Chapter 33 Eliana
ELIANA
choke point /CHōk point/: noun
I’ll only tell you if you promise not to scream.
I don’t know if he rehearsed that one or if he was just feeling inspired in the moment. But whatever the case, it has the intended effect.
I freak the fuck out.
My mind is sprinting through possibilities. Is this one of Aleksei’s men? Has Harold betrayed us already? How did anyone know I’d be here? The appointment was made under a fake name, paid for in cash, and chosen specifically because it was far from anywhere Aleksei might think to look.
And yet here we are.
I’m trapped in a locked exam room, blind, pregnant, wearing nothing but a paper gown that doesn’t even close properly in the back.
My only weapon is Excalibur, which I grip so tight my knuckles ache.
My phone is in my purse on the chair across the room, which means it might as well be on the moon for all the good it does me now.
There’s no one coming to my rescue, either. I made Yas stay home and Bastian doesn’t know where I am. I have only myself to blame. Myself and my dumb convictions about boundaries and independence and all those things that seem so stupid now.
“Who are you?” I manage to squeak out as Mr. Marlboro Red comes closer. “What do you want?”
He doesn’t answer my question. Just sucks his teeth and says, “You’ve made things very complicated, Ms. Hunter.”
The scuff of his shoes against the tile floor is worse than nails on a chalkboard. My free hand goes instinctively to my belly, as if I can somehow shield the tiny life inside from whatever’s coming.
I try to tell myself I’m not totally helpless. I’ve fought off a guard before with Excalibur—cracked his skull open in that hallway while Bastian carried Sage to safety. But that was different. I had the element of surprise and the advantage of righteous fury propelling me forward.
Here, I’m at every possible disadvantage.
I wonder if anyone outside can hear us. Even if they could, would they do anything? Will Dr. Meredith and his charming bedside manner come back in time to interrupt whatever this is?
My bets are on “highly unlikely.”
When the man ventures closer again, I swing Excalibur recklessly.
It does a grand total of jack shit. He catches it easily. I hear him grunt with satisfaction as he wrenches the cane from my grip and casts it aside. The loss of my only weapon sends panic spiraling through my chest.
“That wasn’t smart,” he tuts.
I scramble backward on the exam table until my shoulders hit the cold wall.
I open my mouth to scream, consequences be damned.
Someone has to hear, someone has to help, there are nurses and patients just beyond these walls, or that too-kind-to-be-real woman who loved potato chips, or the laughing wife and her annoying husband worried about parking—
But Marlboro’s gross hand clamps over my mouth before I can make a sound. Calloused, cigarette-stained fingers press hard enough to bruise. He smells revolting. For a moment, I’m genuinely concerned I’m going to asphyxiate on my own vomit.
The ultrasound photos slip from where I’d been clutching them against my chest. I hear them flutter down, and it’s such a small thing, such a stupid, insignificant detail in the grand scheme of what’s happening, but it breaks something in me.
Those images of my baby—our baby, Bastian’s child, the one he pressed his palm against just last night—lying like dead birds on the floor of this exam room while a stranger’s hand blankets my mouth and his other arm pins me against the wall like I’m nothing, like we’re nothing…
I try to bite his palm. My teeth scrape against a fold of his leathery skin, tasting ash and salt, but I can’t get enough purchase to do real damage. He grunts, rips his hand away, then slaps me once across the face.
He doesn’t hold back, but it’s the shock of it more than the pain that freezes me.
“Stop fighting,” he snaps. “You’re only making this harder on yourself.”
“What do you want?” I whisper in a tiny, broken voice.
“Bastian made a mistake,” the man says, his breath hot and foul against my ear. “He thought he could play dead and we’d all just forget about him.” He chuckles to himself, as if anything he just said is the least bit funny. “But he was wrong. Now, you’re going to help me deliver a message.”
I want to fight. Every cell in my body is screaming at me to claw, to kick, to do something, goddammit! But my limbs won’t obey. I’m frozen from head to toe.
“Aleksei has been very patient,” he continues. “Very understanding, considering the circumstances. But patience has its limits, Ms. Hunter. Bastian needs to be reminded of what happens when family doesn’t stay loyal.”
I’m still holding a hand against my belly. I wonder if this is it, this is how it ends. If my child will ever get the chance to exist outside my body.
But even as those thoughts fly across my brain, something animal takes over. Pure, primal, mother-protecting-her-young desperation.
My knee comes up hard and fast and connects exactly where I was aiming: with the soft tissue between his legs. He emits a squeaky wheeze that dissolves into a strangled groan as he doubles over in agony. His grip on me loosens just enough for me to wriggle free.
I don’t wait.
I run.
I lunge off the exam table, my bare feet hitting the cold tile, and throw myself toward where I remember the door being. My shoulder clips something—the corner of a cabinet, maybe—but I barely register the pain. My hands find the wall, then the doorframe, then the lock mechanism.
My fingers are shaking so badly I can barely function. Behind me, I hear Marlboro recovering, cursing through gritted teeth, his shoes squeaking against the floor as he tries to straighten up.
Come on, come on, come on—
The lock clicks. The handle turns. I yank the door open and half-fall into the hallway, my paper gown gaping open.
I open my mouth to scream for help—
—but before a single syllable escapes my lips, a fist closes around the back of my paper gown.
The force of it yanks me backward so hard my feet leave the ground. The gown tears with a sound like a horrified gasp as Marlboro Red drags me back into the exam room. The door slams shut behind us.
He throws me down and I hit the floor hard. The ruined gown hangs in tatters from one shoulder, leaving me exposed and vulnerable in a way that goes way beyond physical nakedness.
I hear the metallic clink of a belt buckle. The whisper of leather sliding through loops.
“I told you, you little bitch,” he pants, his voice heavy with pain and anger. “You’re only making this harder on yourself.”
Then a new voice joins the fray.
A wintergreen voice.
“That's the last mistake you'll ever make, motherfucker.”