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“I just need to—”

“You’ll be escorted.” His voice is flat, final. There’s no room for negotiation or argument. He’s not asking me to comply. He’s telling me what will happen.

I hold his gaze for a moment, testing. His eyes are empty of anything I can read. He’s not a person to me. I’m not a person to him. I’m a task, an assignment, a box to check on his list of duties.

This is what it means to be in the hands of people like this.

The guard steps aside and gestures toward the door. The other guard falls in behind me as I walk out of the room.

The hallway is long and dim, lit by recessed lights that cast everything in a pale glow. There are other doors along the walls, all closed, all identical. I can’t tell if there are other people being held here or if these rooms serve some other purpose.

The bathroom is at the end of the hall. It’s small, clean, and windowless. The guard waits outside the door, his back to me, giving me a modicum of privacy while still maintaining control.

I use the facilities, wash my hands, and look at myself in the mirror over the sink.

I look terrible. My hair is tangled and my face pale. There’s a bruise forming on my wrist where someone gripped me too hard during my kidnapping. I look like someone who hasn’t slept in over a day, someone who’s been taken from her life and dropped into a nightmare.

There’s something else in my reflection too. Something I didn’t expect to see.

I look like someone who’s thinking. Someone who’s calculating. Someone who’s not giving up.

I take a breath and straighten my spine. Then I open the door and let the guard escort me back to my room.

***

Night falls, or what I assume is night.

The sounds outside change. The meal that arrives is heavier, which suggests it’s dinner rather than lunch. I eat more this time, forcing myself to consume calories I don’t want because I know I’ll need the energy.

After the tray is collected, I’m alone again.

I sit on the couch and try to organize my thoughts. I think about the system I accessed, the data I extracted, the name I found. I think about the way the architecture moved around me, guiding me toward certain pathways while obscuring others. I think about how easily I was caught, how quickly they found me, how thoroughly they understood what I was doing.

I think about Maxim.

He’s dangerous. I know that. He’s the head of a criminal organization, a man who built a system designed to hide hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal money. He’s the kind of person I’ve spent my career working against, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

There was something in the way he looked at me. Something in the way he spoke, the way he moved, the way he held himself with that absolute, unshakable control. He was calm in a way that felt dangerous, powerful in a way that felt magnetic.

I tell myself he’s a monster. I tell myself that whatever I felt in that room was fear, not fascination. I tell myself that the sooner I get out of here, the better.

I can’t stop thinking about him.

I lie down on the couch and close my eyes. The ceiling above me is the same as it’s been for hours, the light the same, the room the same. Nothing has changed except the darkness behind my eyelids.

I remember Ethan. His calm demeanor, his professional smile, the way he presented the job like it was just another contract. He seemed so normal. So government. So exactly what he claimed to be.

He wasn’t, was he? He sent me into that system knowing what I would find, knowing what it would cost. He used me as a tool, a weapon, a way to get information he couldn’t access himself.

Then he walked away.

I don’t know if the agency is looking for me. I don’t know if Ethan is trying to find me, if Sienna has reported me missing, if anyone outside these walls knows where I am. All I know is that I’m alone in a room I can’t escape, being held by people I don’t understand, and the only person who’s spoken to me directly is a man whose name I found buried in a money laundering system.

A monster.

I repeat the word in my head, trying to make it stick. He’s a monster. He’s dangerous. He’s the enemy.

The word doesn’t feel as solid as it should. It shifts and wavers, losing its shape the longer I hold it.