Chapter 31 Kaia
KAIA
Antov keeps me confined to my room for the first few days.
The sheer anxiety of being under his roof and near him helps me play into the idea that Gallagher traumatized and starved me during my time with him.
I feign weakness every time my uncle visits me, playing into that weakness when the doctor checks me over, and take my time working out the most believable answers to the constant questions that come my way.
Why are some of my wounds treated?
Flynn treated me in haste when he realized I could be traded.
Why didn’t I go and save my brother?
They’d blindfold me and make me walk for ages so I had no idea how to find the cells, and the compound was on high alert.
Can I retrace the route I drove to get here?
Check the GPS, since it would have recorded my route.
When they tell me the GPS was broken by a bullet, I feign ignorance and tell them I didn’t notice because I was intent on fleeing.
I promise I’ll do my best to remember and return to bed.
Every day the questions are the same, as if they expect me to remember something else the more I rest, but I keep my answers the same and refuse all painkillers.
When the doctor presses why, I simply tell him that Flynn used to drug me and I’d rather feel my pain and discomfort to remember I’m alive and safe.
I can’t tell them I don’t trust whatever they put in their needles.
It’s the same with the food. It all ends up down the toilet and the drinks they bring me are washed down the sink.
I survive on tap water because the risk of being drugged is far too high.
When the doctor leaves and my uncle’s generals leave after asking me the same eight questions, Uncle visits.
Every single night.
He sits on the edge of my bed and pets my hair, pulls me into close embraces, and lets his hands wander over my body in ways that churn my stomach in utter disgust, but I maintain my weak facade and put up with it all for one reason.
Eva.
I need Uncle to trust me enough to let me wander on my own, without someone watching me, and to leave me alone long enough for me to sneak away.
Unfortunately, after four days of the same repulsive dance with that man, it becomes clear that he’s never going to leave me alone.
He tells me they’re planning an assault on all of Flynn’s estates in order to find Vic, and then we’ll all be together as a happy family.
I see in his eyes exactly what that means.
I’m out of time.
As night falls on the fourth day, I dip my hands into the running water in the ensuite and scoop up a mouthful of water.
It’s cold and tastes slightly metallic, but it’s kept me going for four days and so I can handle it.
The estate falls quiet other than the light footfalls of guards patrolling the hallway outside my door.
My ribs don’t throb as sharply as they did on the night I arrived here, which makes it easier to slip quickly out of my nightwear and into leggings and a shirt I drag from the closet.
I can’t wait any longer.
I’m going to sneak down the trellis outside my window, like I used to do as a kid, and sprint toward where I remember the catacomb entrance to be. If Eva’s there, I’ll find her.
Securing sneakers to my feet, I approach the window but as I open the doors to the balcony, hesitation slows my movements. It’s been some years since I climbed down that trellis.
It was only ever to sneak away and play with Anya when I’d been grounded, and I was a lot smaller and lighter back then.
Will it still hold my weight all these years later?
I never get my answer. As I brace on the edge of the balcony, sharp knuckles rap on my bedroom door, making me jump.
“Yes?” I call out, feigning hoarseness in my voice.
“Antov has requested your presence at dinner.”
“Oh.” Shit. “That’s sweet but I’m really not hungry.”
“He insists,” comes the cold reply. “You have ten minutes.”
He wants me at dinner?
I replay the day’s events in my mind as I retreat back into my room.
Did I not play up my weakness enough?
Did I say or do anything that made him think I was well enough to attend and eat dinner?
I glance back at the balcony. Ten minutes isn’t enough for me to get down the trellis and across the grounds. If anything, I’d make it to the hidden entrance just as someone alerted Antov to my absence and it would all be over.
“Fuck,” I murmur softly.
I can do this.
Sitting through one dinner won’t be that difficult. I just need to play into him the same way I played into Vic.
Changing blouses and trading sneakers for simple flat shoes, I open my bedroom door and flinch as I’m suddenly face-to-face with one of my uncle’s guards.
Our eyes meet and the cold, uninterested weight in his gaze makes my stomach churn.
Was he standing out here like this the entire time?
“Little close,” I murmur, holding the doorframe for balance.
The man doesn’t speak, but he offers me his elbow and, to maintain my lie, I take it and lean heavily on him as we walk down the hallway and descend the spiral staircase to the foyer I collapsed in a few days ago.
From there, it’s a short walk to the dining room and the guard removes his elbow from my hand as I enter the room.
“Enjoy,” the guard says and he turns his back, taking up residence outside the door with one other man.
Confusion warms my chest, and I take a deep breath that escapes me in a sharp punch the moment I walk into the dining room.
In the middle of the room, seated at a circular table heaving under a variety of food resting on silver platters and ceramic bowls, sit two people.
My uncle sits at the far end of the table with his plate piled high and a chicken leg clutched in one fist as he tears chunks of meat from the bone.
That’s not what sickens me.
To his right-hand side sits a girl.
She’s the mirror image of Angie except that she’s paler, a little thinner, and her hair hangs in straggles around her shoulders like rat tails.
Dark circles shadow under her eyes and she stares down at her empty plate, unmoving and barely blinking.
My uncle knew where she was.
It takes all my self-control to walk normally toward the table and I take the only other free seat on my uncle’s left side.
“Kaia.” He beams. “It’s so good to see you up and about.”
“Thanks.” I force a smile as I sit. “Forgive me, I didn’t know we’d have company.”
Antov reaches for Eva and touches her cheek, then slides his hand into her thin, straggly hair. “She always eats with me,” he replies. “Has done ever since she got here, although tonight she’s being a bad girl and not eating. That’s not like her at all.”
From the lackluster shine on her skin, I doubt that completely.
Wait…since she got here?
Did Vic lie to me?
Has she been with Antov this entire time?
Vic seemed so confident…
Antov must have figured out where she was.
“I understand,” I say calmly. “Appetite is a fickle thing.”
“Not for you,” Antov replies immediately. “You ate like a pig until you looked like one. Not that I care. I always like my woman with a lot of meat on their bones.” He grins at me with threads of meat caught between his teeth.
The repulsion rises and I force a smile that wavers at the corners of my mouth.
All my years growing up here under his care, every meal had a comment about my weight.
At every event, he made snide remarks with my aunt and I accepted them all, used them as fuel when we practiced and exercised with Anya.
My curves never faded but I built up stamina and strength on par with my weight.
Antov suddenly stands and begins loading my plate with food I won’t be able to stomach, and it strikes me like the cold lash of a whip.
Not once did anyone at Flynn’s place, or Flynn himself, ever pass comment or judgment on my weight.
No one questioned me, no one commented or judged me.
If anything, Flynn barely seemed capable of keeping his hands off me and any comments that reached me were about my actions or my paintings.
How strange that my family’s enemy saw me as more of a person than my own family.
I miss it.
The longing for Flynn and his home, a warm dinner with Angie and him where those worries don’t exist, floods my chest and a static tightness sweeps from shoulder to shoulder.
“Eat up,” Antov insists. “He might have been starving you, but you’d hardly notice. Your body’s probably in survival mode. A few food meals and the weight will fall off!”
I want to reply but the words don’t come.
Despite staring at my plate as I pick up my fork, my attention is fixed on my peripheral watching Antov’s hand reach for Eva once more.
She doesn’t even react.
No flinching. Nothing.
She reminds me faintly of the first time I met Angie, quiet and subdued without a single word to share.
I have to get her out of here.
No matter what happens, I will keep my promise.
“Something wrong with my cooking?”
Antov’s sharp words draw me out of my wandering thoughts.
“I’m not terribly hungry.”
“Why? You’re home. You’re safe. You should be eating like a pig.”
“Not when I don’t have an appetite.”
He meets my gaze and holds it, his brows pinching together. “Eat. Don’t be so fucking ungrateful.”
The cold edge to his voice forces me to smile weakly and pick up my fork, but the metal is barely in my palm when he reaches for Eva and drags her right out of her seat.
The moment he hauls her into his lap, something in me snaps.
The table knife ends up in my other hand and I launch myself upward with a yell, throwing myself over the table and into my uncle as he yells out in surprise.
We collide.
Eva falls to the side.
Uncle and I topple with his chair to the floor and I raise my fist, driving the knife down hard on his shoulder.
He cries out in pain and his scream, plus the commotion, has the dining room door flying open.
Both guards from outside burst into the room and I punch Antov across the face as hard as I can, reach between us and grab his gun from his hip, and then roll onto my back.
As I sit up, I take aim and fire multiple times at the guards until they both collapse on the ground in front of me.
My hand burns and my heart pounds as I scramble to my feet, suddenly aware of someone screaming.
Turning, Antov’s scrambling across the floor toward Eva, who’s curled herself under her chair with her hands over her ears while she screams.
I don’t have time to think this through.
I aim at my uncle and fire twice, watching his body jolt as one of the bullets finds a home somewhere, then I leap over him and crash down painfully on my knees next to Eva.
“Eva?”
She doesn’t react.
“Eva, we have to go! I’m Kaia. Angie sent me!”
Her scream cuts off immediately and she looks up at me, her eyes wide and filled with tears.
With no time to comfort her, I hold out my hand and the moment she takes it, we’re running.
Out of the dining room and down the hall, we sprint as fast as we can with Eva doing an amazing job keeping pace beside me.
We pass the offices, run through the large kitchen and past some very alarmed staff, then out through the back doors onto a large patio that opens out onto a dark garden lit by patchy lights.
“Come on,” I pant, each breath tearing past my pounding heart and covering my tongue in an odd taste of iron. “Keep running!”
Did I kill him?
I hope I fucking killed him.
I should have checked.
No time.
We sprint across the grass at full speed, and as Eva begins to slow, I pause, scoop her into my arms, and we resume running.
My head pounds as hard as my feet on the grass, following old paths from distant memory across flower beds, past trees and bushes, and around the gazebo until we reach the back wall.
There’s no time to get any kind of signal out to Flynn’s men; all I know is to keep running and never stop.
At the wall, I lower Eva.
“Here, Eva. You’ve got to climb this trellis, okay? We have to go high. I know it’s scary, but we have to, okay?”
“You too?” she asks, and I’m brought to a halt because suddenly I’m staring down at Angie and my heart breaks.
“Yes, I’ll be right behind you. Up you go!”
Eva’s halfway up the wall when the foghorn of an alarm blares across the estate and a row of lights surrounding the entire manor clunk to life.
She reaches the top and I climb after her, scarcely feeling the wood and vines as they cut and pierce into my palms, or the scrape of the wall against my shin as one of the wooden slats crumbles under my foot and takes my shoe with it.
“Jump,” I gasp as I reach the top. “It’s high, I know but we have to jump!”
“I—.” Eva chokes, tears pouring down her face, but whatever she wants to say gets snatched away by a sudden hail of gunfire thudding into the wall inches from where we’re balanced.
With no time, I take Eva in my arms and throw us both from the wall.
Her ear-piercing scream cuts right through me in the few seconds we’re falling.
We hit the embankment hard and roll.
My shoulder screams in pain, my hip complains, and I quickly push Eva away from me as we roll so as not to hurt her.
Coming to stop at the dirt at the bottom, I barely have a second to catch my breath before we’re up and running, Eva’s hand in mine.
She’s openly sobbing and wailing now, but I don’t have time to check on her.
All I can do is run.
Run past trees, down a hill and toward the glittering streetlights and deafening roar of the busy main road at the bottom of the embankment.
If we can make it there, we can make it—
“Agh!” A sharp crack of a gunshot matches the sudden agony that explodes across the back of my thigh, and I collapse face-first in the dirt.
Eva’s fist slips from my hand as white-hot pain radiates from my thigh to my ass and down to my knee.
I got shot.
I got fucking shot.
“Run Eva!” I jerk my head up and glare at where she stands a foot away. “You hear me? You run, okay? Keep running!”
She takes a step away, one hand at her mouth as she chews on her knuckle through her sobs.
“Run!” I scream at her, bracing both hands in the first. “You run and you don’t stop, okay? Keep running!” Gritting my teeth, I climb onto my knees then painfully onto my feet as agony twists through my leg. “I’m right behind you, see? Run!”
Eva turns on her heel and sprints away from me as fast as she can, disappearing down the hill toward the busy road.
I try to follow, but one step on my injured leg brings me right back down into the dirt.
“Run!” I scream again, praying my words reach her. “Just keep…keep running!”