Chapter 42
THEA
Everything is dark. Dark and wrong.
The world around me is vibration and engine noise, that awful chemical taste coating the inside of my mouth. My thoughts come in fragments that drift apart before I can hold them together.
The car hits a bump, and my head bounces against the trunk floor. Pain explodes behind my eyes. I instinctively try to lift my hand, but my arm barely responds. Whatever was on the cloth has turned my muscles into jelly.
Think, Thea. Think.
I try to orient myself. I’m on my side, curled up, knees bent. The trunk is tiny. I can smell the awful, acrid scent of exhaust drifting up into it from underneath the car.
I feel something hard beneath my hip. Probably a tire iron or a car jack. I try to reach it, but my fingers only twitch, nothing else.
The baby.
The thought cuts through the fog in my mind like a knife. I’m able to force my shaking hand to my stomach. I press the palm flat there and try to feel something, any sign of the tiny flicker I saw on the screen just a little bit ago.
I think of Gabriel. He doesn’t know that Marco and Enzo are dead, and that I’ve been kidnapped, drugged, and thrown in the trunk of a car heading God knows where.
He’s at the mansion in his office, planning his next move. He still thinks he’s ahead of Kolya. But as I lie in this trunk, I know the war has already begun. He has no idea that the woman he loves, the woman carrying his child, has already been taken.
I think about Amanda. Has she called him yet to tell him what happened?
If I die in this trunk…
No. Do not think like that.
I clench my jaw against the nausea, the chemical fog, and the pure terror.
No. You’re not going to die in some goddamn trunk. Not today.
As my eyes adjust to the dark, I remember the interior trunk release—every car made after 2001 has one. It should be a glow-in-the-dark handle somewhere near the latch.
But I still can’t get my goddamn hand to work. My fingers struggle, brushing against carpet, plastic, and metal. Nothing that feels like a handle. Nothing that pulls or gives.
When my eyes adjust more and I’m able to make out the area near where the latch should be, I realize it’s gone. Someone removed the handle. Someone who planned to use this trunk as a place to store a person they kidnapped.
The thought makes me sick.
The car slows, and I can feel it turning before coming to a stop.
I hear doors opening and closing, low voices speaking in Russian. They’re unhurried this time, unlike the barking commands back at the doctor’s office. They’ve accomplished their mission.
The trunk opens and light floods in, harsh and assaulting. I squint my eyes. The sky above the buildings around us is a bruised purple color, and it appears to be dusk. We must have been driving for hours.
I have no idea where we are.
I’m looking up at the fire escape of an old brick building with blacked-out windows, and a neon sign I can only see the edge of. It looks like it could be a nightclub. The alley smells like grease, stale beer, and rotting garbage.
Two men stare down at me. I don’t have a chance to scream before they reach down and haul me out of the trunk. My first instinct is to put my feet on the ground and run, but my legs aren’t strong enough to carry my weight.
My bare feet drag on the wet asphalt as the men pull me toward a service door propped open with a cinder block.
I hear heels. Familiar, measured steps clicking on the pavement with a rhythm I’d recognize anywhere. I just listened to it, back at the clinic.
Run, Thea. I’m right behind you.
Amanda approaches from a second car parked farther up the alley.
Her coat’s buttoned, makeup perfect, and not a hair out of place, phone in hand. She looks calm and composed, as if she’s heading to a meeting with a client.
She strolls toward me with the confident gait of a woman who is exactly where she intends to be.
Our eyes meet.
I want to say something, scream at her, curse at her, ask her why. But the chemical fog is pulling me back under, my vision swimming. All I can manage is her name.
“Amanda.”
She stops in front of me and tilts her head, as if curious. She studies me with pity on her face. Cold and clinical.
“I really am sorry, Thea, but he was never going to choose correctly on his own.”
She nods to the man on my left. Something presses against my face—the cloth again.
The world dissolves.
The last thing I hear is the sound of her heels fading away.