Chapter Twenty-Three - Annie
The morning begins quietly, the kind of quiet that always makes me uneasy.
I push the stroller along the cracked sidewalks, wheels rattling over uneven concrete.
The salty wind whips strands of hair across my face, stinging my eyes, and overhead the gulls wheel and cry.
Their voices mingle with the creak of the harbor, the steady rush of waves.
My son babbles up at them, pudgy hands waving wildly from his blanket. His laugh cuts through the chill air, and despite the constant undercurrent of caution that trails me everywhere, I can’t stop the small smile that pulls at my lips. For a moment—just a moment—it feels almost ordinary.
The diner’s neon sign glows faintly ahead, buzzing soft, the promise of another shift, another day survived. I push forward, the rhythm of routine steadying my nerves. Groceries later, laundry after. Keep moving, keep breathing, keep safe.
Then the air shifts.
A van rounds the corner too slowly, tires dragging, presence heavy, deliberate. My stomach lurches. Instinct spikes sharp, blood rushing to my ears. I grip the stroller tighter, pushing faster, heart hammering.
The van rolls to a stop. Doors swing open before I can think.
Three men spill out. Efficient. Purposeful.
One clamps a hand around my arm, iron-tight. Another seizes the stroller. The third slaps his palm across my mouth before the scream can tear free.
I thrash, clawing at the grip pinning me, kicking hard, my muffled cries shredding my throat against his skin. Panic claws through me, wild and suffocating, but it’s my son’s cry that detonates the terror into something fiercer.
His wail pierces the air: high, panicked, heart-shattering.
The sound slices through me, igniting a sharper, desperate fury.
I bite down hard on the hand silencing me, tasting blood. The man curses, grip slipping for half a second, and I slam my elbow back into his ribs. My other arm lashes out, nails raking across the face of the one holding me.
“Don’t touch him!” I scream as my mouth comes free, voice ragged, raw, feral. My son’s sobs choke the air, feeding the blaze tearing through me.
I fight like I’ve never fought in my life, every ounce of fear twisting into something savage. Because this isn’t about me anymore.
They can drag me, they can break me, but I’ll tear them apart before I let them take him.
I fight like a wild thing, nothing left but instinct and fury.
My nails rake down an arm, tearing flesh.
My teeth snap when I can reach, biting hard enough to taste blood.
The stroller jolts violently as one of them shoves it toward the van, my son’s cries breaking higher, shriller, splintering through my skull.
I wrench against the grip crushing my wrists until the skin burns raw. My shoulders ache from the force, but I keep pulling, keep twisting, my body a weapon fueled by panic.
“Dimitri,” one of them hisses against my ear.
The name strikes like a blade.
Ice floods my veins. They know. They know who I am; and worse, they know who he is.
My breath snags, terror choking me, but I don’t falter. I can’t. Every instinct screams: don’t let them near him. My son is wailing, desperate, reaching tiny hands into the air, and the sound tears something in me wide open.
I kick, hard, my foot colliding with a shin. A sharp curse in Russian, the sound ugly, and then a shove that nearly knocks me off balance. Pain shoots through me, but I don’t stop. My body thrashes with no rhythm, no sense, only the savage need to protect him.
The men bark clipped Russian at one another, their voices cold, efficient. I don’t need to understand the words. I hear it in their tone: I’m not random. I’m not a target of opportunity. I’m wanted. Sent for.
Leverage.
My child—my son—is leverage too. The thought makes me sick.
I twist violently, managing to angle myself between the stroller and the man dragging it closer to the van.
I half shield my son with my body, spitting muffled screams, throat tearing raw as they force me forward.
My nails catch on cloth, on skin, but it’s useless against the strength pressing in on every side.
The street stays silent. No neighbors step out, no curious faces peek through curtains. The world has turned away, leaving me alone in the snare.
My son’s cries are frantic now, a sound that rips me open and leaves nothing but fire.
“Stop! Don’t touch him!” My voice is ragged, nearly gone, but I scream it anyway, over and over, each time harder, until the words break into sobs.
They don’t listen.
Hands clamp tighter. The stroller bangs against the side of the van, wheels catching for an instant before it’s yanked forward. My body is hauled up the steps, shoved across the metal floor. My shoulder slams into the wall, pain exploding, but I scramble back, reaching for my son.
The last thing I see before the door slams is his face; red, wet with tears, mouth wide in a cry that guts me.
The engine roars to life, drowning him out, drowning everything out.
The van jerks forward. Darkness swallows us whole.
The van lurches forward, tires spitting water from the wet street, the engine’s growl filling every corner of the metal box. Through the slits of the back windows, I catch brief flashes of the town slipping away, neon signs dissolving into shadow, the faint hum of the harbor swallowed by distance.
I press myself hard against the side wall, my body a barrier, wedging myself between my son and the men. My arms lock around him so tightly my muscles scream, but I don’t let go.
His damp cheeks press into my collarbone, breath hitching in hiccupping sobs, tiny fists gripping the fabric of my shirt.
The men say little. Just clipped exchanges in Russian, the words too quick for me to catch, though the tone is enough: calm, certain, assured.
The leader is the one who speaks most. He sits opposite me, posture steady, his gaze fixed. He doesn’t leer or sneer, doesn’t bark orders—he studies. Weighs. Dissects. His eyes rake over me, not with hunger, but with calculation.
I can feel it in the heaviness of his stare. To him, I’m not a woman. I’m a weapon. A hostage meant to cut deeper than bullets or knives.
I force myself to study him back. Three men.
The leader: older, sharp-eyed, the kind of calm that comes from knowing he’s the most dangerous person in the room. He’s the one I need to fear most, the one who won’t slip.
The other two: muscle. Broad, heavy-handed, brutal. They lean back with false ease, careless in their confidence. Sloppy enough to leave a crack if I’m patient.
If an opening comes, I’ll take it.
I lower my chin to my son, whispering into his damp hair, the words trembling out low and fierce.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I swear.” My voice is steady for him, even when my insides quake. He quiets by degrees, sobs softening to small hiccups, though his fists don’t release my shirt.
One of the brutes mutters something in Russian, his mouth twisted in a sneer. The sound drips with mockery, a joke at my expense. My son. My fear.
The leader silences him with a single word, the command sharp as a blade. The brute shuts his mouth, but I don’t relax. The quiet that follows is worse.
Silence has teeth. Silence is where decisions are made.
I keep my breathing even, though my blood runs colder with every passing mile. This isn’t random. It never was. They didn’t stumble onto me by chance, didn’t just happen to find the street I walk each morning.
They’ve been watching. Waiting.
Now they’ve finally made their move.
Every bump of the road carries me further from safety, further into a snare I can’t see the edges of. My arms tighten around my son until he whimpers, but I can’t ease up.
The hours blur into a haze of motion and dread. The van rattles through streets that grow quieter, emptier, until the city itself falls away behind us.
Neon signs and crowded sidewalks give way to rolling fields, stretches of forest, narrow roads that wind deeper and deeper into isolation.
Each passing mile stretches the distance between me and safety, between me and the fragile little life I’d built for us.
My bakery mornings. The sea air. My son’s laughter under the gulls.
All of it slipping farther from reach.
I force myself to breathe evenly, to keep my arms tight around him, though my muscles ache. His weight against me is the only anchor I have left.
Fear sharpens my memory, my mind racing even as the world outside the windows blurs.
I piece it together, pulling threads I’ve tried to bury.
Dimitri’s rivals. Gabriel Moreno’s name whispered in the city, sharp and hushed, always carrying danger.
The Bratva’s enemies circling, waiting for an opening.
This isn’t about ransom. This is some kind of strategy.
They want to hurt him where he is weakest. Now—with me, with my son—they’ve found the blade to cut him.
The realization hits like ice in my veins. My stomach knots, but I don’t let my face break. I can feel the leader’s eyes on me, heavy and deliberate. Watching. Measuring. As though he knows I’ve reached the truth.
His calmness terrifies me more than if he’d struck me. Violence would have meant urgency. Control means he has time. That he knows he’s already won.
I won’t give him the satisfaction of tears. I won’t beg. I tilt my head down to my son instead, whispering softly against his hair, words meant as much for me as for him. “I won’t let them take you. I swear. I won’t.”
My hand strokes over the fine strands of his hair, soothing him as best I can. His breathing steadies, small hiccups still shuddering through him, but he clings tighter to my shirt, trusting me without question. The trust shatters something in me and forges it again, harder.
Inside, fear churns so violently I feel sick, but beneath it there is steel. Dimitri may have cast me aside, may have seen me as nothing but a liability, but I will not let his enemies use my child as a weapon.
If they want to bleed Dimitri, they’ll have to go through me first.
I straighten a fraction, though my back screams against the van’s metal wall. My eyes lift to meet the leader’s gaze, and for the first time, I don’t look away.
He studies me, cool and detached, but I let him see the fire anyway.
Let him know I understand.
Let him know I will fight, even if it kills me.
***
The countryside thickens outside the windows, trees crowding closer, roads narrowing until the van jolts over every rut and stone. Time feels unmoored, stretching and folding in on itself, but the truth keeps circling back: this is no mistake. I was never safe.
I whisper again, softer now, as my son drifts against me, eyelids fluttering shut from exhaustion. “Sleep, baby. Mama’s got you.”
My chest tightens. My arms hold steady.
My resolve sharpens to a blade of its own.