Chapter 3 - Zara
Mikhail’s penthouse sits high enough that the city below me begins to lose its humanity.
From up here, New York stops looking like millions of individual lives colliding in beautiful, chaotic friction and starts looking more like arteries of light pulsing through concrete, traffic signals blinking in measured intervals, glass towers reflecting one another until the skyline feels like an endless hall of mirrors.
Distance does strange things to perspective. It smooths rough edges and makes noise look like order.
That, I think, is what this place is designed to do: create the illusion of order.
The penthouse is exactly what I would expect from Mikhail Korovin if someone translated him into a building, expensive without trying to be impressive yet minimal without feeling empty.
Dark stone, steel, smoked glass, clean angles, nothing soft. Even luxury here feels weaponized somehow, stripped of indulgence.
Never mind that a beautiful prison is still a prison.
Three days have passed since we returned to New York City from Dubai, and Mikhail has made his expectations painfully clear without needing to repeat them:
I am not leaving, not alone, not at all, if he can help it.
He said it in the same deadpan tone he uses, expecting zero rebuttals. Men who rely on shouting need volume because they lack certainty and control; Mikhail never raises his voice. He speaks all self-assured, with the assumption that resistance is temporary and ultimately irrelevant.
Which becomes his first mistake.
My gaze drifts from the windows to the reflection layered over them. My own face stares back, ghosted over the skyline. The exhaustion beneath my eyes has deepened in the past few days, but exhaustion isn’t the only thing that concerns me.
Every hour I spend here costs me something more than I can risk—leads decay, sources get cold feet, digital trails disappear because people with secrets rarely stay still long enough to be found twice.
Investigative journalism teaches patience, but it also teaches that timing is the difference between exposing truth and arriving just in time to document its burial.
Mikhail does not understand. If I stay here long enough, I lose authorship. He has confiscated my phone, my laptop, and my notes.
A bitter taste spreads at the back of my tongue when the realization settles unpleasantly. He may have taken my access, but he has not taken my mind.
That is his second mistake.
The first day inside this penthouse, fury burned inside me, too hot to be useful. By the second day, it cooled, so by the third, it could sharpen into a plan.
People reveal themselves through routine, and so do buildings.
The private elevator opens approximately every forty-five minutes. Two guards remain stationed outside the entrance corridor, though only one actively watches the interior camera feed. The second relies too heavily on peripheral awareness, which means his attention drifts in predictable waves.
Staff deliveries arrive through the service corridor twice daily, cleaning and meal service happen once.
I get four seconds in between, which isn’t anything.
But four seconds is a lifetime if everyone involved thinks nothing will happen.
I learn to disguise my steps as meandering through the penthouse. Restlessness is expected from a captive, which is useful camouflage. Pausing near the kitchen, I feign interest in a bowl of untouched fruit while watching the concealed seam in the wall opposite me.
The service entrance.
I noticed it yesterday when housekeeping came through. The lack of anyone tracking my gaze and my steps is another mistake.
Evening arrives gradually, light draining from the sky in layers until gold turns silver and silver turns blue-gray. The city begins to glow from within. There’s a faint chime of an elevator, followed by low Russian voices.
That’s the meal delivery.
My pulse remains steady, though every nerve feels pulled taut.
One guard steps toward the tray while the second glances toward the corridor.
Their attention shifts.
Four seconds. Go!
I dart.
The concealed panel gives beneath my hand. I slip inside and ease it shut behind me, swallowed instantly by darkness and cold concrete air. The silence inside the service stairwell feels absolute, broken only by the faint mechanical hum of the building’s infrastructure.
I descend quickly, one hand grazing the rail.
Thirty floors in this building.
Twenty-eight, twenty-five. I count.
Nineteen, sixteen—
I jolt to a stop as voices echo above.
The sound of footsteps is metallic against concrete. Judging by their low tenors, it’s two men. The sound reverberates strangely in enclosed spaces, making distance difficult to judge.
Creeping closer…
One door opens and shuts, then silence returns.
I start tiptoeing again, my stride catching the same speed as before.
By the time I reach the ground floor, sweat cools between my shoulder blades despite the chill of the stairwell. My hand presses against the exit bar.
The door opens under my hand and cold spring wind laced with exhaust, rain, and the faint scent of roasted nuts from a street cart half a block away hits my lungs so sharply it almost hurts.
Horns, footsteps, conversations, sirens, music bleeding from somewhere unseen all crash into me at once. For one small moment, relief floods me so fast it nearly buckles my knees.
I made it.
But something much deeper, more primitive in my gut crawls up my spine with cold, deliberate fingers.
My feet begin walking, pace even. I let my body do what’s natural, but every sense has sharpened.
A black SUV idles too close to the curb, its engine running, no visible passenger movement. A man near a newspaper stand appears occupied with his phone, but his thumb has not moved once across the screen.
A woman waiting at the corner turns her head a fraction too late after I pass, the delay polished enough to look natural unless someone is trained to look otherwise.
It all feels familiar, like I’ve seen the same choreography before, dancing to the same music.
My throat tightens.
They were waiting.
The realization cuts cleanly through every stubborn argument I have made in my head about Mikhail’s control. This was never only about his obsession with dominance. Whatever is happening around me is real and organized, and terrifyingly dangerous.
The posture of the man near the stand leans like a jaguar focusing, about to strike its prey.
My feet halt then pivot, immediately breaking out into a run.
The wind drowns out the noise of the city, ears popping because of the sudden motion. People curse as I cut through pedestrian traffic. A shoulder clips mine and someone shouts. My boots slam pavement in sharp rhythm as I angle toward denser foot traffic.
Crowds are unpredictable, which means higher chances of survival.
Footsteps thunder behind me, too many and too close.
Something grabs my sleeve.
I twist violently, driving my elbow backward into soft cartilage. The grip loosens just enough for me to wrench free, but another body cuts across my path, forcing me toward the curb.
They are herding me. Instead of veering away from traffic, I cut directly into it.
A horn screams as I dart between moving cars. Brakes lock and rubber burns against asphalt. I plant both palms against the hood of a stopped sedan and vault sideways, using the vehicle as a barrier.
The one closest to me hesitates.
Good. Half a second matters.
Grabbing the first loose object within reach—a metal café chair abandoned beside a table—I swing it hard into the nearest advancing body. The impact echoes through my arms, jarring bone. He stumbles but does not fall.
Trained and high pain tolerance.
Ducking, pivoting, and changing direction without warning, I force them to constantly recalculate. A man lunges but I drop low and kick hard into the side of his knee. He buckles with a strangled sound. A hand locks around the back of my blazer. Fabric strains.
I toss my weight backward, bone striking bone. His grip loosens with a curse as warm liquid spatters my neck.
Blood.
My lungs burn now, each inhale scraping raw. Adrenaline blurs the glint of headlights in rain-slick asphalt, steam rising from a street grate, the metallic taste flooding the back of my tongue into a hyperreal dream.
They keep on coming but I am slowing down. I cannot outrun them forever.
I can only delay them. Every second I buy is a second something can change—a witness, or a mistake, or an opening.
Jerking around again, I grab a glass bottle from beside a trash bin and hurl it at the nearest face.
Glass explodes only a small distance from him, knocking the man off his track.
Fuck, I’m gonna die for real, aren’t I?
A large shadow falls across my path. Nothing different about it other than the men behind me slow down. Their sudden halt is unmistakable, as if predators have recognized something higher in the food chain is now present.
My breath catches.
It can’t be—
Mikhail Korovin stands in front of me, motionless in the center of the chaos, his broad frame cutting through the street’s fractured light like something carved from violence itself.
His messy dark hair is slightly disordered by the wind, black shirt immaculate beneath his coat, tattoos just visible where ink disappears beneath his collar.
Almost the same bored expression on his face as the first time he rescued me.
His gaze settles on me first, then shifts past to the men behind me. The darkness of his eyes turns completely lethal.
A moment ago, the city had felt wide and chaotic, but now everything narrows around him.
These men know who he is—everyone knows who he is.
Danger radiates from Mikhail even when his breathing remains calm and his shoulders remain loose, hands hanging at his sides.
The street noise continues to sound strangely muffled, as though all sound has been pushed behind glass.
One of the men dares to lunge.
Mikhail’s movement nearly goes undetected because of how fast he is.