Iskra
Runa squealed in delight as another cat drew closer, only for it to halt mid-step at the force of her excitement. She sat in her little plush play ring, taking in the sounds and scents and people around her with the focused attention of someone cataloguing a new world.
I only had to produce the large bag of cat treats for others to converge around us.
Even when Runa’s hand bumped clumsily against a few of them they didn’t retaliate—patient creatures, or perhaps simply experienced with small humans.
I was spreading treats across the grass away from the blanket when I noticed the man.
A quick assessment told me he wasn’t there with family.
His posture against the tree was the specific combination of casual and alert that I had learned to read in another life entirely—in doorways and on staircases, watching men who didn’t know they were being watched.
His hair was light brown. I looked down without making it obvious.
Polished shoes. Tailored trousers. A crisp white shirt tucked in with the precision of someone who dressed for function rather than a day in the park.
I emptied the rest of the treats onto the grass and turned to survey the space.
Front. Back. Sides.
Two men by the entrance. One looked away. The other looked directly at me—a fraction of a second, then gone.
I knew. They knew.
My mind seemed to falter for just a moment—the particular lurch of a plan that had held for months suddenly recalculating.
I wasn’t just on the run anymore. I was on the run with a four-and-a-half-month-old who was happily chomping on her fist, drool running down her wrist, entirely unaware that the world had just shifted beneath us.
I began packing. Slowly enough not to signal. Quickly enough to matter.
When I glanced up they were gone. I turned a full circle.
Nothing.
I wasn’t fooled.
Fear like nothing I had known before moved through me and hardened into something useful before it could become paralysis. Not for long. I had to act.
I hung the hastily packed bag on the pram and lifted Runa free of her ring, prying it gently from around her before strapping her in and stuffing the ring beneath the seat.
Then I walked—not ran, walking didn’t attract attention—out of the park and along the main road beside the Bosphorus.
No one followed. Or if they did, I couldn’t find them, which was almost worse.
I turned into the first internationally recognised hotel I reached—the kind with a lobby full of people and cameras and staff who had seen everything. I bought a scarf from the shop inside, then left the pram and the bag where they stood.
The only thing I took was the cotton scarf she loved.
I wrapped the burgundy material around her, pulled it close, and when the taxi came I walked out and didn’t look back.
??
??
??
Time. Time. Time.
I needed time. Runa was due a feed but wouldn’t be hungry enough to take one yet. I sat her in her floor seat and ran around the counter to grab the stored baby food I’d bought for her future solids and the breast milk from the freezer.
The suitcase was always packed and ready to go. It had been packed since the day we arrived. Everything we needed was inside it. I wrapped the milk bottles in paper towels before placing them into multiple plastic bags to insulate them.
Blanket.
Passports.
Cash.
Baby food and meds.
Basic clothing.
Toiletries.
Nappies.
Prepaid SIM card.
Phone.
I opened the laptop and dropped it into the partially filled bath. My phone was next. The GPS was off but the SIM needed to go. I opened the cabinet and rummaged through the small box for a safety pin.
Runa was beginning to register her own boredom. The sounds she made when she was approaching the end of her patience were distinct and I knew every variation of them.
I worked faster.
The pin ejected the SIM. I snapped it, dropped the pieces into the toilet and flushed.
No more time.
Everything done.
Rent paid.
They could keep our belongings.
Damn. Runa’s nappy.
I could change her in the taxi.
We had to leave.
They could have followed us.
Oh God. They could have been following us for days.
“Bratva,” I whispered—saying the word I was most terrified of so it couldn’t hold power over me. It wouldn’t stop me. Nothing would stop me from saving Runa from a life of bartering.
The thought of him selling my daughter off in marriage made my stomach turn.
“Fuck the Bratva,” I hissed and stormed back to the living area.
The sling was on in seconds. I unbuckled Runa and slipped her into it, securing her at my hip with the practiced efficiency of four and a half months of muscle memory. I extended the handle of the suitcase, kicked it into motion and mentally mapped the route through the back garden as I moved.
I flung open the door.
Froze.
Vadim.
The same cold eyes—only molten now, fury barely contained beneath the surface, the particular stillness of a man who had been patient for a very long time and had run out of patience entirely.
Men behind him.
I cried out and threw my weight against the door.
Too late. His polished shoe was already jammed in the frame, immovable, the door bouncing uselessly against it.
“No,” I cried, trying to force it closed anyway.
He pushed it open with one hand and I stumbled back into the apartment.
Runa whimpered.
I pulled her closer and felt her heart against mine—fast, confused, too young to understand and old enough to feel the fear radiating off her mother.
His eyes found her immediately.
“I believe you have something that belongs to me,” he said, striding into my apartment as though he had always owned it—pausing only to straighten his cufflinks, tugging his jacket sleeves into place with the unhurried precision of a man entirely certain of the outcome.
I shook my head. My nightmare. My deepest fear made real and standing in my doorway in a tailored suit with cold eyes and men at his back.
Konstantin moved in behind him. Then Bogdan.
A fourth hung back.
The man from the park.
“You can go,” Vadim said, without looking at me. “She is mine.”
“No,” I croaked. “You can’t have her.”
I backed away. Nowhere to go. The wall found me before I found it. Cornered—the suitcase still by the door, Runa at my hip, my eyes still moving across the room looking for something that wasn’t there.
“Nobody steals what is mine,” he said, his voice dropping to something quieter and infinitely more dangerous than a shout—the anger finally showing at the edges, controlled but present, a door held shut by a man deciding whether to open it.
“Bogdan,” he said—and with that single word a gun cocked somewhere behind me.
I shielded Runa and swivelled, putting my back between her and the room so no bullet could reach her. My legs buckled. I went down to my knees on the hard floor, Runa screaming against my chest, her fear and mine indistinguishable from each other.
Before I could soothe her the blow landed—sharp, at the back of my head—and as my body began to crumple I could only think of her. Only of Runa. Her cries were already fading at the edges, growing distant, as though someone were slowly turning down the volume on the only thing that mattered.
Someone began to pull her from me.
My arms wouldn’t respond.
My eyes closed before the tears could fall.
It was happening all over again.
Then.
Darkness.
Silence.
He had torn my heart from my body once again.
Taken my child.
Again.