Chapter 4 #2
Her gaze is locked on the picture. She looks like she might be sick. Her fingers claw at her own shins, nails digging in. “That was years ago,” she says. “Before I left.”
“Before you ran.”
“Yes.”
The rope in the picture cuts across her throat.
I lower the photo and look at her neck. In this light, I can see it—faint, but there—a thin, pale line where fibers once pressed hard enough to bruise.
He did that to her under my nose. The fury that rises is slow.
It sears its way up. “Taken in my house.”
She shuts her eyes, breath stuttering.
“Explain this picture?” I ask.
“I don’t know how it happened,” she answers. “Everything was fast. I woke up in a chair, tied and gagged. He wore gloves. A mask. His voice was filtered. I only saw his hands and the boots he wore when he crossed the floor.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
A short, humorless sound escapes her. “Because at first I thought he was one of yours. Then I realized he wasn’t following your patterns. He didn’t want information. He wanted a reaction. I couldn’t give him that and stay alive.”
I study her. She steadies her breath, but not enough to hide the fear sitting in her bones.
“He’s recreating it now,” I say. “He wants me to see the picture in my own kitchen.”
Her expression tightens. “Congratulations. You have his attention.”
I crouch so we are eye level. The corridor shrinks around us. The air feels charged, too warm, too close. Her eyes meet mine, and something in my chest pulls tight.
“I need every detail,” I tell her. “How he took you, where you woke, what you heard, what you smelled, how you got out. Nothing is irrelevant. I decide that.”
She nods and starts talking.
At first her voice is clipped, brittle. Then the dam breaks and the words keep coming.
She tells me about the night it began. How the door to her room clicked open when it should have been locked.
How two hooded men lifted her out of bed before she was fully awake.
She fought on instinct, kicking, twisting, landing blows that earned her a hard crack to the ribs.
“I was taken to the bathhouse in the Garden Ring first," she says.
“He waited there,” I say. “He thought I would come for you.”
She nods once. “When you didn’t, one of his men pressed a cloth to my face.”
Her voice thins. I hear the memory tightening around her.
She tells me how the drug hit fast, sharp enough to burn her throat as she inhaled. She says the world folded in on itself—light collapsing, sound stretching thin—until everything went black. She remembers her own body fighting it, a short, frantic struggle she never stood a chance of winning.
“When I woke…” She swallows. “I was tied to a chair.”
I stay silent. I let her speak.
She describes the room, a different place entirely. The room smelled of iron and damp concrete. Her wrists were wrapped in zip ties that rubbed her skin raw each time she tested them. A single bulb glowed overhead, steady and cold.
She describes the modulated voice that stayed calm while she gasped for breath. Too calm for a man watching a woman fight for breath, each word precise, measured like he was timing her fear.
She tells me how she learned not to scream. How she counted her heartbeats. How she memorized the rhythm of the man’s steps, storing every detail in case she lived long enough to use it.
“He wanted to see how long it would take you to notice I was missing,” she says. “He told me your schedule was full. That you wouldn’t even know I was gone until morning.”
My pulse hits the inside of my throat. I remember that night. I had just returned from a summit in Riga. I came home after midnight, reviewed reports, and went straight to my office. I never checked her room. I never saw that she wasn’t there.
She looks at me like she is bracing for recoil.
“When I came to you,” she says, voice thin at the edges, “I thought you’d be mad with worry.”
Her eyes mist. “But you didn’t even know I was missing.”
Something tightens low in my chest, but I hold still. She keeps going.
“I thought I was going to die.” Her hands curl in her lap. “He tied the ties so tight I could feel the blood stop. I tried not to breathe. He kept tilting his head like he was waiting for any sound I made.”
I picture it. The bindings. The chair. The small room stripped to nothing.
She looks past me, into the memory. “He stood right in front of me. Close. I could hear him smiling under the mask.”
A short breath leaves her. “He didn't introduce himself. Just said his name. He didn’t threaten. He just watched me… until he felt like speaking.”
“He said his name like it amused him.” Her lips press together.
“Courier,” she says. The word leaves her mouth with a faint tremor. “He let out a little laugh, like this was all entertainment. Then he lifted the camera. Took a picture while I tried to stop shaking. Said it was ‘for keeps’. Then he walked out.”
She falls silent for a moment. It hangs heavily between us.
“I cut myself free,” she says at last. “There was a strip of metal under the chair from the construction. It sliced my wrist, but I didn’t care. I just needed to move.”
I remember the renovation. The exposed beams. The dust. I remember how close that unfinished wing sat to my own rooms.
“When I got loose, I looked around. Plastic on the walls. Bare concrete. I realized I was inside your mansion. I thought if I found you, it would matter. That you’d see me. That you’d know.”
Her voice falters, and something sharp twists in my gut.
“But when I reached your office…” She swallows. “You weren’t alone. You were working. Focused. Untouchable. You didn’t even look up.”
Her hands start to shake. The tremor is small, but unmistakable. Without thinking, I reach out and close my fingers around her wrist. Her pulse hammers against my thumb. She looks at my hand, then at my face, and the heat between us rises like it never left.
“He told me he’d come for me again when the stakes would be higher,” she says, almost a whisper.
My grip tightens before I force it to loosen. Shame hits like a punch. I let another man cut her, bind her, hurt her, and walk out of my house alive.
“He said you’d miss rehearsal,” she whispers. “So he would build a bigger show.”
Her voice breaks. She bites it back, but it shakes the air between us. Her hand rises toward her throat, stopping just short of the rope mark.
“He did it here,” she says. “In your walls. And you didn’t even see it.”
I move my hand from her wrist to her throat. My fingertips find the faint roughness where the fibers bit. She draws in a breath. Her throat shifts under my palm. “You’re mine to punish and protect,” I say, my voice dropping. “No one touches you inside my house and lives.”
Her eyes flare. Gold catches in them like a spark taking. The corridor narrows around us. My blood thumps in my ears. I can see every line of her face, the way her pupils widen when my thumb traces the edge of the scar.
“Why are you shaking?” I ask, worry creeping into my voice.
“Because I still dream this,” she whispers, shaking her head like a tiny, cornered animal in pain. Her hair spills like muted light on her shoulders. “I still dream of you, Sergei,” she whispers. “That is the part I can’t forgive.”
The space between us breaks. I catch the back of her neck and pull her toward me, pinning her against the cold wall. She meets me halfway. My mouth finds hers after five years.