Chapter 38 #2
Lidia rushes from the bathroom with a broken perfume bottle.
One compromised guard seizes her around the waist before she reaches Igor, receiving a heel down the front of his shin that makes him shout.
He wrenches her left arm high and drives her shoulder into the bathroom frame.
The crack of bone against wood turns my stomach, but she still throws her head backward into his mouth; teeth click across the room.
“Bitch,” he gasps.
“Veteran dancer,” Lidia replies, breathless. “We invoice differently.”
Igor grips the back of my shirt. I turn with the pull, trying to bring my knee toward his weak side, but his thigh blocks mine before it rises. He learned from the freight yard; the knowledge frightens me more than his size because every move I own now belongs partly to his preparation.
I claw at the wound beneath his eye.
He makes a broken sound, then drives me face-first against the mattress.
The bed catches my chest while I wrench both hips sideways, keeping my abdomen clear of the wooden edge.
His forearm pins my shoulders, and fabric presses over my mouth, carrying the cedar smell of Artur’s shirt into a room where Artur is absent.
Panic closes my throat, and my legs kick against the rug, searching for leverage while the pulse behind my eyes becomes painful. A hand pulls my right wrist behind my back. Plastic tightens around it, then catches my left after Igor forces the arm down.
“Don’t touch her stomach,” Igor tells the guards. “Pasha wants the leverage intact.”
The word makes bile sting the back of my tongue. Three babies reduced to leverage by men who haven’t seen their flickering hearts, while my own body becomes a container everyone intends to move.
I stop wasting breath against the mattress.
Igor notices the change. “Finished?”
“Thinking.”
“That has caused enough trouble.”
He pulls me upright by the bound arms, wrenching my right wrist until heat runs toward my thumb; the sharp pain clears some of the panic. I plant my feet beneath me, memorizing who stands where while pretending balance is all I want.
Inside the bedroom, two guards remain: one bleeds from the mouth after Lidia’s head strike, while the other favors the knee caught by the bench. Blood covers the left side of Igor’s face, though he can still watch me.
Resistance marked them, so Artur will read every mark if he reaches this room.
Lidia’s hands are bound in front because the guard can’t force her injured shoulder backward. She looks at me without speaking, pale beneath the dust of broken makeup. The old burner remains inside her bag on the bathroom floor, proof left behind where Boris can find it.
Igor pushes us into a hall changed by violence again.
The angled mirror remains on the floor beside powder and splintered wood, while one dark drop falls from Igor’s face near the closet threshold.
I drag the side of my shoe through it before he forces me onward, smearing the blood into a line that points back toward Artur’s empty weapon box.
Outside, the air smells like wet leaves and vehicle exhaust. A white service van waits beyond the disabled gate with both rear doors open. No loyal exterior guards remain visible; either Ivan replaced them before the council meeting or the men who waved to me yesterday chose his side this morning.
The betrayal hurts differently when it wears a face I recognize.
One guard lowers a black cloth over my eyes. Darkness presses against my lashes as he ties it behind my head, catching strands of hair in the knot. I hear Lidia shoved into the van ahead of me, then metal beneath my shoe as Igor lifts me by the upper arm.
“Mind the step,” he says.
“Your manners have improved since you broke into my apartment.”
He pushes me inside.
The van floor vibrates through my hip after they seat me against the wall. A belt crosses below my breasts, fastened tightly to hold me upright without touching my lower abdomen. When Lidia’s shoe finds mine in the dark, I press back once.
The doors close, sealing us inside diesel fumes, hot rubber, and the sour breath of the guard sitting opposite.
The van reverses over gravel, and we turn left at the end of the safe-house drive, where the tires begin their steady rush across smooth pavement. I match my breathing to the changes beneath us, holding each route detail without narrated numbers because sequence matters more than arithmetic.
Long left. Straight road. An abrupt stop makes the belt bite my ribs. Right turn over patched asphalt, followed by the hollow roar of an underpass that enlarges the engine around us.
A train horn sounds from our left.
Lidia’s shoe taps mine when the van curves right again because she is tracking too.
The guard shifts across from us, and leather creaks near his waist while metal touches the floor. I smell cigarette smoke in his coat whenever the van slows, then taste it bitterly at the back of my throat.
Traffic thickens until brakes hiss nearby while music passes once from another car, bass reaching us through the van wall before falling behind. The road becomes rough for several minutes, then smooths as we descend a wide spiral.
Parking structure.
We stop long enough for a gate to rattle upward. The van continues down, tires squealing around painted concrete while the air cools against my damp face.
Artur chose me in front of his council, giving me a direction through the danger. If he surrendered power to keep me alive, I have to leave him a route through the dark instead of becoming another locked door he arrives too late to open.
The van levels out.
Ventilation rattles overhead in a pattern I know from hours spent reconstructing the private-room attack. Air moves through the rear seam carrying citrus disinfectant, old liquor, and the powdery residue used on Velvet Fortune’s stage floor so clear heels don’t slip.
My skin goes cold beneath my shirt.
The rear doors open, and hands pull me upright, guiding me down onto concrete before someone removes the blindfold.
Light stings my eyes, but as my vision clears, black-painted pipes cross the low ceiling above the service corridor where Cherry brought me in a borrowed costume seven weeks ago.
The guards cut the restraint behind my back only to bind my wrists again in front, then march Lidia and me toward the service stairs.
We are beneath Velvet Fortune.