25. -24-
Nina
The moment my feet hit the balcony, my brain was running on pure instinct. Everything between Dorian shoving me toward the shelves and the cold slap of night air blurred into adrenaline.
I ducked low and slid into the shallow architectural recess beneath the balcony railing, a stupid decorative notch barely wide enough for a body to flatten into.
My boots hovered inches above open air as I wedged myself sideways against cold concrete, one palm braced on the wall, the other clawing a narrow metal drainage rail that cut across the ledge.
It dug into my skin, but I didn’t let go.
Seven stories yawned beneath me. One slip and there would be no second chances.
My thighs burned, my calves trembled as I balanced on tight muscles that were seconds from giving out.
Thank God Dorian had bought an unfinished building instead of constructing one of those modern glass towers from scratch. Decorative ledges still existed here. On a sleek glass facade, I’d already be decorating the pavement.
I pressed my cheek to the stone and closed my eyes for a second. My lungs screamed for air. Sweat slid into my eyes, but I kept perfectly still while Dorian and Malin’s voices drifted from inside.
Time stopped making sense. Black edged my vision. I adjusted a fraction of an inch, just enough to keep from collapsing, and instantly, the rail screeched softly under my grip. I nearly cried at the sound, but nothing followed it.
When the voices finally moved away from the balcony, I didn’t waste time.
I peeled myself free, climbed toward the open window under Dorian’s office, and slipped inside on legs that barely held me upright.
Thankfully, the room was empty, and the door was open.
The escape sign burned red at the end of the corridor.
I took it like it was the last thing in the world worth reaching.
After that, it was just running. Cold steel stair rails, echoing steps, heavy fire doors slamming shut behind me. The sterile stink of disinfectant filled my lungs as I tore down flight after flight. My boots thudded against concrete in a rhythm that felt like a countdown to my execution.
When the parking lot burst open around me, I didn’t slow down. My chest was on fire, but I still sprinted between cars, frantically trying to find the familiar old Toyota.
“Here you are,” I mumbled, stopping right before it, but my fingers shook so hard I almost dropped the keys twice. Then, the engine refused to cooperate.
“Come on,” I whispered to the steering wheel like it was a living thing. For some idiotic reason, I thought taking this old sack for a ride to a stalking mission was a good idea. “Don’t fuck with me now.”
The engine coughed, rattled, and eventually roared to life. God bless the Japanese and their unkillable motors.
I didn’t breathe until the hospital disappeared from the rearview mirror. Even then, every pair of headlights behind me looked like Malin’s people. Every car that switched lanes was a threat. Every shadow on the sidewalk felt like a gunman.
The underground garage of my apartment building had never looked so welcoming.
Sweat glued my shirt to my spine and my heart hammered against my ribs as I parked.
The ride up to my loft felt endless. Only after the elevator doors slid shut behind me and I was safely inside did my legs finally give out.
Sliding down the wall, I ended up on the floor in the hallway, leather creaking as my chest heaved. My hands trembled so violently that I had to sit on them. The apartment felt both too small and too big, as if the walls were pressing in while the ceiling stretched up into nothingness.
Jesus Christ!
Dorian almost uncovered my identity. Malin almost caught me. I almost died. Again. If Grandpa were alive, he would have beaten my ass with his walking stick and then applauded. In that exact order.
My brain returned to practical mode with the last remaining functional neuron. I grabbed my phone and dialed my father’s head of security. It rang only once before he picked up.
“Miss Nina,” a deep voice with a thick Italian accent answered without greeting. He never greeted.
“I want two men in the lobby of my apartment building,” I ordered, surprising myself with how steady I sounded. “From now until I say otherwise. No visitors are allowed without my explicit approval.”
“Understood,” he replied. “Should I inform your father?”
“No,” I snapped. “I will tell him when it’s necessary.”
“We will be in the lobby in twenty minutes.”
The line went dead. I kicked off my boots, peeled the leather from my skin, and tossed the new mask onto the dresser.
My ribs ached when I straightened. Almost a week old and it still protested every deep breath.
My shoulder pulled when I raised my arm, a reminder of the railing that tried to kill me in the escape from the safe house.
I stumbled into my bedroom and straight into my walk-in closet. I needed to feel the energy of my secret sanctuary.
The wall of photographs greeted me: Dorian laughing with a colleague, Dorian leaving the hospital at dawn, tie loose, hair messy, Dorian at a medical gala, tuxedo flawless, family behind him, Dorian from security footage, slightly blurred, but still the most beautiful man on the planet.
My collection grew with new printed shots I took before the kidnapping, screenshots from his social media, and a few newspaper clippings.
All pinned, taped, and arranged in a mosaic of obsession I could never show to a therapist without being immediately locked up.
I sank onto the floor in front of it, curling my knees to my chest. I stared at Dorian’s face on the wall and replayed everything.
The way he pushed me toward the shelf. The hissed “Malin can’t find you here.” The panic under his perfectly controlled expression when he said Malin would hang me by my intestines. The choice he made in a split second: to hide me instead of handing me over.
He risked lying to Malin for me, for his kidnapper, for the lunatic who drugged and cuffed him. If that wasn’t the proof he cared, I didn’t know what was.
“You’re so screwed, Nina,” I whispered to his paper face, resting my head against the wall.
My gaze shifted from his pictures to the tragic paper clipped to the bottom right corner of the board. The marriage certificate, with only my name and Dorian’s letter D, mocking me, reminding me how close I was. One pathetic letter between me and death.
If he had finished it, I would have something. A starting point, a weapon. Instead, I had hope printed on expensive paper and reality breathing down my neck.
“Could have signed faster, hubby,” I muttered, scowling at the paper. “You stitch arteries, but you can’t write your name in one go.”
I closed my eyes, seeing him again, on his hospital bed, in his office, under me.
I felt his fingers on my throat, his mouth on my skin, his voice in my ear.
Our future flashed like a slideshow in my brain.
Him sitting at the table in a luxurious dining room of his mother’s haunted mansion.
Me, sitting beside him, Malin cutting his steak like it was a heart he pulled from someone’s chest. It was that kind of dinner where I wasn’t the prey, but the wife, the valuable member of the family.
Zyon was frowning. Their mother was glaring.
Their father’s ghost was laughing from wherever mafia kings go when they die.
It was a ridiculous fantasy. It was insane to believe they would accept me, but it was the only way out of Sonny’s grip and my father’s schemes. And I had nothing to make it real.
The sting behind my eyes annoyed me. I refused to cry over missing letters and fantasies. I chose this mess. I walked into it with a gun on my thigh and a leather jacket like armor. No one forced me. No one led me by the hand.
“Now drown in it, you stupid bitch,” I hissed.
The phone buzzing on the floor beside me interrupted my self-pity moment.
I almost ignored it until I realized Lucas should’ve arrived already.
Malin’s people were quick, but if I could escape with bruised ribs and three hours of sleep, Lucas with his permanently caffeinated veins should’ve outrun them without even sweating.
Grasping the phone, I answered it.
“Miss Valentino,” the doorman’s shaky voice came through. He’d known Lucas and me since we were little kids. “Mr. Lucas is asking to come up. He looks… distressed.”
“Let him up,” I replied.
“Yes, miss,” he squeaked.
I stretched my protesting limbs and picked Dorian’s picture from the floor, hearing the elevator’s ding. Lucas burst inside half a minute later, hair wild, pupils blown, chest heaving. Fear clung to him like a second skin.
“I hate you,” he announced without greeting, slamming the door of my walk-in closet shut. “Deeply, from the soul outward.”
“Hello to you, too,” I replied, leaning against the wall. “You’re late.”
“Late?” His voice cracked as he spun toward me, eyes gleaming with a manic mix of panic and outrage.
“Malin’s people were breathing down my codes.
Do you understand what that means? My servers are dead.
My house is a graveyard of burnt circuits.
If there is an afterlife for routers, mine are screaming. ”
“At least they died heroically,” I snorted, muffling my laughter with my hand.
He glared, dragging a hand through his curls.
“I wiped everything,” he rushed on, words spilling fast. “Servers, backups, the backups of the backups. Every little pretty piece of code I wrote in the last five years is gone. My house is dark. Even my fridge is traumatized. And I ran here like a cartoon character with a bomb behind him. We’re so unbelievably fucked. ”
“You’re here,” I pointed out, taking his elbow and dragging him toward the floor with me. “Not in Malin’s dungeon, not in an unmarked grave. I call that a win.”
He sat beside me, lifting his eyes to look at the board hanging proudly on the wall.