19. Maya
MAYA
The air in the apartment is still and quiet, and I can feel my heart thumping against the inside of my chest as I look around. I don’t know how long I have here before I’m interrupted, but I need to take whatever chance I can get to try and find whatever freedom I can.
Anton and three of his guards left hours ago. Considering the interrogation he put me through earlier about Ruby, I know exactly why. Artem has found his next targets. The thought of what those girls are being subjected to makes me sick, and sitting here completely useless is driving me insane.
I’m trapped in a gilded cage, reading, watching TV, and just existing. When I worked at the bar, I would have killed for this kind of rest.
Now, the quiet is suffocating.
I need out. Not forever—Anton would hunt me down before I made it past city limits—but long enough to grab a few of my own things.
Just enough to make this place feel less like a cell.
With whatever chaos is pulling their attention tonight, I have the perfect cover to slip out and sneak back before anyone realizes I’m gone.
I reach the door, which is currently standing unguarded; the new guard will arrive in a few minutes, I’m sure, but right now, it’s empty.
I push it open slightly and peer out into the corridor beyond.
It’s practically the first time I’ve seen out of this place, and my pulse is racing as I look around, trying to figure out if there is anyone here who is going to stop me.
But it’s silent. Quiet.
Whatever is going down outside these walls, it must be serious, for Anton to have left this place low on guards.
I guess, after the attack on his mansion, his numbers must have taken a hit.
I feel bad exploiting such a thing, but he has left me with little choice, given that he so completely refused to let me help him in all of this.
I inhale deeply, and dart out of the door before I can think about it any further, reaching the elevator and slamming my finger repeatedly into the button.
I glance around again, the back of my neck prickling, feeling like I’m going to be caught at any moment, but then the elevator doors slide smoothly open in front of me.
And I hop in before I can think better of it.
It whisks me downstairs, my stomach lurching with the sudden movement, and I try my best to recall what the reception area looked like when I first arrived.
he elevator doors part, and I dart out, pressing myself flat against the cold marble wall before the lobby guards can spot me.
Scanning the room, my eyes lock onto a nondescript door at the far end—a service exit. I hurry over, twist the handle, and practically collapse with relief when it gives. I slip into the alley, easing the heavy door shut behind me so it doesn’t click.
I pull my jacket hood low and hurry down the block, sticking to the shadows.
It’s not just Anton I have to hide from out here.
If his brother Artem finds me—and figures out I’m pregnant—he’ll twist it to claim the baby is his.
The thought alone makes my stomach violently churn.
I’d die before I let that monster anywhere near my child.
Reaching the main thoroughfare, I catch my bearings. If I take the subway, I can be at my old studio in an hour. I only grabbed a few spare bills from Anton’s apartment, so a cab is out of the question. I don’t have my old key, but the lock is so pathetic a credit card will pop it open.
Scuff.
A noise echoes behind me, and I whip around, every nerve ending firing. I scan the dark mouth of the alley, my pulse hammering in my throat. Nothing moves in the shadows, but my instincts are screaming. I need to move, now.
But what if one of the guards on the door spotted me?
Or if the back door didn’t close properly, and now they are suspicious about what it’s doing open?
I need to go back and make sure that I closed it behind me, or I’m going to be turning it over and over in my head, worrying that I have exposed myself in a way I can’t go back from.
I hurry back down the street, one of the lights flickering slightly above me, making my vision dance with specks of light. I reach the door, and test the handle, to find that it is still closed tight.
Come on, Maya, you need to stop being so paranoid. I don’t know how much time I have out here before Anton returns, and I don’t want to waste it second-guessing myself.
But just as I turn to leave once more, I hear it again—the same sound, like the flick of a lighter. And then, the scent if cigarette smoke, that smoky, woody, slightly choking scent that catches at the back of my throat.
“Remember me, Maya?”
His voice emerges from the darkness, and all the blood feels like it has drained from my body.
No. No. There is no way I’m hearing that right. Because it sounds like.
Artem steps out of the shadows, revealing himself at last, and my knees grow weak beneath me. It’s him. It’s really him. There is no doubting it, the look on his face so twisted and furious that it cuts straight down to my bones.
“Artem, what are you—”
“My brother was at a strip club tonight,” he tells me, lowering his voice as he stubs out the cigarette he was smoking, tossing it on to the ground below.
“And I figured he had left you... unguarded, let’s just say that.
Didn’t expect you to make it so easy for me to find you.
Did you know I was here, hmm? Come looking for me? ”
The words fail me. I want to scream in his face, tell him that I would never in a million years have set foot outside that place if I had known he was here, but the exclamation withers on my tongue.
I feel like I’m going to throw up, terror gripping me as I realize that I might just have put my child and I in more danger than we can survive.
I dart back towards the door and try to heave it open, but it’s locked tight.
He makes no move to stop me, just watching me there from the darkness, clearly amused by my desperation.
I try the handle a couple more times, but it does not budge an inch.
I’m about to rush off down the street, towards the busy sidewalk beyond, in the hopes of finding someone who can get me out of this mess, but he calls out to me before I can make a move.
“I have men surrounding the building,” he tells me calmly, moving towards me slowly, almost like a predator. There are clouds at the corners of my vision, panic coursing through every inch of me.
I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this.
This can’t be happening. I can’t let him take me.
I swore to my child that I would do everything in my power to keep them safe, and now, I might just have walked into the grasp of a monster who will destroy every promise I have made to my little one...
“So you can come with my quietly, or I can take you like I did before,” he tells me. “Your choice, Maya.”
I almost laugh. My choice? He says that like there’s any part of this that I would choose, if I had the opportunity to turn it down. But the laugh turns to a sob in my throat, and he knits his eyebrows together in a face of faux concern.
“Come on, beautiful, don’t cry,” he taunts me. “Just come with me. Let me remind you what you’ve been missing...”
And before I can say another word, he gestures to someone behind me. I look around, but I don’t get a chance to see who it is before I feel a rough hessian bag being shoved over my head. Something in me gives up then, a limpness overcoming me as my legs give out from underneath me.
I should have stayed in the apartment, I should have done what he told me, I should have...
Arms close around me and I’m dragged down the street. I try to let out a scream, but a hand clamps over my face, silencing me.
And that Anton, no matter how protective he might be of me, may not forgive me for putting myself in the midst of danger like this. Especially not if Artem is telling the truth, and he spent the night at a damn strip club...