Page 10 of Claimed By the Pakhan

I step out of the car, grabbing the passenger door for her. She refuses my hand, dragging herself out of the vehicle, leaving the door open for me to shut.

She folds her arms over her chest, gazing up at my estate. She’s called this place home for an entire year and looks as though she’s about to enter a prison. Coincidentally, she had the same look on her face three years ago when my associate dragged her inside.

Gravel crunches underfoot as she walks down the driveway, heading to the porch.

The estate is nestled in the middle of the forest, built using nearby supplies. The dark oak and stone can be intimidating to city folk, when all you know are contemporary gray buildings with no character.

A rhythmic tapping echoes through the forest walls, the woodpecker coming out of its nest to welcome Fia back home.

She steps up onto the porch holding her breath. She studies the trees, following them up to the sky as if to scale the height of each one.

“What happens when you need to buy more milk and can’t make a quick trip to the grocery store?”

“I steal someone else’s.” I wink at her, unlocking the front door.

It creaks on the old hinges, slowly opening to reveal a dark corridor.

“You should consider oiling that down,” suggests Fia.

“I like the noise it makes,” I reply. “It notifies me when somebody is entering.”

“Like people would leave the city to come pay you a visit.”

“They do as they’re told.”

Another cautious look from Fia.

She exhales a long breath and steps inside, gasping all of a sudden. She stumbles into the wall, collecting her thoughts, pressing her palm against the dark oak to stabilize herself.

I frown, watching her for a moment. The same thing happened after the ultrasound when I touched her stomach.

“Another memory?”

When she doesn’t respond, I snake my hand around her lower back, bringing her away from the wall. She’s still weak from the coma, but she’s always done a bad job of protecting herself, even before the accident.

If Fia had her best interests at heart, she’d have known to wait until morning before snooping around my very dangerous dockyard in the dead of night, or even better, avoided the trip completely…

And in turn, I never would have met her.

Fia loses herself in the facts and is always so determined to win that she forgets about the risks.

“Don’t touch me,” she gasps, shaking me off as she walks down the corridor. She finds her way to the kitchen without my assistance. “This house is…” she loses her train of thought in the trees, staring through the floor-to-ceiling windows in the kitchen that lend a pleasant view of the forest. “Weirdly familiar, like I’m getting déjà vu.”

“Of what exactly?”

Fierce lines form between her brows as she stares hard at the trees, determined to get her memories back.

A text message interrupts me. I slip my phone from my pocket, replying to Luka.

ME: She’s back at the estate if you want to pay her a visit.

Luka’s response to Fia losing her memory was rather positive.“At least she’s not dead,”is what he assured me yesterday afternoon.

But burying Fia would be easier than losing her to amnesia.

I open the kitchen cabinet and grab two glasses, filling both up with water. “Here.” I slide a glass over the island to her. “You should drink something. Hospitals make you dehydrated.”

Fia takes one look at the glass and grimaces. “Got anything stronger?”