38. Harper
HARPER
“Can I sleep in here tonight?” Ginger asks, already in the doorway of my room in her pajamas, arms wrapped around the dragon book like a shield. “I keep thinking about the bad men.”
“Of course, baby. Come here.”
She climbs in beside me, curling close, and I pull the blanket up over both of us, tucking her hair back from her face the way I have every night since Mia died.
“Are we safe here?” she asks, small and direct, the question she’s clearly been sitting with all evening before finally letting it out.
“We’re safe here. This house has lots of people watching over us, remember? Viktor made sure of that.”
“Will you stay awake until I fall asleep?”
“I’ll stay right here the whole time.”
“Read me the part where the dragon isn’t scared anymore,” she says. “The end part.”
I find the page and read it slow, doing the voices even though I’m tired, because some nights the voices matter more than the sleep does. Ginger’s eyes grow heavy halfway through, her breathing evening out against my shoulder, one hand still fisted loosely in the blanket.
“He’s not scared anymore,” I read, “because he learned that even dragons need somebody brave enough to stay close.”
She’s asleep before I finish the sentence. I set the book on the nightstand, turn off the lamp, and lie there a while longer in the dark, listening to her breathe, feeling the baby shift low in my stomach, thinking that despite everything, tonight feels almost peaceful.
I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep when the hand closes over my mouth.
I wake fighting before I’m even fully conscious, thrashing against a grip too strong to break, a man’s weight pinning me flat against the mattress, his forearm pressed hard across my collarbone.
He shifts his weight off my stomach at the last second, and somewhere beside me I hear Ginger scream, sharp and terrified, cut short by another man’s hand.
“Ginger!” The word comes out muffled against the hand over my mouth, barely a sound at all.
I twist, trying to see her, one arm curling instinctively toward my stomach even as he pins my wrists, but the man on top of me is too heavy, pinning my wrists with one hand while the other keeps my mouth sealed shut.
My mind screams at my body to fight harder, and my body simply can’t, outmatched in every possible way, terrified for the baby as much as for myself.
I see him lift her, one arm locked around her small body, and she’s fighting too, small fists useless against him, her legs kicking uselessly at his shins, and the man carrying her turns toward the door and, almost casually, pulls a gun and points it directly at her face.
“Stop moving,” he tells her, voice flat, bored, like he’s done this before. “Or I use this. Understand?”
Ginger goes still, eyes huge, tears streaming silently now instead of screaming, her whole small body gone rigid with a fear no six-year-old should ever have to understand, and he carries her out the door like that, gun still raised, and I scream against the hand covering my mouth, thrashing so hard the man holding me has to use his full weight to keep me down.
Then, all at once, he releases me, and he’s gone too, out the door after the other one, footsteps receding fast down the hallway, and I’m alone in a bed that still smells like Ginger’s shampoo, gasping, shaking so hard my teeth are chattering.
Gunshots crack somewhere outside, three in quick succession, then more, scattered, distant and close at once, echoing through walls that were supposed to keep exactly this from happening.
I don’t remember deciding to move. I’m just suddenly on my feet, legs unsteady, one hand braced against my stomach, stumbling toward the door.
I open it to find the guard who’s been posted outside my room every night since we arrived lying flat on the floor, unmoving, a dark stain spreading beneath him that I don’t let myself look at directly.
The hallway beyond him is chaos. Smoke, somewhere, acrid and thin, stinging my eyes before I even register where it’s coming from.
Another body further down, one of the men I’d started to recognize by face over these last two weeks, sprawled at an angle that tells me everything I don’t want to know.
Shouting, more gunfire, further away now, moving further from the house with every passing second, punctuated by the distant roar of an engine.
A third body near the top of the stairs, a man I don’t recognize at all, someone who clearly wasn’t one of ours, and the sight of him almost steadies me, proof that whatever happened here wasn’t entirely one-sided.
“Viktor!” His name tears out of me, raw, desperate. “Viktor, where are you!”
Nobody answers. I stumble down the hall, past another body, past a shattered window with curtains moving in a wind that shouldn’t be inside a house at all, screaming his name into rooms that don’t answer back, my bare feet catching on debris I can’t see clearly enough to avoid.
I find Dimitri near the top of the stairs instead, blood on his shirt that doesn’t look like it’s his, radio in hand, barking orders to someone I can’t see.
“Where’s Viktor?” I demand, grabbing his arm hard enough that he actually turns to face me fully. “Dimitri, where is he? Where’s Ginger? What is happening?”
“He went after them himself.” Dimitri’s voice is controlled, but his eyes are wild, adrenaline and fury both barely leashed. “The second he heard the room breach on the radio, he was out the back door before any of us could stop him. He’s tracking the vehicle now.”
“Alone?”
“Two men with him. Not enough, and he knows it, but he wasn’t waiting for a better option while they drove away with her.” Dimitri’s jaw tightens. “Harper, you need to get somewhere safe. Now. We don’t know if this is the only team on the property.”
“I’m not going anywhere until I know Ginger’s safe.”
“You’re pregnant. I need you downstairs, in the safe room, immediately, or I swear to every god either of us believes in I will carry you there myself.”
“Dimitri, please. I need to do something; I can’t just stand here.”
“No.” His voice cracks like a whip, sharper than I’ve ever heard from him.
“I don’t have time to argue with you right now.
Viktor’s out there chasing a car full of armed men who just proved they’ll shoot through anybody to get what they want, and I have exactly as many resources as I have right now to help him, not one of which involves standing here convincing you to survive the night. ”
I stare at him, shaking, furious and terrified in equal measure, every instinct screaming at me to run out that same back door after all of them.
“How did they get in, Dimitri? We had cameras. We had men on every corner of this property.”
“One of our own let them through. I don’t know who yet, and right now I don’t have the luxury of finding out before I make sure Viktor has backup.
” His voice breaks slightly on the admission, the first real crack in his composure since I found him.
“Someone we trusted did this. I promise you I will find out exactly who.”
“I want to help,” I say, voice breaking. “I can’t just sit in a room while they have her.”
“You can, and you will, because right now the single most useful thing you can do for that little girl is stay alive long enough for us to bring her back to you.” Dimitri’s expression softens by a fraction, just enough to show me the fear underneath the command.
“Please, Harper. I can’t fight for both of them tonight.
Let me fight for one while you protect the other one growing inside you. ”
I don’t answer right away, torn between every maternal instinct I have and the cold, undeniable logic of what he’s saying.
“Find her,” I finally manage, voice barely above a whisper. “Find her, and bring her back, and bring him back too. Please, Dimitri.”
“I intend to.” He grips my shoulder once, hard, grounding. “Safe room. Now. I’ll have someone update you the second there’s anything to report.”
I let him steer me toward the stairs, legs still unsteady, mind still screaming Ginger’s name even as my body finally, reluctantly, obeys.
The safe room door closes behind me with a heavy, mechanical sound, and I stand there alone in a space built for exactly this scenario, stocked with everything Viktor promised months ago and I never let myself fully believe I’d need.
Bottled water. A cot. A radio I don’t know how to use properly, sitting silent on a small shelf.
I sit on the small cot against the wall, hands pressed flat against my stomach, and I cry the way I haven’t let myself cry since the night of the reveal, loud and ugly and completely unrestrained, because there’s no one left to perform strength for down here, no six-year-old to shield from the truth of how frightened I actually am.
Time moves strangely in a room with no windows. I don’t know if minutes pass or an hour does, only that at some point the shaking in my hands slows enough that I can actually think again instead of just reacting.
Somewhere out there, past walls that suddenly feel too thin despite everything Viktor built them to be, Ginger’s being driven further away with every passing minute, and Viktor’s chasing her through a night full of men who’ve already proven exactly how far they’re willing to go.
I think about the gun pointed at her face. I think about her eyes, huge and silent, the exact moment she stopped fighting because fighting had just become too dangerous to risk.
I think about every promise I’ve made her since Mia died, every assurance that I would keep her safe, and how completely tonight has broken every single one of them despite everything Viktor and I built to prevent exactly this.
I don’t know how long I sit there before the shaking finally starts to slow, replaced by something colder, steadier, an anger that settles into my chest and refuses to leave.
They took her. They took her from my own bed, from beside me, and pointed a gun in her face like it was nothing at all. A six-year-old girl, terrified into silence by a stranger who treats children like leverage instead of people.
I press my hand harder against my stomach, feeling the baby shift beneath my palm, small and unaware of everything currently happening around it, and I make myself a promise in the quiet of that locked room, the same promise I’ve apparently been making since the night I first walked into a club looking for anything that might save my family.
Whatever it takes. Whatever’s left of tonight, whatever comes after it…
I will get her back.