Chapter 5 - Ilana
The gravel tore at my feet with every step I took forward, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. Not when the trees were finally beginning to thin, and the sky was cracking open to shed gray light. The world ahead of me widened into something that looked like a road. A real road.
I was out. I was out.
My lungs burned, the cold air stabbing my chest, and my hair stuck to my face, borrowed clothes damp with sweat and rain. Every little sound made me flinch. From my own footsteps to the echo of the wind, and even something as innocent as a branch snapping somewhere behind me.
But I didn’t dare look back.
If I looked back, I’d stop running. And if I stopped running—
“No,” I whispered to myself, forcing my legs to move faster. “You cannot think about this. Keep going.”
The road curved sharply, revealing an old gas station that appeared half-abandoned, with only one flickering light buzzing over the awning. In front of it, tucked beside the ice machine, was a payphone.
My knees nearly gave out.
I reached it in a sprint, slamming my palm against the cold metal and grabbing the receiver like it was oxygen.
This was my only chance to contact one of my brothers; someone had to be home to pick up this call.
I dialed the number for the house in Miami, but the call refused to go through.
I quickly changed numbers and dialed the country code for Russia with trembling fingers.
It didn’t work.
I tried again, but there was only static in my ears.
The world tilted. Tears pricked my eyes but refused to fall. “Come on, come on…”
I tried to collect call, but it immediately asked for coins. And of course I didn’t have any on me.
“Please…” I whispered into the phone as if begging would make it work. “Please, please—“
Thunder rolled in the distance as the sky darkened above me to a kind of gray that promised another storm.
None of it made sense. If I were unable to call my brothers, this running would be for nothing.
I had no idea where I was, and running back home was clearly out of the question.
The moment Avgust found out I was gone, he would come after me. I hardly had any time left.
My hands shook as I dialed my eldest brother’s number from memory.
It rang. A harsh beep cut through my ear before the call suddenly dropped.
“No.” My voice cracked. “No, please. Pick up. Kliment, pick up—“
I dialed Nico. Jarek. Fyodor.
Every single one rang into silence before the harsh beep cut it off, reminding me that I might be outside, but the outside world was still just as inaccessible to me as before.
Did they even know I was missing? Were they looking for me?
Avgust had revealed that they weren’t, or else they would have definitely gone to the police.
Was this a nightmare they were unaware of, living their lives while I tried to stay alive?
A sob clawed at my throat, but I swallowed it, gripping the receiver harder in my clammy palms.
“Please,” I whispered, pressing my forehead to the metal casing. “Please. Somebody answer.”
Nothing.
The phone felt like a dead thing in my hand. I dropped it, the clatter echoing in the empty station. My breathing grew shallow, but I could not stop here. Not when Avgust might already be out somewhere looking for me. I turned around, desperately scanning the road that lay ahead.
Just at the far end of the parking lot stood a man in a brown jacket.
From where I was standing, I could not see his face properly, but he looked fairly young.
Maybe in his mid-thirties. He appeared normal, but none of that mattered to me.
He was human, alive, and he had something in his hand that strongly resembled a phone.
I needed to make a call. Just one simple phone call.
“Sir!” I called out, running towards him. I crossed the parking lot to go nearer, but he had heard my shout. “Please, I need help! Can I borrow your—”
He turned around slowly. I could only imagine what I might look like to him in my frantic, not-so-elegant state, but he did not look confused or startled. In fact, from what I could tell, he seemed to be assessing me. Something cold slithered down my spine as his gaze met mine.
“Phone?” His voice was too calm. “Sure. Come closer.”
I hesitated and took a step back.
Something in his smile was wrong. Very, very wrong.
“You look familiar,” he said, keeping the phone in his hand back inside his pocket as he turned all his attention towards me.
My stomach twisted.
Just then, I heard a whistle. Sharp. Piercing. Too close to me.
I spun around, my eyes landing on another man who had stepped out from behind the dumpsters. I had not seen him in the dark. He had been obscured by the shadows.
He was tall. His face narrow. A scar slicing his jaw.
Scar. Scar.
My breath vanished. He was one of them. One of my kidnappers. The men from the warehouse who had kept me there silently and then auctioned me off in a room full of men, where Avgust had bought me and brought me to safety.
Avgust. I needed Avgust.
I should never have run away from him.
“Found you,” he murmured, an evil smile spreading across his ugly face.
The first man stepped closer from behind, and I clearly understood they were not strangers. They were working together, which meant they would capture me again.
Oh god. Oh god.
I stumbled back, though there was nowhere to go, nowhere at all.
“Don’t… don’t come near me.”
The scarred one’s smile was slow and poisonous. “Can’t have you running off. You would still give one hell of a price, princess.”
My whole body trembled. “Stay away from me.”
“We don’t want to hurt you,” the other said, hands raised mockingly as if offering me peace. “Not unless someone pays us to.”
A sob tore free.
Not now.
Not here.
I cannot cry now.
Run, Ilana.
I turned and ran, faster than I’d ever moved, heart slamming so hard it hurt. Gravel flew behind me. My breath ripped in and out as rain started again, cold needles hitting my skin. Footsteps thundered behind me, getting closer and closer, but I kept running, refusing to look back or stop.
I couldn’t breathe or think as my vision blurred. The road twisted and faded with it. A hand snatched the back of my shirt, but I screamed and tore forward, the fabric ripping.
“Get back here!”
I ran blindly, tears and rain mixing on my face. My chest burned, and I didn’t look where I was going. The only thing that mattered was not going back to them. They had auctioned me once, and I could only imagine what they might do to me this time. I had to get away from here.
Just then, I hit something solid. Hard.
Arms. A chest like a wall. A scent I recognized before I even saw him. Dark. Clean. Expensive.
Avgust.
My breath broke as my hands fisted in his jacket, my heart beginning to slow down already.
“They—they’re here—”
Avgust didn’t ask questions or look surprised. His arms came around me, one hand steadying my spine. He didn’t even look angry, his handsome face entirely expressionless.
“Ilana,” he said quietly. His voice was low, steady, lethal calm, running under every syllable. “Breathe.”
I shook, continuing to sob while I clung to him like a drowning person. “They’re going to take me—”
“No,” he said, pulling me behind him. “They will not. Nobody can take you anywhere while I am here. Do you understand?”
The rain came down harder as the men stepped forward. I nodded, my heart already believing him.
Scar smiled again. “Chernykh. Didn’t expect you here.”
“You should’ve,” Avgust said, voice dropping into something colder than ice.
My pulse thundered as I tried to grip his arm, but he pushed me backwards gently without turning to look at me. “Stay behind me.”
“Avgust—”
“Behind. Me.”
His hand slid to his holster as the scarred man’s eyes widened. “Wait—”
Avgust didn’t.
The gunshot cracked through the air like a lightning strike, slicing through the rain and splitting my breath in half, and for several heartbeats, the world became nothing but sound and shock. I flinched so hard my knees nearly buckled, the echo bouncing off the empty road.
The scarred man jerked violently as the bullet hit him, his body twisting with the force. He stumbled back before collapsing into the wet gravel with a heavy, sickening thud that sent rainwater splashing up around him.
The second man shouted something I couldn’t understand, but it didn’t matter because Avgust was already moving again. His stance widened, and his shoulders lowered, the gun steady in his hand as if it were simply an extension of his arm rather than a weapon capable of ending lives in an instant.
“Don’t,” the second man barked, lifting his hands as though surrendering would erase what had already happened here.
Avgust fired again.
This time, I saw the flash. Sharp. Bright. Almost beautiful in a horrifying way. I saw the man jerk back, arms flailing as the shot punched into his chest. He dropped to his knees first, a strangled sound escaping him, before collapsing face-first into the rain-soaked asphalt.
Silence followed, but it wasn’t real silence. It was heavy, charged, vibrating with the aftershocks of violence, with the rain now pounding harder, soaking my hair, my clothes, and tracing lines down my face that I couldn’t tell apart from tears.
He turned around slowly, lowering his gun but not holstering it yet. His eyes swept over me, taking in my shaking hands, my uneven breaths, the panic written across me so clearly I didn’t bother pretending otherwise.
“Ilana, he said, voice deep, steady, and unhurried. “Look at me.”
I tried. God. I tried.
But my gaze kept dragging back to the two bodies sprawled on the road, rain collecting in the folds of their jackets, mixing with blood until everything looked blurred and unreal.
“They were going to take me,” I whispered, my voice raw, cracking on the words. “They were going to—”
“I know,” he murmured, stepping closer and cupping the side of my face with a hand that was somehow steady despite pulling gunshots just a moment earlier. “You did the right thing running. But you ran in the wrong direction.”
I choked out a short, broken laugh, half hysteria, half disbelief. “There was no right direction.”
“There was,” he insisted, thumb brushing damp hair from my cheek. “Back to me.”
A shiver tore through me, not from the cold this time. “You can’t say things like that.”
“I just did.”
“Boss?” A man emerged from the shadows and I realized Avgust’s car was parked just behind us. I had seen the man around the house, but I did not know who he was.
“Yes, Mikhail?”
“More are coming. We must leave immediately.”
My stomach plummeted. “More… more of them?”
“They will come looking for these two,” he said, motioning towards the dead men on the street. “We need to leave. Now.”
I swallowed hard and nodded, unable to form the words. He turned, his grip tightening around my waist. Not painfully, but firmly, grounding me and tethering me to him as he guided me back toward the SUV waiting near the bend.
“Avgust,” I whispered as he opened the passenger door for me, my voice still trembling. “I didn’t know… I didn’t know they were still looking.”
“People like them never stop.”
“Are you not mad at me?”
“We will talk after getting home.”
My stomach dropped.
“Are you taking me back to the house?”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes.
A part of me wanted to scream to be let go but another part of me sighed in relief at his agreement. I had not realized exactly when that place had started to feel like home.