Chapter 7 Rowan
ROWAN
The trains are what tell me we’re still in the industrial district, even though they moved us again sometime before dawn.
They never stop. Even when the building falls quiet, and Lila stops pacing long enough for the air between us to feel thick and unmoving, there is always that distant metallic drag somewhere beyond the walls.
Steel grinding against steel. A low, hollow echo that seeps through the concrete and remains beneath every other sound.
The guards are more careful with me now, like they’re afraid of damaging something they’ve been told to protect.
The room they’ve put us in is bare, nothing in it meant for comfort.
Two narrow cots with thin gray blankets that feel rough against my palms. A metal table bolted directly to the concrete floor.
I don’t see any cameras, which probably means they’re hidden somewhere in the walls.
A reinforced window sits high near the ceiling, framed in thick steel.
Even if we stacked the cots, we wouldn’t reach it, and the opening is so narrow it offers nothing but the illusion of escape.
The steel door seals with a quiet hiss when it closes, and the sound doesn’t echo the way it should. It just disappears into the walls, and the room seems to draw tighter around us.
Lila hasn’t stopped moving since we were locked inside.
She paces from one wall to the other, her boots brushing over the floor, pivoting sharply at the corner of the table before retracing the same path.
Her arms are folded tightly across her chest, her fingers digging into the sleeves of her coat.
“This place isn’t permanent,” she mutters, her voice low but full of restless energy. “You can feel it. They’re just holding us here.”
I sit on the edge of the cot for a moment, pressing my palms into the thin mattress before pushing myself up again. When I stand too quickly, the room tips slightly before righting itself, just enough to remind me my body isn’t quite cooperating lately.
Lila notices.
“You okay?” she asks, stopping mid-step.
“I’m fine.” I try to sound convincing even though the words fall short of the truth. “Just… adjusting.”
Her eyes drop briefly toward my stomach before she looks away again.
The nausea isn’t sudden or violent. It builds slowly beneath my ribs, a quiet pressure that rises and fades if I breathe through it carefully enough.
Today, the air tastes faintly metallic. I swallow against it and focus on the trains in the distance, on the steady vibration of something beyond these walls that keeps moving whether we’re trapped here or not.
The hinges of the door groan softly before a woman steps inside, carrying a plastic tray balanced against her hip.
She isn’t dressed like the men. No tactical boots or dark uniform.
Just jeans and a sweater worn thin at the cuffs, her hair pulled back in a loose knot that looks assembled without care.
She smells faintly of stale coffee and detergent.
“Eat,” one of the guards tells us from the doorway behind her.
She nods once in agreement and slips in. The door seals shut behind her. Crossing the small space, she sets the tray down on the metal table with bread wrapped in plastic, a sealed container of soup, and two bottles of water.
For a moment, the three of us stand there in silence. She glances up, her eyes moving from my face to Lila and then back again. The look isn’t long enough to draw attention, but it’s long enough for me to see the fatigue there.
“You should eat,” she murmurs.
Lila moves a little closer as I push myself up from the cot. I take a moment to center myself before crossing the room. The woman slides one of the water bottles slightly closer to me.
“Thank you,” I say quietly.
The woman pauses briefly. She nods once, then turns toward the door. Before knocking, she tilts her head slightly, listening.
“What’s your name?” Lila asks suddenly.
The woman freezes for a moment before answering.
“Maria.”
Her voice is almost reflexive, as if she hasn’t spoken her name aloud here before.
“They’re not paying you enough for this,” Lila mutters.
Maria’s lips press into a thin line, but she doesn’t respond. She knocks twice, waits, and leaves as soon as the door opens.
When it seals again, Lila exhales sharply.
“She’s not like the others,” Lila says, dragging her hands down her face. “Did you see that? The way she pushed the water closer to you.”
“I noticed.”
“She could help us.”
“Maybe,” I respond carefully.
Lila resumes pacing, though slower now.
“I heard two guards arguing earlier,” she says after a moment. “About Ivan.”
My fingers tighten briefly around the water bottle before I loosen them again. “What about him?”
“They said he hasn’t stayed anywhere long. He keeps rotating between locations. Different cars. Different men. One of them said they’re burning through safe locations too fast.”
I draw a slow breath through my nose.
“Why would he do that?” Lila asks, stopping in front of me.
“Because something changed,” I say quietly. “And he expected it to.”
Lila studies me for a moment. “You think Kiren did something?”
“I think someone did something,” I reply quietly. “And it’s reaching here now.”
The building feels different today. Boots move faster in the corridor, conversations cut off the moment they begin, and doors close harder than they need to.
An engine roars outside, closer than the trains, the vibration carrying through the floor and into my bones. Car doors slam, heavy footsteps follow, and a voice suddenly cuts down the corridor, raw with fury.
Arkady.
Lila stops mid-stride. Her shoulders pull back, and her fingers curl into her palms.
“That doesn’t sound good,” she whispers.
“No,” I agree.
Whatever Ivan has been preparing for has just arrived.
Arkady’s voice reaches us before his footsteps do, and it fills the corridor with the kind of anger that doesn’t need volume to intimidate.
Lila freezes near the table, one hand braced against the metal edge as if she needs something solid to keep herself upright. At the same time, I remain closer to the cot, my body angled toward the door, listening so intently it feels like my ribs are doing the work my ears can’t.
The noise in the corridor changes suddenly.
Heavy footsteps move quickly along the concrete.
They close the distance in a rush before stopping just beyond the door.
Something scrapes against the wall, and then a door farther down the hall slams open hard enough that the vibration runs through our door and into the floor beneath my feet.
Lila looks at me, her eyes wide and bright with dread, making everything else in the room fall away.
“Do you think he knows about…” Her voice breaks off before she finishes, and her hand drops from the table to her side.
“I don’t know what he knows,” I whisper back. “But he’s here for a reason.”
Her throat moves as she swallows, and she drags a slow breath through her nose, trying to make herself quiet.
Outside the door, Arkady’s voice cuts through the corridor again, closer now, harder than before. Even through the walls, the anger in it feels dangerous.
“You’ve been moving,” he snaps. “Running between sites like you’re afraid of your own shadow.”
A pause follows, long enough that my pulse begins to climb, because the silence isn’t calming.
Then Ivan answers. His voice doesn’t rise to meet Arkady’s anger. It stays calm and level, and that calmness makes its sound worse.
“I’ve been rotating,” Ivan answers, and even through the steel door I hear the faint edge of impatience beneath the calm. “Because staying in one place makes us predictable.”
Arkady gives a harsh laugh. It sounds like disbelief and insult braided together.
“Predictable?” Arkady repeats. “What made us predictable was you letting money freeze in the open, you incompetent bastard. Baltic routes stall for twelve minutes and you act like it’s nothing.”
My stomach tightens.
Someone is reaching into Arkady’s world, disturbing whatever he relies on to keep control. The tension in the building didn’t appear out of nowhere, and the way the guards have been talking makes it clear that something outside these walls has changed.
Kiren.
The certainty of it rests quietly in my chest. He’s coming. I’ve known that since the moment I was taken. The only question is whether he’ll reach me in time.
Lila exhales slowly beside me and lifts her eyes toward the ceiling, like she’s trying to picture the invisible threads connecting everything beyond these walls. Like she’s trying to understand how someone like Kiren could reach a man like Arkady from a distance.
“You were supposed to keep the route clean,” Arkady continues. “You were supposed to keep his attention off my accounts, my shipments, and my people. Now one of my transfers has stalled, and my men are questioning things.”
I imagine Arkady striding back and forth, his hands cutting through the air, his eyes burning with suspicion, while Ivan stands still and watches him burn through his own control.
“You think this started yesterday?” Ivan asks. “You think one restriction is the beginning?”
“Careful,” Arkady replies coldly. “You’re forgetting who you’re speaking to.”
Ivan pauses for a moment before answering, his voice calm. “No,” he says. “I know exactly who I’m speaking to.”
Lila’s hand flies to her mouth. She covers it hard, pressing her knuckles against her lips as if she can physically stop herself from making a sound.
My breath catches, too, not because I’m surprised Ivan challenges him, but because I feel the moment tipping, like standing too close to the edge of a drop you didn’t see until you’re already there.
Arkady goes quiet. Not calm quiet. The kind that means something bad is about to happen.
“You forget where you stand,” he murmurs, low enough that I have to lean toward the door to hear him. “You forget who put you in the position you’re in.”