Chapter 13 #3
The car slows. We're pulling into a large parking lot surrounded by empty warehouses. There’s broken windows and graffiti on the walls. The kind of place where bad things happen and no one hears you scream.
My stomach clenches.
"There." The driver points to a black sedan parked near the entrance to one of the buildings. My father's car.
"Stay in the vehicle until I clear the area," Andrei orders. He's already moving, gun drawn, eyes scanning every shadow and corner as he slips from the car.
His men fan out, checking sight lines and entry points. I watch through the window as my father's car door opens.
Alexander Baumann steps out, and my breath catches. He looks…
Fine.
He doesn’t look like he’s lost sleep, or like anything about his life has changed.
His suit is impeccable, his facial hair neatly groomed, his hair styled.
The only sign that he might be feeling any distress at all is the way his mouth is pressed in a thin line, his jaw a little tight as he scans the area.
He doesn’t look like a man losing sleep over his kidnapped daughter. He doesn’t look like a man who’s lost anything at all.
My heart clenches in my chest. I want to jump out of the car and go to him, demand to know why he doesn’t look more concerned, and throw my arms around him all at once. But I stay put, remembering Andrei’s instructions. If I disobey him now, he’ll never trust my opinions or ideas again.
I’m not sure why that matters to me at all, aside from the possibility of getting out of his clutches. But I don’t have time to think about that right now.
Andrei approaches him. They're too far away for me to hear what they're saying, but I can see the tension in both their postures. My father's bodyguard has his hand near his weapon.
Then Andrei turns and gestures to the car. The driver opens my door.
I step out into the cold air, and my father's face brightens the moment he sees me. A smile spreads across his lips, and I feel a wash of relief.
He does miss me. He did want me back. His appearance is just because he didn’t want to meet his daughter’s captor looking like Andrei had him on the back foot. It was just that… appearances.
“Liesl.” I can hear the relief in his voice, and I smile back. I start walking toward him.
That's when the world explodes.
Gunfire erupts from everywhere at once—the warehouse windows, the rooftops, behind parked cars. Someone screams.
Andrei is moving before I can process what's happening. He's on me in two strides, his body slamming into mine, taking me down to the ground behind the car. The impact knocks the air from my lungs. "Stay down!" he roars.
There’s more gunfire—so much gunfire. The sound is deafening, overwhelming. I hear glass shattering, metal pinging, men shouting in Russian. A body hits the ground near me. One of Andrei's men. His eyes are open but empty.
Dead.
I can't breathe. I can't do anything except press myself against the cold pavement while Andrei's body shields mine and bullets tear through the air above us. "The car!" Andrei shouts to someone. "Get to the fucking car!"
He's firing back now. I can feel the recoil of his gun through his body pressed against mine.
I can smell gunpowder and blood, the air suddenly hazy and thick with it.
Someone grabs my arm—Andrei, hauling me up, keeping himself between me and the shooters.
We're running—stumbling—toward his car. His men are firing, providing cover, but there are so many shooters. So many angles of attack.
This wasn't a meeting. This was an ambush.
My father set me up.
The thought is so horrifying I almost stop moving. My legs almost give out. But Andrei's grip is iron, dragging me forward. Then we're at the car and he's shoving me inside. "Drive!" he screams at the driver. "Now!"
The engine roars, and the tires screech. We're driving before my door is even closed, and I'm thrown against the seat as the car accelerates.
Gunfire follows us. I hear bullets hitting metal. The back window spiderwebs but doesn't shatter. Andrei is on top of me, pressing me down into the seat, his body covering mine completely.
"Don't look up," he orders. "Don't fucking move."
I don't. I can't. I'm shaking so hard my teeth are chattering, and there's something wet on my hands. Blood. Not mine… someone else's.
The gunfire fades. We're moving fast, taking corners too sharp, the driver pushing the car to its limits. "Update," Andrei barks into his phone. His weight is still crushing me into the seat. "Who made it out?"
A pause. His body goes rigid. "Understood." He ends the call.
We drive in silence for what feels like hours. Finally, the car slows. We're back at the estate. Safe, I think, and then flinch. When did Andrei’s estate become the place that was safe?
I guess when my father staged an ambush instead of meeting with me like he promised.
Andrei climbs off me slowly. His face is spattered with blood and his jacket is torn. "Inside," he growls. "Now."
I stumble out of the car. My legs barely hold me upright. There's blood on my sweater, on my hands, in my hair. Someone else’s, I think again, dizzily. One of Andrei's men who died because I convinced him to arrange this meeting.
The front door of the mansion opens, and Andrei's hand is on my back, pushing me forward. Through the foyer. Down the hallway. Up the stairs.
To my room.
He opens the door and I walk inside on autopilot. My mind is blank. There's nothing in my head except the sound of gunfire and the image of that man's empty eyes.
"Liesl—"
"How many?" My voice doesn't sound like mine. "How many of your men died?"
Andrei’s jaw clenches. "Three."
Three. Three men who were alive this morning. Who had families, maybe. Friends. Lives.
Three men dead because I thought I could negotiate with my father.
"I'm sorry." The words sound hollow. I can’t help but say them, but I also know they don’t mean anything. Not after this. "I'm so sorry, I thought—"
"No more suggestions." Andrei's voice cuts through my apology like a blade, cold and final. "You don't think about strategy. You don't offer ideas. You don't speak unless I ask you a direct question. Do you understand?"
I stare at him. "Andrei—"
"Do you understand?"
I nod shakily. "Yes."
"Good." He turns toward the door. "Stay in this room. Don't come out. Don't try to help. Don't try to fix anything. Just stay here and be quiet."
The door closes behind him and the lock clicks. I sink to the floor, back against the bed, and stare at my blood-covered hands.
Three men.
Three men dead because of me.
—
Hours pass. I don't move from the floor to wash the blood off my hands or change my clothes. I just sit there, replaying the ambush over and over in my mind. Trying to understand how I got it so wrong.
My father set me up. He agreed to the meeting knowing it was a trap, knowing his men would be waiting to kill Andrei and take me back. Knowing he would put me in danger.
Without negotiation. Without payment. He was willing to kill Andrei and anyone with him just to get me back.
He wants me back that badly… or it was a convenient way to get me and also take out Andrei, who is the focus of all of this—the family he’s working with, the territory they’ve agreed they want, according to Andrei himself.
I was being used. The thought makes me want to vomit. I press the heels of my hands into my eyes, not caring about the dried blood, tears burning at the backs of my eyelids. I don’t understand how all of this works, and I don’t want to.
I want to go back to my life.
A gunshot cracks through the compound. I freeze, every muscle in my body locking up as my head jerks up toward the window.
Someone just died.
I don't know who or why. But that sound—that terrible, final sound—means someone is dead. More of Andrei's men questioning whether I'm worth the trouble? More consequences of my stupid, naive belief that I could fix this?
I press my hands over my ears, but I can still hear the echo of it.
A little while later, I hear footsteps in the hallway, then the sound of the lock clicking open. Andrei stands in the doorway.
"What happened?" I whisper.
He steps inside and closes the door behind him. "One of my men suggested, publicly, that you should be eliminated. That keeping you alive was causing more problems than it solved."
My stomach drops. "And you—"
"I shot him." The words are matter-of-fact, like he's reporting the weather.
"My men think you're making me weak." Andrei moves closer, and I can see the exhaustion in his face.
"They think I'm distracted. That I'm making poor strategic decisions because of you.
Some of them want you dead so I can refocus on the war with your father. "
“So you… you just…”
He crouches down in front of me, eye level now.
"So I'm asking you: would that be better? Would you rather I put a bullet in your head right now? End this complication? Let my men stop questioning my leadership? Show them all that you’re not making me weak?” He pauses, his cold blue eyes fixed on mine.
“Even I’m not sure that isn’t true any longer. ”
The admission makes my heart thump in my chest. I can feel my pulse in my throat, and I no longer know if it’s entirely from fear over what he could do to me, or because of how close he is, and the memory of everything we’ve done together.
“I don’t think anything could make you weak,” I whisper.
He goes very still. There’s a flicker of something I can’t read in his cold blue eyes. "What?"
I lick my dry lips, and I see his gaze flick to my mouth, and back up again. Something cracks in his expression, and for a moment, he’s not the hard man that I see most of the time.
There’s something softer, almost aching, in his eyes. "You don't know what you're talking about," he says quietly.
I swallow hard, my pulse still beating a quick rhythm in the hollow of my throat. "Yes I do."
"Three of my men died today because I let you convince me to arrange that meeting. Because I couldn't say no to you. Because I—" He stops, and looks away. "That's weakness, Liesl. That's exactly what weakness looks like."
His jaw tightens, and I see that muscle tick in his cheek. There’s a long, heavy silence before he looks back at me, and speaks again.
"I should kill you," he whispers. "It would solve everything."
I suck in a sharp breath, and hold it. A heartbeat passes, and then another… and then, without saying another word, Andrei pushes himself to his feet and walks out of the room.
And I’m left there, wondering what the hell comes next.