Chapter 15 #2
His hand slides from my face to my throat. Not squeezing—just resting there, thumb pressed against my pulse where it hammers frantically beneath my skin. Feeling the fear. Claiming the fear. Taking ownership of every racing heartbeat and making it his.
"Good girl." Another kiss, harder this time, teeth catching my bottom lip hard enough to bruise.
Marking me so I'll feel it hours from now, a reminder of who I belong to.
"After tonight, we have the conversation about what happens between us.
What this is, what it means, what you want from me.
But until Lazarev's dead, you're mine. You do exactly what I say, when I say it, without question or hesitation. Understood?"
The command in his voice sends heat through me despite everything—despite the fear, despite knowing what comes next. Because this is the bargain I made when I chose him. When I chose to stand beside a man who lives in the space between absolute control and barely contained chaos.
"Understood."
"Say it properly." The reminder comes soft but inflexible.
The demand that even now—especially now—he expects my submission makes something tight and terrified in my chest loosen slightly. This is familiar ground. Safe ground in the midst of chaos. The place where I know exactly what he needs from me.
"I'll follow your orders, Sir."
"Perfect." He releases me, steps back, expression shuttering into tactical focus. "Get your things. Luc's waiting."
He doesn't come with us.
Remy stays behind to finish rigging the apartment, to position his phone at the perfect angle, to set the trap with the precision he's known for. I don't look back as we leave. Can't look back. Because if I do, I might refuse to go.
Luc and I move through Rotterdam's residential streets on foot, staying off main thoroughfares. He sets a pace that doesn't attract attention—just two people out for a late morning walk. Nothing to see here.
The secondary location is a small studio apartment with windows overlooking our former safe house. Luc sets up his laptop on a narrow desk, pulling feeds from Remy's phone still positioned in the rigged apartment.
Remy's visible on the screen doing final checks on the charges.
"He'll wait until Lazarev fully enters the kill zone," Luc explains, gesturing to the feed. "Shaped charges will detonate in controlled sequence. Contained blast, but absolutely lethal within the apartment itself."
"And if Lazarev doesn't come?"
"He'll come." Luc's certainty matches Remy's exactly. "Obsession doesn't allow for delegation. He needs personal confirmation, needs to search for extraction route clues. The pattern's predictable precisely because obsession follows patterns."
I watch the monitor. Remy moves with efficient precision—checking wireless triggers, adjusting his phone's angle, setting up the kill zone with the same focus he used in the warehouse.
Then, in the early afternoon, he disappears from the phone's view.
Finding a position nearby where he can trigger the charges when Lazarev enters.
Luc makes coffee—strong and black, the kind designed to keep you functional through long surveillance shifts. We settle in to wait.
Hours crawl past as the afternoon begins to fade.
The screen shows Remy's phone feed—empty apartment, staged chaos, drawers hanging open, clothes scattered, all the careful details designed to sell panic.
The shaped charges are invisible in the feed's angle, but I know exactly where Remy positioned them.
Know exactly how much devastation they'll unleash within that minimal radius.
My hands won't stay still. I press them flat against my thighs, force them to be calm. But my fingers keep curling into fists anyway, nails biting crescents into my palms hard enough to hurt.
Every minute that passes without Lazarev showing feels like the trap failing. Like maybe he's smarter than we calculated. Like maybe he won't come at all and we're sitting here waiting for nothing while he circles around to hit us from a direction we didn't anticipate.
The worst part is the waiting itself. The sitting still while Remy's out there alone, positioned somewhere nearby with his finger on the trigger, waiting to kill or be killed.
Every scenario my mind conjures gets progressively worse—Lazarev bringing a team instead of investigating alone, Remy's position compromised, the charges malfunctioning, collateral damage despite all his calculations.
Luc doesn't tell me to relax. Doesn't offer empty reassurances that everything will be fine. Just refills my coffee when the cup runs dry and keeps his own attention fixed on the screen with the same unwavering focus.
His silence somehow makes it worse. Because Luc knows the odds. Knows exactly how operations like this can go catastrophically wrong. And he's not pretending otherwise.
Outside the window, Rotterdam continues its ordinary day. People walking dogs. Cyclists pedaling past. A woman pushing a stroller. Normal life flowing around us while we wait for violence.
The contrast makes my stomach turn.
Remy's voice crackles through the comm, sudden and startling. "In position. Maintaining radio silence from here. Confirm receipt."
"Confirmed," Luc responds immediately. "We'll monitor and alert if situation changes."
Then silence settles over the monitoring station like a physical weight. Just the hum of equipment, distant city sounds, and my own heartbeat too loud in my ears.
Light shifts as afternoon bleeds toward early evening. Shadows stretch long across the street. The apartment building where Remy rigged the trap sits quiet, windows dark, looking thoroughly abandoned.
Exactly like we want it to look.
Movement appears on the screen as the night embraces the sky.
A figure approaches the building—male, tactical gear, moving with professional caution. He pauses at the entrance, checking for surveillance, then picks the lock with practiced ease.
"Is that him?" My voice sounds too loud in the quiet apartment. "Is that Lazarev?"
Luc leans closer to the screen. "Movement pattern matches contractor training. Wait for facial confirmation."
My pulse hammers so violently I can feel it in my throat, taste it on my tongue. This is it. This is the moment everything hinges on. If it's not Lazarev—if he sent someone else to investigate—then the trap fails. Then Remy positioned himself as bait for nothing.
The figure enters the building, disappears from view. Seconds tick by, each one stretching into eternity while my hands grip the desk edge hard enough that my knuckles go white.
Then the phone feed shows him entering the apartment—weapon drawn, clearing the space with tactical precision. When he moves into the frame's optimal range, I catch a clear view of his face.
Lazarev.
Relief hits so hard I actually gasp—then terror follows immediately because now it's real. Now Remy's trap is sprung and there's no calling it back, no stopping what comes next.
He's older than I expected from Remy's descriptions. Harder. Damaged in ways that go deeper than physical scars—the kind of damage that comes from years carrying guilt and rage and projecting both onto someone else until the obsession consumes everything.
His expression reads cold, focused, calculating. It's the look of a man who believes he's about to confirm exactly what he wants: Remy Pascal evacuated in panic and left clues behind about where he ran.
He enters cautiously, clearing each room with professional thoroughness. Finds the scattered clothes, the open drawers, the abandoned equipment suggesting hasty evacuation. Pauses in the living room center, looking around slowly, calculating.
Then his expression shifts. Recognition crosses his features—understanding that this setup looks staged, that the evacuation evidence is too obvious, too convenient.
That he's walked into a trap.
He pulls out a phone. Starts to dial.
"No," I breathe, the word escaping without permission.
Luc's already reaching for his own phone. "He's calling for backup."
Lazarev lifts the phone to his ear, mouth moving as he gives orders to someone on the other end. No response from Remy through the comm. Radio silence maintained just like he said.
Lazarev moves toward the window, scanning the street below like he's trying to spot where we're watching from, phone still pressed to his ear.
"Where is Remy?" My voice cracks slightly, fear bleeding through despite every attempt at control. "Why isn't he responding?"
"He's maintaining operational security." Luc's jaw sets, tension visible in the muscle. "But Lazarev just called in reinforcements. If a team arrives before Remy detonates, they'll sweep the building systematically. They'll find his position."
On screen, Lazarev ends the call. Turns toward the door, weapon coming up like he's expecting company any second.
That's when the apartment erupts.
Remy doesn't wait for reinforcements to arrive. The shaped charges detonate in precise sequence, turning the apartment into an inferno so massive that even on the grainy phone feed I can see fire blooming through windows, heat shimmer visible in the air itself.
The blast is devastating. Directional and contained exactly like Remy promised, but absolutely devastating within the target zone.
Even from blocks away, I feel it. The window beside me trembles. A deep concussive thud rolls through the air, rattling in my chest cavity like something trying to tear loose, followed immediately by the shriek of car alarms and breaking glass.
The phone feed goes black—thermal overload, the device destroyed by temperatures hot enough to melt metal and plastic into slag.
From the window, I watch the apartment consumed by fire.
Flames lick through shattered windows, angry orange against the darkening sky.
Smoke billows upward in thick black columns that blot out what's left of the evening light.
Heat shimmer is visible even at this distance—air wavering like liquid above the burning unit.
Glass continues falling in tinkling crashes as windows blow out from thermal stress. Wood snaps and groans—support beams warping under extreme heat inside the apartment.
The shaped charges did their job perfectly. Directional blast, destruction completely contained to the target apartment. Neighboring units show lights coming on, residents at their windows, but the walls held. No structural damage beyond the kill zone. No civilian casualties.
Just one apartment burning like a funeral pyre.
No sign of Lazarev. No sign of movement from the burning apartment. No way to confirm the kill.
Emergency sirens wail in the distance, growing louder. Fire trucks responding, police converging on the scene.
The comm crackles—static, then silence.
No word from Remy. No confirmation he's alive, no signal that the operation succeeded, no update on extraction status.
Just flames consuming the apartment, smoke billowing from broken windows, and silence where Remy's voice should be.
I stare at the black screen where the feed used to be, then out the window at the devastation. Lazarev walked into the trap. Remy detonated before reinforcements could arrive. But there's no body, no confirmation Lazarev died in that inferno.
And there's no way to know if Remy made it out.
"He'll extract." Luc's hand finds my shoulder, steadying, grounding. But even his voice sounds less certain than before.
"Then why—" The words stick in my throat.
"Because he's moving through an active scene. Police, fire crews, witnesses everywhere. He'll make contact when he's clear and secure."
The logic makes sense. But logic doesn't stop my pulse from hammering. Doesn't quiet the images flooding my mind—Remy trapped under rubble, bleeding out in some alley while emergency crews search the wrong location, caught by police responding to the explosion.
Minutes crawl past with agonizing slowness. Fire crews battle the blaze, police cordon off the street, neighbors evacuate buildings on either side. Standard emergency response to a residential explosion.
Somewhere in that chaos, Remy's either extracting to safety or dying in what's left of the apartment.
The comm stays silent.
I keep watching from the window, waiting for movement in the shadows, waiting for his voice through the static, waiting for any proof he made it out alive.
Below, the street shows nothing but fire crews working the contained blaze, smoke still rising from the gutted apartment, emergency lights strobing red and blue against the darkness.
Daylight bleeds out completely. Full night settles over Rotterdam—over the gutted apartment still smoking, over emergency crews packing equipment, over the empty street where I keep waiting for proof he survived what he set in motion.
Hours pass. The comm stays silent.