Chapter 24 - Keira
The hood smelled like sweat and gasoline.
I tried to breathe through my mouth, tried to keep the panic at bay, but my lungs felt like they were wrapped in iron bands. Every bump in the road jolted through my body, my bound hands scraping against the metal floor of the van.
Stay calm. Stay present. You've helped patients through trauma. You know how this works.
But knowing and doing were different things when you were the one with a bag over your head, being driven to God knows where by men who'd killed to get to you.
I forced myself to focus on what I could control. My breathing. The details I could gather through senses that weren't sight.
The van had been driving for a while—twenty minutes, maybe thirty. We'd stopped and started several times at first, probably at traffic lights, then the stops had become less frequent. Highway, most likely. The road beneath us had smoothed out, the engine humming at a steady speed.
North. Dimitri had said they were heading north, toward the bridge. Were we out of the city now? In Westchester? Connecticut?
I tried to count the turns, track our direction, but the hood disoriented me. Everything blurred together into a nauseating soup of motion and fear.
Think about something else. Think about the baby.
My hands moved instinctively toward my stomach before I remembered they were bound. The zip tie bit into my wrists, plastic edges sharp against my skin.
Five weeks. Maybe six. A cluster of cells smaller than a grape, already changing everything.
I would not let these men hurt my child. I would not let them win.
The van stopped.
Doors opened. Cold air rushed in, carrying the smell of pine and wet earth. Hands grabbed my arms, hauling me upright, dragging me out of the vehicle. My feet hit gravel, unsteady, and I stumbled.
Someone laughed. A man's voice, harsh and foreign. "Careful, princess. Wouldn't want to damage the merchandise."
The hood was ripped off my head.
I blinked against the sudden brightness—not sunlight, but floodlights, harsh and artificial. As my vision adjusted, I saw where they'd brought me.
A manor house. Massive, Victorian, three stories of gray stone covered in creeping ivy.
It might have been beautiful once, in that old-money way of estates built to impress.
Now it looked abandoned. Haunted. The windows were dark except for a few on the ground floor, and the grounds were overgrown, nature slowly reclaiming what had been taken from it.
"Welcome to your new home," the same voice said. I turned to see him—a thick-necked man with a shaved head and a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Don't worry. You won't be here long."
They marched me inside.
The interior was worse than the exterior. Dust covered everything—the furniture, the floors, the chandelier that hung from the ceiling like a skeleton of crystal and cobwebs. The air smelled stale, unused, with an undertone of something else. Something chemical.
I counted men as we moved through the house. Six in the main hall. Two more on the stairs. At least eight total, possibly more in rooms I couldn't see.
Too many. Even if Rodion came—when Rodion came—the odds were against him.
They took me up two flights of stairs, down a hallway lined with closed doors, to a room at the end. The thick-necked man opened it and shoved me inside.
"Make yourself comfortable," he said. "The boss will be up to see you soon."
The door slammed shut. A lock clicked into place.
I stood in the darkness, breathing hard, waiting for my eyes to adjust.
The room had probably been a bedroom once.
A four-poster bed dominated one wall, its mattress bare, its canopy in tatters. A wardrobe stood in the corner, doors hanging open to reveal empty shelves. A vanity with a cracked mirror. A fireplace that hadn't seen flames in decades.
And windows. Two of them, tall and narrow, covered with iron bars that had been bolted to the frame from the outside.
I moved to the nearest one and looked out. The view showed the back of the estate—a terrace, an overgrown garden, and beyond that, dense forest stretching toward what might have been a river in the distance. No other houses. No roads. No sign of civilization at all.
Isolated. Deliberately so.
I tested the bars anyway, pushing against them with all my strength. They didn't budge.
The door was solid oak, the lock heavy and old-fashioned. I tried the handle, knowing it was pointless. Locked from the outside, no keyhole on my side.
I searched the room methodically, looking for anything I could use as a weapon. The wardrobe was empty. The vanity drawers held nothing but dust. The fireplace tools were gone—removed, probably, for exactly this reason.
Nothing. I had nothing.
I sat down on the edge of the bed, fighting the despair that threatened to overwhelm me.
Think. You're a psychologist. You've spent years learning how people work. Use it.
Whoever was coming to see me—this "boss"—I needed to be ready. Needed to understand him, find his weaknesses, figure out how to survive until Rodion found me.
Because he would find me. I had to believe that.
I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Counting each breath, slowing my heart rate, pushing back the fear until it was manageable.
Whatever happened next, I would face it with clear eyes.
I would not break.
***
The door opened an hour later.
I'd been expecting the thick-necked man, or one of the other guards. Instead, the man who walked in was different. Younger. Better dressed. And far more dangerous.
He was handsome in the way predators were sometimes handsome—sharp features, dark hair swept back from his face, a body that moved with easy, athletic grace. His suit was expensive, his shoes polished, his watch catching the light as he closed the door behind him.
But his eyes were wrong. Dark and flat, like stones at the bottom of a river. The eyes of someone who looked at other people and saw only objects to be used.
"Mrs. Rysev." He smiled, showing perfect white teeth. "Or may I call you Keira? Given our history, I think we can dispense with formalities."
"We don't have a history."
"Don't we?" He moved further into the room, circling me like a shark circling prey. "Your father and I had an arrangement. Your uncle was the intermediary. You were promised to me before you ever met Rodion Rysev."
Branko Petrovic. It had to be. The son of Milos, the heir to the trafficking empire that had tried to buy me.
"Arrangements made without my consent aren't binding," I said, keeping my voice steady. "I'm not property to be traded."
"Aren't you?" He stopped in front of me, close enough that I could smell his cologne—something expensive and sharp. "Your father certainly thought so. Your uncle did too. The only person who seems confused about your status is you."
"And my husband."
Something flickered in his eyes. Anger, quickly suppressed. "Your husband is a thief. He took what was mine. But that's going to be corrected tonight."
"He'll come for me."
"I'm counting on it." Branko smiled again, but there was no warmth in it. "In fact, I've made it quite easy for him to find us. Breadcrumbs, you might say. A trail leading right to this door."
A trap. This whole thing was a trap.
"You want him to come," I said slowly, the pieces clicking into place. "This isn't about me. It's about him."
"It's about both of you. He took something that belonged to me. Now I'm going to take everything from him." He reached out and touched my face, his fingers cold against my cheek. "Starting with you."
I forced myself not to flinch. Not to show the revulsion crawling through my veins.
"And then what?" I asked. "You kill him and take me back to Serbia? Force me into some kind of marriage?"
"Force?" He laughed softly. "I don't think force will be necessary. Once Rodion is dead, you'll have no one else. No family, no protector, no options. You'll come to me because there's nowhere else to go."
"You don't know me very well."
"I know you better than you think." His hand moved from my cheek to my hair, fingers threading through the strands.
"I know you grew up in violence. I know you ran from it, built a little life for yourself, pretended to be someone ordinary.
But you're not ordinary, Keira. You're a survivor. And survivors do what they have to do."
I held his gaze, refusing to look away. "You're right. I am a survivor. That's how I know I'll survive you, too."
Something shifted in his expression. The civilized mask slipping, just for a moment, to reveal the predator underneath.
"I was hoping you'd have some fire in you," he said softly. "It's going to make breaking you so much more satisfying."
He released my hair and stepped back, adjusting his cuffs with precise, deliberate movements. "I'll be back soon. Try to rest. It's going to be a long night."
He left, the lock clicking into place behind him.
I sat on the edge of the bed, my whole body shaking. The place where he'd touched my face felt contaminated, like his fingers had left something foul behind.
But beneath the fear, something else was burning.
Anger.
He thought he could break me. Thought he could take everything I'd built and reduce me to property again. Just like my father. Just like Cormac. Just like every man who'd ever looked at me and seen only what I could give them.
I pressed my hand against my stomach, feeling the life growing there. My child. Mine and Rodion's. The future we were building together.
I would not let Branko Petrovic take that from me.
Whatever happened tonight, I would fight. And if I couldn't win, I would make him bleed for every inch he took.
***
Time passed slowly.
I paced the room, too wound up to sit. Listened to the sounds of the house—footsteps below, voices too muffled to understand, the occasional creak of old wood settling.
How long until Rodion came? An hour? Two? Or was he already on his way, racing through the darkness to find me?
I thought about what Branko had said. Breadcrumbs. A trail leading right to this door. He wanted Rodion to come. Wanted to face him, defeat him, take everything from him.
That meant there would be a confrontation. And in a confrontation, anything could happen.
I needed to be ready. Needed to find a way to tip the scales, even slightly, in our favor.
I searched the room again, more carefully this time. The bed frame was too heavy to move. The vanity was bolted to the floor. The wardrobe—
Wait.
I moved to the wardrobe, examining it more closely. The doors hung loosely on their hinges, the wood old and brittle. And there, on the inside of one door, a piece of metal was coming loose. A hinge pin worked free after decades of neglect.
I worked at it with my fingers, ignoring the pain as the metal bit into my skin. After several minutes of effort, it came free—a metal rod about four inches long, pointed at one end.
Not much of a weapon. But better than nothing.
I tucked it into my sleeve and sat back down on the bed, trying to look as defeated as I had before.
Whatever happened next, I wouldn't be helpless.
***
The gunfire started without warning.
One moment, silence. The next, the crack of weapons, sharp and distant, somewhere on the ground floor. Shouts followed—men yelling, running, the chaos of unexpected violence.
Rodion. He was here.
I jumped to my feet, heart pounding. The sounds of battle grew louder—more gunshots, the crash of breaking glass, a scream that cut off abruptly.
Footsteps thundered in the hallway outside my door. I heard someone shouting orders in a language I didn't understand—Serbian, probably. The Petrovics mobilizing to meet the threat.
I pressed myself against the wall beside the door, the metal pin gripped in my hand. If anyone came through, I would be ready.
Minutes passed. The gunfire continued, punctuated by silences that were almost worse than the noise. I tried to track what was happening, but it was impossible. Too many sounds, too much chaos, everything blurring together into a symphony of violence.
Then footsteps in the hallway. Closer this time. Coming toward my door.
I raised the pin, my hand trembling but steady.
The lock clicked. The door flew open.
Branko stood in the doorway, wild-eyed, a gun in his hand. His perfect suit was disheveled, his hair falling across his forehead, his civilized mask completely gone.
"Your husband," he spat, "is even more stubborn than I expected."
He crossed the room in three strides and grabbed my arm, fingers digging into the flesh hard enough to bruise. I tried to twist away, tried to stab him with the pin, but he was too fast. His other hand caught my wrist, squeezing until I cried out and dropped my makeshift weapon.
"Nice try," he said, kicking it away. "But you're going to need to do better than that."
He dragged me toward the door. I fought him—kicking, scratching, using every ounce of strength I had—but he was bigger, stronger, fueled by fury. He pulled me into the hallway like I weighed nothing.
"Let me go," I gasped.
"Not a chance. You're my insurance policy now."
We reached the top of the stairs. Below, the sounds of fighting were closer—gunshots echoing up the stairwell, men shouting, the chaos of battle. Branko paused, assessing, then started down.
We made it to the second-floor landing when a figure appeared at the end of the hallway.
Rodion.
He was covered in shadows, gun raised, his face a mask of cold fury. Blood spattered his shirt—whether his or someone else's, I couldn't tell. He looked like death itself, come to collect what was owed.
"Let her go." His voice was ice.
Branko laughed and pressed the gun to my temple. The metal was cold against my skin, the barrel digging in hard enough to hurt.
"One more step," Branko said, "and I paint the walls with her brains."
Rodion froze. I saw his finger twitch on the trigger, saw the calculation behind his eyes. The shot was there—I could see him measuring it—but too risky. Too close to my head.
"It's over, Branko," he said. "Your men are dead. You've got nowhere to go."
"I've got her. That's all I need." Branko's arm tightened around my throat, cutting off my air. "Drop the gun or I kill her. Right now. Right in front of you."
Rodion's eyes met mine. I saw the fear there—the same fear I felt, reflected back at me. We were so close. So close to the end of this nightmare.
And now everything hung in the balance.
"Rodion," I whispered. "Don't—"
The gun pressed harder against my temple, silencing me.
"Drop it," Branko said. "I won't ask again."