
Chapter 19
Polina
The apartment was nothing like what I expected.
At least, from the outside.
I had been constructing something entirely different during the drive. Something ostentatious. A penthouse wrapped in glass and steel. The sort of place wealthy men acquired because wealth eventually became a competition with itself.
Instead, the building sat quietly among the others on the street, expensive without advertising the fact. The architecture was clean and understated. Large windows reflected the late afternoon light, and the entrance looked more like it belonged topeople who valued privacy than people who wanted to impress strangers.
This was where Jared had brought me.
Or hidden me.
Or abandoned me.
I wasn’t entirely sure which.
I had a cut on my temple held closed with a butterfly bandage that a federal paramedic had applied with brisk efficiency in the rear drive of my father’s house. I had no luggage. I had the clothes I had put on that morning with the intention of telling my father no, the burner phone in my jacket pocket, and approximately nothing else.
For a moment I didn’t move.
The last twenty-four hours had been a succession of doors opening into realities I hadn’t known existed. Federal agents. Arrests. Confessions. Freedom.
The word still felt theoretical. The car stopped.
The driver came around and opened my door.
I stepped out into a parking garage so clean it looked almost architectural. Soft lighting. Concrete. Glass. Security cameras positioned with deliberate precision.
Not my father’s style.
My father’s security had always been designed to remind people it existed.
This felt different.
Competent enough not to need the reminder.
The elevator required two separate credentials before the doors would open.
I watched the process in silence.
Jared stood beside me, close enough that I was aware of him without looking.
I had spent the drive trying not to think about him.
The effort had been largely unsuccessful.
The elevator climbed smoothly.
When the doors opened on the fourteenth floor, floor-to-ceiling windows immediately pulled my attention toward the skyline.
Philadelphia stretched beyond the glass.
Alive.
