4. Robin
Robin
M y wrists are on fire.
The zip ties have cut too deep, and every time I shift, I fear I’m going to open a vein. I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been here—hours? Days? The single bare bulb overhead flickers sporadically, casting dancing shadows that make the cramped room feel like it’s breathing around me.
Every so often, one of my captors comes in to give me water, or, in the ferret-faced one’s case, just to leer at me.
Aside from the pain and the occasional unwelcome visitor and the mounting need to go to the bathroom, I’ve been stuck with my own thoughts, which isn’t fun.
And the walls are thin. Paper-thin, really, which means I can hear everything happening in the adjacent rooms, so if I even manage to doze off, I wake right back up to the sound of shouts or running feet.
And right now, the action has picked up, and so has the conversation.
“—telling you, she won’t be in charge much longer.”
The voice drifts through the wall like smoke, rough and gravelly.
I recognize it as belonging to the stockier of my two original captors.
I still prefer him to the other, who has come in twice just to stare and lick his lips at me.
They’re both dangerous, but Ferret Face is definitely the worst of them.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” This voice is younger, uncertain. I don’t think I’ve seen him before.
“Means exactly what I said. That Novak bitch’s reign is coming to an end.”
I raise my head sharply.
“The Consortium’s got plans, kid,” the rough voice goes on. “Big plans. And they don’t include some jumped-up little princess playing dress-up in her dead daddy’s crown.”
The Consortium. Eva’s own organization. But that doesn’t make sense—Eva is the Consortium. Unless...
Unless someone within the Consortium wants her gone. But who?—
Doubt slides through my thoughts like poison, a doubt I’ve felt before.
Leon runs security for Eva and the Consortium. Leon knows exactly where we live here in Vegas, the security protocols…and my weaknesses.
Leon would know exactly how to orchestrate my abduction.
I shake my head, trying to dislodge the terrible thoughts. Leon loves Eva—I’ve seen it in the way he watches her, the careful distance he maintains that speaks of devotion rather than duty. He would die before betraying her.
Wouldn’t he?
“So what’s the timeline?” the younger voice asks. “When do we move?”
“Soon. Real soon. Just waiting for word.”
“You mean you still haven’t heard back from him?” the younger voice complains. “Starting to make me nervous. What if something goes wrong?”
“Nothing’ll go wrong. He knows what he’s doing. Been planning this for months.”
Months. They’ve been planning this for months.
Which means whoever is betraying Eva has been at her side for months, smiling and nodding and playing the loyalist while plotting her destruction. The thought makes me physically sick.
“You sure she’ll even come?” Young Voice asks. “I mean, maybe she’ll just cut her losses. Write the girl off as collateral damage.”
It’s logical. Eva Novak is a crime boss, not a lovesick fool. Her decisions are based on cost-benefit analyses. What’s one kidnapped ex-lover compared to the safety and stability of her empire?
Maybe she really would just abandon me.
The thought opens up a hollow ache in my chest, spreading outward until it feels like I might collapse from the weight of it. Eva came back for me once, but that was different. That was when she still thought she could keep me, when she still believed we could make it work somehow.
But she doesn’t think that anymore. So why would she risk everything now for someone she’s already written off?
She meant it when she said it was over. I know she did.
So why am I still hoping she’ll come?
The voices in the next room fade as the men move away, leaving me alone with my spiraling thoughts. Hours pass. Or maybe minutes. Time has lost all meaning in this windowless room with its flickering light and stale air.
Then I hear footsteps approaching—lighter than the heavy tread of the larger guy, more hesitant than the confident stride of Ferret Face. The door opens with a creak.
It’s the young one, the nervous kid whose voice I heard through the wall.
Maybe early twenties, with dark hair that needs cutting and brown eyes that won’t quite meet mine.
He’s trying to project menace, but there’s something fundamentally uncertain about him that suggests he’s new to this kind of work.
“You, uh...” He clears his throat, shifts his weight from foot to foot. “You need to use the bathroom or anything?”
The question catches me off guard. But my bladder is indeed screaming for relief, and my mouth feels like sandpaper, so I nod quickly, not trusting my voice.
He approaches with obvious reluctance, taking out a switchblade with what is supposed to be a glare, I think. “Don’t try anything stupid,” he mutters, but there’s no real threat in it. More like he’s reciting lines someone else taught him.
When the zip ties fall away, the relief is immediate and overwhelming. I have to bite back a groan as blood rushes back into my hands, bringing with it a painful tingling sensation. I flex my fingers and feet experimentally, noting the deep red cuts the plastic left in me.
The kid—I can’t think of him as anything else—takes a gun from where he must have had it tucked in the back of his waistband, and gestures toward the door with it.
It’s a small gun, but he holds it like he’s afraid it might bite him.
“Bathroom’s down the hall. And don’t get any ideas about running—there’s nowhere to go. ”
I believe him. From what I’ve pieced together, we’re in some kind of warehouse district, probably miles from anything resembling civilization. Even if I could overpower this nervous kid, where would I go?
The hallway is narrow and dimly lit, with concrete walls that have seen better decades.
My legs shake as I walk, partly from fear and partly from sitting in that chair for so long.
The kid stays about three feet behind me, close enough to shoot but far enough away that I can’t easily turn and grab the gun.
The bathroom is exactly what I expected—a single toilet in a room barely big enough for one person, with a sink that looks like it hasn’t been cleaned for a long, long time. There’s no window, no other exit, nothing that could serve as a weapon except...
“I’ll wait out here,” the kid says, pulling the door almost closed but leaving it cracked open. “You got two minutes.”
I wait until I hear his footsteps move away from the door before I sit down and pee with relief. And then I act. The toilet is old, the kind with a separate tank and visible plumbing. I lift the heavy porcelain lid as quietly as I can, wincing when it makes a small scraping sound.
The flush mechanism inside is a maze of metal and plastic, corroded with age and mineral deposits. Most of it is too big or too obviously missing to be useful, but there—a small piece of the metal mechanism has broken away, leaving a sharp, jagged edge about the size of a large nail.
I work it free as quickly as I can. The metal is rusty and rough, but it has a good point and enough heft to do some damage if I can get close enough to use it.
“Time’s up!” the kid calls from outside.
I slip the makeshift weapon up my sleeve, feeling it bite into my skin as I arrange my cuff to hide it. Then I flush the toilet and open the door, trying to look as defeated and harmless as possible.
The walk back to my prison feels like a funeral march. Each step brings me closer to that chair, to those zip ties, to the growing certainty that I’m going to die in this place. But now I have a weapon. Small, crude, but better than nothing.
The kid gestures for me to sit, then moves around behind the chair in preparation to retie my hands. This is my chance.
My only chance.
I stop where I am and don’t move toward the chair. “When Eva comes for me,” I say conversationally, “she’ll kill all of you.”
He freezes, his hands stilling on the zip ties. “What?”
I keep my voice calm, reasonable. “Eva Novak doesn’t leave loose ends. When she finds this place—and she will find it—she won’t just rescue me and leave. She’ll tear everything down. Everyone who touched me, everyone who helped, everyone who even knew about this…they’ll all die.”
The kid’s breathing has gotten faster.
“But,” I continue, “I could protect you. If you help me get out of here, I could make sure Eva knows you were the one who saved me. She values loyalty above everything else. She’d reward you for it.”
For a moment, I think it might actually work. I can practically hear the gears turning in his head.
Then his eyes narrow, and his voice hardens. “You’re trying to manipulate me.”
“I’m trying to save your life,” I reply honestly. “When Eva gets here?—”
“ If she gets here,” he cuts me off. “From what I heard, your girlfriend might just cut her losses. Write you off as a bad investment.”
The words sting because they echo my own fears. But I force myself to smile, to project a confidence I don’t feel. “Then you don’t know Eva Novak at all.”
He darts over and yanks me roughly toward the chair, his earlier nervousness replaced by anger. “Sit down and shut up.”
I start to comply, then twist suddenly and bring my hand up, the piece of rusty metal glinting in the harsh light as I aim for his throat.
I’m too slow.
He catches my wrist easily, his reflexes much better than his nervous demeanor suggested. The metal scrap goes flying, clattering across the concrete floor like a dropped coin.
“Nice try,” he snarls, and then his other hand is in my hair, yanking me back to the chair.
This time, when he binds my wrists, the zip ties bite even deeper than before. I can’t help the sharp intake of breath as the plastic cuts into the wounds that were already there. The pain is immediate and excruciating—I can feel fresh blood trickling down my fingers.
“Try that shit again and it’ll be your throat next time,” he mutters, pulling the ties so tight I’m afraid they might cut off circulation entirely. My hands are already going numb.
He steps back, breathing hard, and for a moment we just stare at each other. His earlier nervousness has been replaced by something harder, more dangerous. Whatever sympathy I might have been able to exploit is gone now.
“You’re lucky I don’t tell the other guys what you just tried,” he says. “They’d probably take a few fingers as punishment.”
The kid leaves, slamming the door behind him with enough force to make the bare bulb overhead swing wildly. I slump in the chair as much as the restraints allow, fighting back tears of frustration and pain.
Time crawls by. The zip ties are so tight now that I can’t feel my hands at all, which is almost worse than the pain was. At least pain meant circulation. This numbness could mean permanent damage.
Just when I’m starting to wonder if they’ve forgotten about me entirely, the door opens again. This time it’s Ferret Face, and his grin tells me he’s heard about my escape attempt. Maybe the kid wanted to see me punished after all.
“Well, well,” he drawls, circling my chair. “Heard you gave the new guy some trouble. Got some fight in you after all, huh?”
I don’t respond, just meet his eyes with as much defiance as I can muster.
“Boss is here,” he continues, clearly enjoying himself. “And sunrise is only an hour away.” He leans in close. “Looks like I’m gonna live to see it after all, eh?” he chuckles.
But then, from somewhere in the corridor beyond the open door, I hear a voice. The tone isn’t familiar, but something about it makes me freeze. The cadence, the particular lilt to the vowels...
It’s the dialect from Eva’s village. That lilting, musical quality is so familiar to me now. Someone here speaks the language of Eva’s home.
Ferret Face notices my sudden alertness and frowns, turning toward the door to listen. But before either of us can make sense of what we’re hearing, heavy footsteps thunder down the hallway.
The big guy bursts into the room. “Red alert,” he announces. “Time to move. Now!”
I can’t help myself. Despite everything—the pain, the fear, the hopelessness of my situation—a smile tugs at the corner of my mouth.
“You sure you’re gonna see that sunrise?” I ask Ferret Face.
Both men whip around to stare at me, and for a moment, I think the skinny ferret guy might actually hit me. But then the big one grabs his arm.
“Come on,” he growls. “Boss is already here.”
They rush from the room, slamming the door behind them. I hear the lock turn, then their footsteps pounding away, shouting voices, and the sound of something banging in the distance.
And then silence.
Could it be...?
I close my eyes and let myself hope. Hope might be a cruelty, but it’s wrapped in sweetness all the same.
Eva. Please let it be Eva.