Victoria
I don’t hesitate.
The decision hits my body before it reaches my mind, muscle memory snapping into place like this is what I was always meant to do.
I take the back stairs two at a time, heart hammering, lungs burning already as if they know what’s coming.
The house doesn’t alarm. It doesn’t shout.
That’s the cruelest part. It lets me go, smooth and silent, like it’s curious to see how far I’ll make it.
Cool air slams into my face as I burst through a side door and sprint across stone that’s been worn smooth by centuries of feet that never ran this hard.
Gravel bites into the soles of my boots.
The estate opens up around me in sweeping late morning light, rolling ground, low shrubs tracing paths that twist away into shadow.
Beyond that, trees, dense and dark clawing at the sky.
I aim for them without thinking.
Branches whip at my arms as I plunge into the woods, breath tearing out of me in sharp bursts.
The forest smells damp and alive, earth and rot and rain-soaked bark.
The ground slopes unevenly, roots rising like traps under fallen leaves.
Somewhere in the distance, a bird shrieks.
Somewhere closer, I hear the unmistakable sound of boots on stone.
He’s already moving.
Panic flares hot, but it sharpens instead of slowing me.
I duck and weave, pushing deeper, following instinct over logic.
The trees thin suddenly, opening onto the skeletal remains of an old structure.
Stone foundations half-swallowed by moss, remnants of something medieval and forgotten.
Prague doesn’t erase its past. It builds around it and lets it fade away quietly.
I vault over a fallen wall and keep going.
My lungs scream. My legs burn. Every breath tastes like iron and fear. I don’t know where the edge of his land is, only that there has to be one. No one owns forever. No one builds an empire without a boundary.
My name carries through the trees behind me. Calm. Unhurried.
My blood turns cold.
He isn’t chasing like someone afraid of losing me. He’s chasing like someone enjoying the certainty of the outcome.
The ground rises suddenly, steep enough that my pace falters. I push harder, forcing my body up the incline as my calves burn. Branches tear at my jacket, thorns catch in my hair. And then the trees break apart, and I skid to a stop so hard I nearly fall.
The wall looms out of the ground like a judgment.
Old stone, high and thick, its surface rough with age and lichen, stretching left and right as far as I can see.
It isn’t decorative. It isn’t modern. It’s the kind of wall built centuries ago to keep people in when escape meant death.
I run my hands over it anyway, frantic, searching for cracks, footholds, anything.
There’s nothing.
I back away slowly, breath coming in ragged gasps, chest heaving as the truth settles heavy and absolute.
This isn’t just a boundary.
It’s an ending.
Slow footsteps crunch behind me. I don’t turn right away because I don’t want him to see the moment as it breaks on my face, the instant I understand that this wasn’t a race.
It was a demonstration.
When I finally do turn, he’s already there, standing a few yards away beneath the trees, shirt dark against darker shadows, eyes glinting like this is exactly where he expected us to end up. He doesn’t look out of breath. He doesn’t look angry.
He looks satisfied.
“There you are,” Leonid says calmly, like I wandered off and he simply followed. “I was wondering how long it would take.”
My legs shake. Fury surges up to meet the fear, hot and useless. “You planned this.”
“Yes.”
“You let me run. Again.”
“Yes.”
“Why?” I demand, voice cracking despite everything I do to keep it steady.
He takes a step closer, boots crunching softly over leaves and stone. “Because you needed to see it for yourself.”
“See what?” I snap.
“That there was never a way out that didn’t go through me.”
The wall presses cold and immovable at my back. The woods close in around us, ancient and indifferent.
“That was a good attempt,” Leonid says calmly, like we’re discussing a chess move instead of my last shred of freedom. “You chose speed over stealth. Terrain over planning.”
I laugh, breathless and wild. “Fuck you.”
There’s no anger in his answer. Only certainty. “You could’ve gone left at the incline. The ground drops there. You might’ve gained another minute.”
I step closer then, fury slicing through the panic. “You watched me tear myself apart just to see how far I’d go.”
“Yes.”
I put my hands on my hips and turn slowly, my chest heaving, heart trying to claw its way out of my ribs. It’s plain to see now I’m standing here. There is no way out.
He stands a few feet away, shirt unruffled, expression unreadable. Like the forest itself bends around him instead of slowing him down.
“You enjoy this,” I accuse. “Watching me fail.”
“No,” he says quietly. “I enjoy watching you fight. And this isn’t failure. It’s learning.”
I swallow hard, hating how he echoes something dangerous and validating in my chest. “Why did you leave this morning?” The words are out before I can stop them.
His gaze sharpens, just slightly. Enough that I know I’ve hit something real.
“You don’t get to do that,” I continue, anger spilling now, hot and reckless. “You don’t get to stay and make me feel like—” I choke, breath hitching, “—like that… and then disappear like it meant nothing.”
He takes a step closer.
“It didn’t mean nothing,” he says.
“Then why weren’t you there when I woke up?” My voice cracks and I hate myself for it. “Why did you leave me alone in that bed like I was a mistake?”
The silence stretches, thick and heavy, the woods holding their breath around us.
“You brought me here when you knew my situation, knew that I was running for my life. You tell me that you’ve been watching me, make me think it’s so you can catch me, but tell me it’s because you have developed some ridiculous bullshit feelings for me.
You say that you want me to choose you. Really you just want to fuck with my mind, because it’s the one thing Boris didn’t quite destroy.
” I’m flailing now. My arms and hands waving around to punctuate my words, pacing as the vitriol and anger pours out of me because I’ve no room left inside of me for it. No strength left to carry it.
“I left,” he says finally, low and controlled, “because if I stayed, you would’ve felt like I was taking the choice from you.”
My pulse stutters.
“And you’re not?” I demand, incredulously.
His eyes darken. “No.”
“You’re a fucking idiot if you think for one minute, any part of the last twenty-four hours, has been about my choice. Last night was the first and only choice I had. And I took it because I wanted to feel something other than pure fucking rage for a few seconds.”
Disappointment has my shoulders sagging, but it’s disappointment in myself.
“I may have brought you here by unconventional means—” he continues, and I cut him off with a snort. “But I did so you could stop running long enough to decide what you actually want. Who you want to be. Who you want to be with.”
I laugh again, but this time it’s broken. “I made my choice in that vault. I chose to leave and live, or die trying. Now I’m stuck here with a man who watches me on monitors, who has been watching me for God knows how long.”
My shoulders slump. I’ve never felt so defeated in my life. Not even when Boris was at his worst.
“I watch you because I can’t take my eyes from you. I brought you here because I know I can keep you safe here. Not just from Boris, but from everyone who is circling because you fucking stole from them, Victoria. There’s damage control still to be done, but my priority was to find you first.”
“So what? You found me, you brought me here, whatever last night was happened…what am I supposed to think? Do? Tell me, Leonid, because I am going out of my mind.” I smack my fingers against my head because insanity feels all too fucking close.
“I want you to consider that I might be right. I know I’m meant to be with you.
I wanted to give you space to figure it out too, but you’re so fucking stubborn.
As for last night I think it woke something in you that you didn’t know was there because you’ve never let yourself believe it.
You couldn’t even get yourself to come properly.
How have you got to adulthood with so much fucking tension twisting you up? ”
My breath shudders from me on a long exhale. I hate that he’s right. Hate that my body remembers the dark, the way his voice wrapped around me, the way safety felt like something real instead of a lie.
“You’re so busy being angry at me that you haven’t stepped back enough to consider the bigger picture. That perhaps, your anger belongs squarely at Boris’s feet and if you take a hot-fucking-minute, you’ll see I’m trying to help because I fell so fucking madly for the woman in that vault.”
I push my hands through my hair, unable to look at him because I know what he is saying makes some kind of sense.
He reaches out and tilts my chin up, forcing me to meet his gaze. His touch is steady and certain. Infuriatingly gentle.
“I left,” he says, “because I wanted you to choose me when you were awake. Not half-asleep. Not overwhelmed with something new and different. Not because you were afraid to be alone.”
My heart slams so hard it steals my breath all over again.
“And what if I don’t choose you?” I ask.
His thumb presses lightly at my jaw, just enough to remind me he’s solid. “You already did. And I’ll wait for you to realize it.”
My eyes narrow before I can control my expression. “When did I do that?”
He tilts his head to the side, “At the bar in the city.”
Something hot and reckless snaps loose inside me before slotting into place like it was always waiting for that last piece of information.
I’ve spent my whole life being oppressed by a man who wanted to break me. A man who cornered me to remind me how small I was, how dependent, how easily I could be put back where I belonged.
But Leonid doesn’t look at me the same way.
There’s no triumph in his eyes. No hunger to see me collapse. Just a sharp focus, like he’s watching something sacred decide whether it’s going to bolt or bare its teeth.
I press my back to the wall because it’s solid and cold and real, because I need something to hold me upright while my pulse starts doing traitorous things under my skin.
My body remembers last night. The way his hands never rushed, never demanded, the way he stayed when I asked instead of taking that as permission to own me.
That’s the difference.
Leonid didn’t take.
He waited. He gave. He trusted I would react exactly as he knew I would.
If he wanted to force me, I wouldn’t be standing here arguing. If he wanted to hand me back to my uncle, he wouldn’t have let me run at all. If last night was just about control, he wouldn’t have left before dawn and let me wake up with the choice still mine.
That’s when the anger twists into something else.
Want.
Hot, reckless, furious want. My body leans toward him before my mind catches up, drawn by the memory of how it felt to stop fighting for one single night.
I hate him for that. I hate myself more, because standing here, shaking and breathless and cornered, I realize the truth I don’t want to face.
I don’t want to go back to being numb. I don’t want to go back to shrinking.
I want whatever this madness is. The danger, the intensity, the way he looks at me like I’m something worth waiting for instead of something to be managed.
So when I step into him, it’s not surrender. It’s defiance of everything that I was before I stole those diamonds. And when my hands fist in his shirt and my mouth finds his, it’s because I want to hold onto this feeling, even if it destroys me later.
Before, life and death were equal in my mind. Balanced on luck and tipped by the possibility of freedom. That balance has been slowly recalibrating since the moment I began planning to escape my uncle. And the more it leans towards my possible death, the more I realize I want to live.