Chapter Four - Lukyan
She sits across from me with her hands clenched in her lap, her back pressed against the door as if she’s ready to throw herself through it. The fear is there, clear enough in the way her breath catches every few seconds, but she refuses to break.
She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t beg. She stares at me with wide, furious eyes like she’s the one who deserves an explanation.
I didn’t expect that.
Most people fall apart the moment they realize who I am. She only tightens her jaw.
“Where are you taking me?” she asks. Her voice shakes, but the anger in it holds steady. “If you’re going to kill me, at least have the decency to say it.”
I study her for a moment. Her hair is messy from the struggle. Her chest rises and falls too fast. She keeps swallowing like she’s fighting the urge to panic. Her knees knock together in small, tight movements, but she lifts her chin anyway.
“Stop assuming the worst,” I say. “If I wanted you dead, you wouldn’t be asking questions.”
Her glare sharpens. “Then tell me where we’re going.”
“I need answers first.”
“I haven’t lied to you.”
“You’re lying already,” I say. “No one writes what you wrote without someone pushing them.”
“No one pushed me.”
Her voice rises with heat this time. She isn’t trying to charm or manipulate. She’s telling the truth as she sees it.
The car turns off the main road. Streetlights fade behind us. She notices immediately, straightening in her seat.
“Who told you to put my name in that article?” I ask.
“No one.”
“Who are you working for?”
“No one.”
She gives the answers without hesitation. She doesn’t look away from me. Even now.
Her defiance edges something inside me toward a reaction I don’t want to examine. I should be angry. I should see her as a threat. Instead, she keeps catching me off-balance.
“You expect me to believe a student put my name in print without someone feeding it to her?” I ask.
“Yes.”
Her conviction is unnerving.
The car pulls through iron gates that hang open by a single hinge.
The abandoned estate sits ahead, its windows dark, its structure intact but worn.
It isn’t one of my safe houses. It’s far outside the city, off any usual route, and my men aren’t used to it.
I chose it for a reason. I don’t want them too close to her yet.
She looks out the window, taking in the cracked driveway and the overgrown grounds. Her shoulders tense again, but she stays silent.
When the car stops, I get out and open her door. She doesn’t move until I nod once, a silent order. She steps out slowly, her fingers clinging to the doorframe before she releases it.
Inside, the house is cold and quiet. Dust clings to the edges of unused furniture. The walls echo with each footstep.
She stops in the entrance hall and faces me fully.
“Are you planning to kill me?” she asks. She tries to keep her expression steady, but the fear flickers across her features. The question costs her something.
“Not if you stop lying.”
“I’m not lying.”
Her voice is tight, but not pleading. She keeps meeting my eyes. She reminds me of someone cornered but refusing to kneel.
I lead her down the hall to a room with a clean mattress and a heavy door. No bars. No chains. She looks around, taking in the space, then turns toward me again.
“Why did those men try to take me?” she asks.
“They weren’t mine.” The truth surprises even me. I hadn’t planned on saying it.
“Then who—”
“Stop asking questions,” I say. “You’ve asked enough for one lifetime.”
She presses her lips together and steps back as I close the door. Her eyes lock on mine until the last moment before the lock clicks.
It should feel satisfying to confine her. It should feel like control. Instead, something unsettles me as I walk away. Her voice follows me inside my head, repeating every refusal, every honest answer, every question she forced out through fear.
She is too steady. Too certain. Too alive in a way that doesn’t fit with the world she stepped into.
Downstairs, my men wait in a small living area near the back door. Their expressions shift when they see me.
“What do you want done with her?” one asks. “We can get information quickly if you want. Rough her up a little. Scare her.”
“No.”
The answer leaves me before I consider it.
Another man speaks. “We could go to her apartment. Destroy her equipment. Make it clear she shouldn’t touch this again.”
“No.”
They exchange looks. Not open defiance. Confusion. Curiosity.
“She’s different,” I say.
That quiets them. They don’t know what I mean, and I’m not sure I do either. I only know what I don’t want.
“She doesn’t get touched. She doesn’t get threatened. She doesn’t get spoken to. Keep watch on the perimeter and stay out of her line of sight.”
One of them shifts. “So what do you want from her?”
“I want the truth.”
“She said she told you the truth,” another reminds me.
“I don’t believe her.”
I’m not sure if that’s accurate or if I just refuse to accept that the story is this simple—that a twenty-one-year-old wrote my name because she believed she had the right to.
My men wait for more instructions. I give none.
“Stay alert,” I say instead. “No mistakes.”
They nod and scatter to their posts.
When I’m alone, I lean against the far wall and let out a slow breath. Her face hangs stubbornly in my thoughts—wide eyes, tight jaw, anger fighting fear.
She wrote my name because she thought it mattered. She sat in that car and demanded answers instead of collapsing.
She doesn’t understand the world she provoked, but she walked into it anyway. She’s different, and I’m not sure why that bothers me more than it should.
With a sigh, I shove that to the back of my mind and focus on something else. Her laptop sits open on the table where my men placed it.
They didn’t touch the files inside; they know better than to go through something I haven’t reviewed myself. I pull the chair out and sit, the cold wood pressing through my shirt. The screen glows with the last document she worked on.
I expected chaos. Notes scattered everywhere. Dead links. Guesswork dressed up as journalism. Instead, her folders are organized in a way that makes it easy to follow her entire process. Timelines. Names. Public records. Budget discrepancies. Property transfers. Nothing sloppy, nothing rushed.
She’s young, but she’s not careless.
I click through her drafts, reading lines she never published.
She catches patterns most professionals overlook.
She leaves herself honest comments in the margins.
Questions. Doubts. Reminders to double-check sources.
There’s a notebook scan of her handwriting—dense, pointed, impatient, with words crossed out only when she finds something cleaner.
She barely touched the surface of what I do, but she had the right instincts. Given time, she could’ve found more. Much more.
That thought sits uncomfortably in my chest.
Her ambition makes her a threat. That should be the only thing that matters. Most problems disappear. A car crash. A mugging. An overdose. There are a hundred clean ways to remove someone who digs too deep.
When I picture doing that to her, something in me rejects it before the idea even forms fully.
I tell myself it’s strategy. Killing her would draw attention. She already made noise online. Removing her now would raise questions. Keeping her alive gives me control over the narrative. Over her.
That explanation holds for a moment, but not long enough.
The truth presses through, quiet but sharp. I want to understand her.
She put my name in her article because she believed she was right. Not because she wanted attention. Not because someone pushed her. She built something on her own and didn’t flinch. She didn’t even hide behind anonymous sources. She staked her own name on it.
Or so she says.
People in my world lie, beg, bargain, or posture. She does none of that. She walked into danger without knowing it and then refused to break when the danger stepped out of the dark.
I close her laptop and sit back, steadying myself before I open the surveillance feed.
The room I placed her in appears on the screen. The camera catches the far corner and the window beside it. She’s curled up there, knees pulled to her chest, chin resting against them. Her hair falls across one shoulder. She stares out at nothing, as if the whole estate isn’t closing in around her.
Her lips move.
She’s whispering something I can’t hear. Maybe she’s talking to herself. Maybe she’s trying to calm down. Maybe she’s keeping herself awake to avoid dreaming of what happened on that street.
Her shoulders shake once, barely visible, like she swallowed whatever fear tried to push through. She rubs her hands over her arms, slow and steady, then tucks them close again.
She looks small in that room. Not weak, just alone.
A tightness settles in my chest, slow and unwelcome. I shouldn’t feel anything watching her. I shouldn’t care if she cries or if she doesn’t. But the sight of her hugging her knees bothers me more than the article ever did.
She shouldn’t have to fight to stay steady. Not after the night she had. Not after being dragged off the street by men who weren’t even mine. Not after the fear she tried to hide in the car.
My jaw ticks once. I turn off the feed abruptly. The screen goes black and leaves me staring at my own faint reflection.
I shouldn’t care. I keep repeating it, but the words don’t settle.
She’s a risk I should’ve removed. She’s a danger I should’ve silenced.
Instead, she’s in the next room because I wanted her close enough to question, close enough to watch, close enough to understand. I brought her here rather than any of my safe houses. I refused to let my men go near her. I refused to let them touch her.
I lean forward and rest my elbows on my knees, hands clasped tightly. The room is silent except for the faint hum of the old lights.
This woman shouldn’t matter to me.
She already does.