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“Just hear me out first, okay.” I lean forward, keeping my voice even, refusing to let this turn into the kind of argument he can dismiss as emotional rather than reasoned. “The person who actually tried to hurt me is gone. Fired. Not coming back. Whatever threat existed inside this house, inside your own staff, that’s resolved now. So I need you to tell me honestly, plainly, what’s actually still keeping me here.”
“It was never just about Nadia,” he says plainly, no hesitation in it at all.
“Then what is it about?” My voice sharpens despite my best effort to keep it level. “Because every time I ask, I get the same vague answer. Danger. Threats. People who might come looking. It’s been months, Artem. At what point do I get the clear, true, unfiltered answer?”
His eyes flick to the window and back, and he leans back in his chair like he’s deciding how much of the truth to give me tonight. “There’s an active threat from a rival organization. The Sokolovs. They’ve known for weeks that a woman’s been living under my protection, and recently they’ve confirmed enough to know you’re worth looking into more closely. If you walk out of here now, unprotected, you become a target in a way you’ve never been before.”
The words land heavier than I expect, some real fear threading through the anger I walked in.
It’s strange, hearing an actual name attached to the danger for the first time, some faction I’ve never heard of suddenly turning into the reason my entire life’s been rearranged. “Why am I only hearing this now?”
“Because telling you sooner wouldn’t have changed anything except giving you something else to be afraid of on top of everything you were already carrying. I decided to handle it quietly. That was mine to make.”
“That wasn’t yours to make. Not about my own life.” I stand up, needing the movement, needing somewhere to put the anger building beneath the fear, and pace a short line in front of his desk that does nothing to burn off the energy climbing through me. “You’ve spent months telling me you’re keeping me safe, and every single time I ask when that ends, the goalposts move somewhere new. First it was verifying my story. Then it was Nadia. Now it’s some entire criminal organization I’ve never even heard of. When does it actually end, Artem? Or is ‘danger’ just the excuse you reach for whenever I get too close to actually leaving, whenever this stops feeling convenient for you?”
He doesn’t answer right away, and the silence stretches long enough that it starts to feel like its own kind of answer entirely, heavier than anything he could’ve said out loud.
“That’s not fair,” he says finally, and there’s something in how measured his words come out that tells me even he hears how thin they sound tonight. “The threat is real. I’m not inventing it just to keep you here.”
“But you’re not exactly rushing to solve it either, are you? Because as long as it’s unresolved, you get to keep me exactly where you want me.” I fold my arms, watching him for the flicker of denial I expect, the reflexive pushback he’s given me every other time I’ve challenged him on anything since the day I first woke up restrained.
He doesn’t deny it.
“You ruined my life.” My voice cracks upward, no exhaustion left in it, just heat. “You took me off a job site, you locked me in this house, and now I’m carrying your child, and you still think you get to decide when I’m allowed to leave. Do you hear yourself?”
“Harper—”
“No. You don’t get to Harper me right now.” I’m on my feet, chest heaving. “Pregnant or not, with a kid or without one, you don’t get to keep me here just because it’s convenient for you. That’s not protection. That’s control wearing a nicer word.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is that simple. You just don’t want it to be, because simple means you’d actually have to let me go.”
He stands, reaching for me, and I step back before he can touch me.
“Don’t.” My voice comes out low. “Not tonight.”
He doesn’t push it. He just stands there, jaw tight.
“I already know the answer.” I grab my sweater off the chair, hands unsteady. “You’re not protecting me anymore. You’re keeping me. There’s a difference, and I’m done pretending you don’t know it too.”
I walk out and slam the study door behind me, and I don’t slow down until I’m in my own room with the door shut, my tears finally breaking loose the second I’m alone.
21
ARTEM
Three days have passed since the conversation in the study, and I haven’t found a better answer than the silence I gave her that night. I’ve run through a dozen ways to raise it again since, and every one of them feels either too small for what she actually asked or too large for a conversation I’m still not sure I’m ready to finish.
I’ve thought about it more than I’d admit to anyone, turning her question over in odd moments, in the middle of calls, in the quiet after she’s fallen asleep beside me. I can live with being afraid of something real. I don’t know if I can live with being kept here because it’s easier for you than letting me go.
I still don’t have a clean rebuttal. What I have instead is three days of trying to be worth trusting despite not having one, showing up in small ways I can’t fully articulate even to myself, hoping it counts for something in the meantime.
The house feels different without Nadia in it, more than I expected. I hadn’t fully registered how much of the daily friction in this place ran through her until it stopped. Meals come up without the undercurrent I used to half-notice and never examine closely enough. The staff moves through the halls without the tightness that used to follow her wherever she went.
Even Harper seems to breathe easier walking past the kitchen now, her shoulders visibly looser in a way I’ve started to notice more than I expected to, a small physical proof that removing one threat, at least, has actually meant something to her.
Over those three days, we fall into something I don’t have a name for. She’s less angry… or maybe pretending to be. I can’t tell. We have dinner together most nights, not because either of us decided to make it a habit, just because it kept happening and neither of us stopped it.
