Chapter Three #2
When none of it came, her throat tightened. She swallowed carefully. Her fingers curled against the table, nails biting into the worn surface.
This could still be a test.
Her mind searched for the angle. A new interrogator. A different tactic. Kindness could be weaponized as easily as cruelty.
But there was no softness in his expression.
There was restraint.
And patience.
She realized—slowly, cautiously—that he was not trying to make her respond.
He was waiting to see if she would.
No one had done that since she’d been taken.
Her breath came shallow, then steadied as she forced control back into her body. She straightened in the chair, shoulders squaring despite the ache that protested the movement. She said nothing.
The man watched her for another beat, then spoke.
"My name is Nikolai Petrov." His voice was low and even, carrying without effort. “My friends call me Kol. This is Rafael," he indicated to the man on the right, "and Mateo. We’re here to get you out.”
Not a command.
A statement.
She searched his face, harder this time, looking for the lie. For the flicker of satisfaction, the anticipation of compliance. She found none.
He nodded once, as if acknowledging her silence rather than resisting it. “You don’t have to answer me. You don’t have to explain anything. You don’t owe us anything.”
Her chest tightened painfully.
You don’t owe us.
“That door,” he continued, keeping his tone steady, grounded, “leads away from this place. From the people who brought you here.” He paused, deliberate. “If you come with us, we will take you out of here, and you won’t be alone again. We will take these bastards down for you.”
Behind him, one of the other men—broad-shouldered, coiled—shifted his stance, attention snapping toward the corridor. “We’ve got movement,” he said quietly, already angling his body to block the doorway.
The third man lifted a hand to his ear, eyes distant. “Two contacts. Fast,” he murmured. “We need to move.”
The man in front of her didn’t turn around. He kept his focus on her, as if nothing else mattered more in that moment. “We can’t stay,” he said simply. “But I won’t touch you unless you tell me to. And I won’t leave without you unless you want me to.”
The words landed with careful weight.
Choice.
Real choice.
Her fingers dug into the edge of the table. Her breath came shallow, then steadied as she forced her body to respond instead of her fear. This could still be a lie. A different kind of trap.
But the sounds beyond the room were changing now—boots moving too quickly, voices raised, the sharp edge of urgency cutting through the stale air.
The man took a single step back, giving her space. “If you can stand,” he said gently, “we leave now.”
She pushed back from the table.
Slowly. Deliberately.
The chair legs scraped softly against the floor. No one rushed her. No one grabbed her arm.
She stood.
The man’s shoulders loosened by a fraction, relief flashing across his face before he buried it. He turned his head slightly. “Rafael.”
“I’ve got her,” the broad-shouldered man replied, positioning himself between her and the hallway.
“Mateo,” he said next.
“Exit’s still clear,” came the answer. “But we’re out of time.”
The man looked back at her. “Stay close to me. That’s all you have to do.”
She took one step toward him.
Then another.
She did not speak.
And he did not ask her to.
Somewhere deeper in the building, a door slammed hard enough to rattle the walls.
Rafael moved first, clearing the way.
Mateo was already talking, already adjusting, already buying them seconds they desperately needed.
The moment fractured.
Sound rushed back in all at once—the hum of the lights rising to a whine, the distant echo of shouting, the sharp crack of a command barked too late to matter.
Eliza’s senses narrowed, focusing on the space immediately around her, on the man in front of her who had placed himself just slightly ahead, just slightly to the side.
A shield without touching her.
Rafael moved with lethal efficiency, clearing the corridor in controlled bursts of motion, his presence a wall between her and whatever came next. Mateo stayed half a step behind, voice low and rapid as he fed directions, times, warnings—words meant for the men, not for her.
She followed because there was nothing else to do but follow.
Each step felt unreal, her body lagging half a beat behind her intent, muscles protesting as if reminding her how long she’d been made to sit, to wait, to endure.
The man—Kol, though she did not yet know his name—matched his pace to hers without comment, adjusting instinctively whenever she faltered.
They turned a corner. Another door. A rush of warmer air that smelled of dust and oil and the outside world.
Hope flickered again, unwanted and dangerous.
She swallowed it down and kept moving.
Behind them, something shattered—glass, maybe, or metal—followed by a curse and the sharp report of a weapon. Rafael answered it without hesitation, pushing them forward.
Eliza did not look back.
She focused instead on the solid presence ahead of her, on the simple instruction she had been given.
Stay close.
She did.
And for the first time in three weeks, she moved toward something instead of waiting for what would come for her next.