40. Harper
HARPER
I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been sitting on this cot, knees pulled to my chest, phone clutched in one hand though there’s no signal down here, nothing to do but wait and pray and wait some more.
I count the minutes in heartbeats instead of a clock I don’t have, the baby shifting occasionally beneath my palm, a small reminder that I’m not just waiting for Ginger tonight, I’m also holding still for someone who has no idea any of this is happening at all.
I think about every version of tonight that could still be unfolding somewhere out there beyond these locked walls. I think about the gun pointed at Ginger’s face, replaying it over and over, unable to stop myself, unable to fully believe any version of tonight where it doesn’t end in tragedy.
The radio on the shelf crackles to life sometime past two in the morning, and I’m on my feet before the voice fully registers.
“Mrs. Markov. She’s safe. They’re bringing her in now.”
Relief crashes through me so hard my knees nearly buckle, and I have to brace a hand against the wall just to stay upright, the words repeating themselves in my head until they finally feel real instead of like something I’m imagining out of pure desperation.
I don’t remember crossing the room. I don’t remember unlocking the door, though I must have, because I’m suddenly in the hallway, running, past the same dead guard, past bloodstains someone’s already started cleaning, none of it registering the way it should, my entire body narrowed down to one single need.
I reach the front entrance just as the car pulls up, and the door opens, and Viktor climbs out first, Ginger cradled against his chest, and the sight of her, small and disheveled but breathing, awake, alive, breaks something open in my chest that I didn’t know was still holding.
“Ginger!”
She twists at the sound of my voice, reaching for me before Viktor’s even fully upright, and I take her from his arms without either of us discussing it, her whole body colliding into mine with a force that nearly knocks me backward.
“I’m here, baby, I’m here, you’re safe, I’ve got you.”
She doesn’t answer, just clings, arms locked around my neck tight enough to hurt, her whole body trembling against mine, and I sink down onto the front steps because my legs won’t hold either of us standing any longer, rocking her the way I did when she was younger, before any of this, before any version of a world where six year olds get taken from their beds at gunpoint.
“You’re shaking,” I murmur into her hair. “You’re okay. You’re okay, and I’m not letting go of you.”
“He had a gun right here.” She touches her own cheek, showing me exactly where. “He said if I moved he’d use it. I didn’t move, Aunt Harper. I did what he said.”
“You did exactly the right thing. You were so brave, baby. Braver than most grown-ups would have been.”
“Are you okay?” she asks, small and worried, checking on me the way I’m checking on her.
“I’m okay because you’re okay.” I pull back just enough to check her over myself, hands running along her arms, her face, searching for anything I might have missed. “Does anything hurt? Anywhere at all?”
“No.” Her voice comes out small, hoarse from crying. “I’m okay. I was so scared, Aunt Harper. The man had a gun and he pointed it right at me and I thought.”
“I know. I know, baby. You’re safe now. It’s over.”
She buries her face against my neck instead of finishing the sentence, and I hold her there, rocking slightly, murmuring nonsense reassurances that are as much for me as they are for her, and it isn’t until she finally starts to go slack with exhaustion in my arms that I let myself look up at Viktor properly.
He’s standing a few feet away, watching us, and the state of him stops my breath entirely.
His shirt’s torn at the shoulder, dark stains across the front of it that I know, immediately, aren’t his own blood.
There’s a graze along his jaw, another darker mark blooming along one forearm.
His hands, when I finally look at them, are shaking slightly, adrenaline still working its way out of his system.
“You’re hurt,” I say.
“Not badly. None of this is mine.” He says it plainly, no drama attached, though the words land in my chest like something physical. “It’s over, Harper. She’s safe.”
I look at him for a long moment, really look, taking in every detail I’ve been too consumed by relief to notice until now, and the full weight of what those details actually mean settles over me slowly, inevitably, impossible to hold back once it starts.
He did this. He drove into the night after armed men, found them, fought them, and whatever happened at wherever he found her, he came out the other side of it covered in evidence of exactly how far he was willing to go.
“How many,” I ask quietly, not entirely sure I want the answer.
“Enough.” He doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t push, some instinct telling me neither of us is ready for the full account tonight, maybe not for a long while yet. “I’d do it again. Every single time, without hesitation, if it meant bringing her home to you.”
I believe him completely, and that belief sits strangely alongside everything else I’m feeling right now, gratitude and horror and love all tangled together in a way I don’t have a clean name for.
“Come here,” I say instead of responding directly, and he crosses the distance, kneeling down in front of both of us, and I reach out with my free hand and pull him into the same embrace I’m holding Ginger in, all three of us tangled together on the front steps of a house that nearly cost us everything tonight.
“Thank you,” I whisper against his shoulder. “Thank you for bringing her back to me.”
“Always.” His voice breaks slightly on the word. “I told her that tonight, and I meant it for both of you. Always.”
We stay like that a long while, none of us willing to be the first to pull away, Ginger finally fully asleep between us, Dimitri and the security team giving us the space to simply exist in this moment before the practical realities of tonight inevitably catch up with all of us.
Eventually Viktor carries Ginger inside himself, refusing to hand her off even to me, and I follow behind them both, taking in the visible aftermath of tonight’s violence with fresh eyes now that the immediate terror has finally started to recede.
There’s so much I don’t know yet about what happened after Dimitri sent me down to that safe room.
So much I suspect I’m not going to fully understand even once Viktor eventually tells me the rest of it.