8. Donovan
DONOVAN
The heavy sound of the exterior deadbolt sliding into place seals the room.
Total blackness follows.
The overhead condenser units roar to life, a mechanical hum vibrating through the steel grating underfoot. The temperature immediately plunges. The thirty-eight-degree air bites into my skin with an immediate, punishing force.
My fist hits the reinforced stainless-steel door. The thick metal barely shudders.
"Open the door." The demand is loud, ringing uselessly against the heavy industrial insulation.
I strike the metal again. Harder. The skin across my knuckles splits, but the warehouse beyond remains quiet. The late-shift worker is already gone, his boots fading into the distance. It is past ten o'clock at night. The loading dock is abandoned.
I reach into my trousers, pulling out my phone. The harsh, blue light from the screen cuts through the pitch-black space, illuminating the dense white vapor of our breath.
"No service," I say, staring at the empty signal bars. "The steel vault blocks the cellular network."
Elisa steps into the faint glow of the phone screen, her arms already wrapped tightly around her waist. "There has to be a manual override. The fire code mandates an internal release for walk-in coolers."
"It's an exterior deadbolt, Elisa. Someone physically threw the latch on the outside." I drop the phone back into my pocket, plunging us into total darkness once more. "We are locked in."
A sharp gasp echoes in the sudden blackness. Her teeth chatter, the sound frantic and uncontrollable in the quiet hum of the room.
"Elisa."
"I'm fine," she insists, her voice already shifting further down the narrow aisle as she moves away from me. "Just... give me a minute. I know this inventory room. There is an emergency thermal blanket near the back shelving unit."
I hear her shoes shuffle blindly against the frosted concrete, followed immediately by the sound of a plastic bucket scraping harshly across the floor as she stumbles in the dark.
"Stop moving before you break your neck," I order. The pitch-black space is disorienting, but the uneven rhythm of her breathing maps her exact coordinates. I step forward, tracking the sound of her voice.
The soft gray crewneck sweater she wears offers zero resistance to a commercial vault engineered to keep Indonesian flora in cold suspension.
I pull the heavy charcoal-gray suit jacket off my shoulders.
I step into her space, the narrow gap between the water-filled buckets forcing a brutal, unavoidable proximity. I crowd her, finding her shoulders in the dark.
"Put your arms through."
"I don't need your jacket, Donovan. I am looking for the?—"
"Put your arms through the sleeves, Elisa. Now."
I drape the heavy wool over her shaking shoulders, ignoring her protest. My large hands grip the lapels, pulling the jacket tight across her chest.
She is a rigid, vibrating column of ice. The sheer magnitude of her shivering overrides my hesitation. The anger that has kept my spine stiff since she walked out on me this morning fractures under the immediate, pressing need to get her warm.
I step flush against her back.
"What are you doing?" Her voice jumps, startled by the contact.
"You are freezing," I say, the sheer cold draining the anger right out of my voice. "Stop fighting me for one minute."
I pull her directly into my chest. My forearms cross over her stomach, locking her against my torso. The collision of our bodies brings a sudden, staggering rush of heat. My chest presses against her back, blocking out the freezing air of the cooler.
The freezing air of the vault vanishes the second she is in my arms, replaced by the searing, desperate heat of our bodies pressed together.
She gasps, her hands flying up to grip my forearms. The rough calluses on her fingers dig into my rolled-up sleeves. She stiffens, her entire body fighting the surrender, fighting the gravity pulling us together.
"I'm fine," she whispers, though her teeth are still chattering against the collar of my jacket.
"You're a terrible liar." I tighten my grip, flattening my forearms against her waist, anchoring her against me. My body easily absorbs the violent tremors wracking her frame.
Slowly, the tension drains out of her.
Her knees unlock. She sags back, her weight settling against me.
The silence in the vault thickens. The only sound is the drone of the refrigeration units and the unsteady rhythm of our breathing.
I lower my head. The movement is involuntary. My chin rests heavily on the crown of her head.
The thick coils of her hair brush directly against my jawline.
The scent of her hair—jasmine and damp earth—brings back a flood of memories I've spent five years trying to bury. It cuts through the anger. It strips away the sterile walls of my mother’s mansion and every defense mechanism I meticulously constructed after dragging my shattered body out of that hospital bed.
My face buries deeper into her hair. The overwhelming urge to turn her around and crush my mouth against hers threatens to snap my restraint .
Five years. She has a child. A family. A million-dollar transaction.
My jaw tightens as I pull her closer in the dark.
"Why did you take the money, Elisa?"
The words tear out of my throat, breaking the weighted silence of the vault.
I feel her breath hitch against my arms.
"Why?" I ask, my voice rough. "Was I just a paycheck to you? An investment portfolio?"
The warmth radiating between us vanishes in a single heartbeat.
Elisa goes rigid. She rips herself out of my grip.
She spins around in the cramped aisle. The darkness hides her face, but the sudden, sharp anger rolling off her body is palpable.
A sound cuts through the hum of the condenser units.
She laughs.
It is a bitter, broken sound.
"You keep talking about money, and I have enough of it! A paycheck." Her tone is laced with a rage that stops me from moving. "You're delusional."
She steps forward, jabbing a hard, unyielding finger directly on my chest.
"Your mother called me, met me in her office, and humiliated me. She looked me dead in the eye and told me you were done playing with me. That I was an embarrassing summer mistake, and you don’t even want to see me. I needed to leave on my own before you order security to remove me."
The finger presses harder into my sternum. The accusation takes me blindsided, the certainty in her voice fracturing the reality I've lived with for five years. I open my mouth to argue.
'I—' She cuts me off.
"I never saw a dime. I never even saw you, you bastard."