20. Sofia
Sofia
There was no way in hell I was going down like this. Not when I had so much to fight for still. Even though Leonard had overpowered me outside in the snow, I knew there was always a way out of every situation.
I just had to find the right opening.
At first, I’d tried to reason with him. But he was breathing heavily, his eyes wild and bloodshot beneath his hood. I wondered if he hadn’t slept in a while or maybe he was high. Whatever it was, he was obviously not in his right mind. Trying to reason with him was not going to end well.
That’s when I realized that he had a gun pointing at my ribs.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
“Payment,” he said over and over again.
He dragged me into the freezing darkness of what I knew was an old part of the plant, his grip on my arm tightening to a bruising clutch.
He held the gun to my side and dragged me further into the darkness, somehow knowing which way to go.
I stumbled on something and when it made a squeaking noise, I recoiled. His fingers tightened on my upper arm and jammed the gun further into my side.
“Stop this.” I kept trying to bargain with him. I was desperate and things were flying out of my mouth. “Leonard, we can work things out.”
“You are going to pay,” he kept repeating. “You ruined my life. You’re the reason. You lied to everyone. It was all my idea. Everything was my idea.” He was mumbling now.
When he turned his head for a fraction of a second to open a door, the gun slipped away from my side, so I drove my elbow back with every ounce of strength I had, catching him squarely in the ribs at the same time that I drove my heeled boot into the top of his shoe.
He wheezed and his grip slipped just enough for me to tear myself free as he doubled over to jerk his foot away from my weight.
“You bitch!” he screamed, his voice echoing violently off the rusted machines.
I didn’t glance back, I just lunged into the dark maze of towering industrial shelves, my boots skidding on the slick concrete as I scrambled into the shadows.
Behind me, I could hear him recovering, his heavy footsteps pounding after me, paired with the horrific clatter of metal as he kicked over a row of steel pipes in his rage.
“You can’t leave, Sofia!” his voice rang out, entirely unhinged, booming through the cavernous warehouse. “Not until we settle this! You have to pay for what you did to me. What you took from me.”
I hunkered down behind a large crate and held my breath as he passed a few feet in front of me. I realized he’d made his way backwards and was now blocking the only exit. He was pacing back and forth, stalking the aisles like a predator, keeping watch on the only way to freedom.
I pressed my back against a massive wooden crate, my chest heaving as I tried to swallow the sound of my own frantic breathing. The temperature in the warehouse was freezing, but sweat was trickling down the back of my neck from the effort of my escape.
I could hear him talking to himself just one aisle over—a stream of erratic, crazy mutterings about how I had stolen his life and how he was going to make sure that I paid.
I waited, freezing in place until the heavy crunch of his boots began to drift toward the far end of the aisle. Slithering on my hands and knees, I moved deeper into the shadows, desperately trying to find a clear path toward the front of the building or another exit.
I lost track of time. Of how many close calls I had, with Leonard feet away from my hiding spots. Slowly, I crept away from him, hoping, praying that Rick would come to save me.
Then, a distant, heavy thud of a door slamming echoed through the facility.
“Leonard!”
My heart leaped straight into my throat when I heard Rick’s voice echo through the building.
I wanted to cry out to Rick, but I could see Leonard’s dark shadow just feet from my hiding spot.
If I called out now, he would find me. If he had me, he held all the power, and I didn’t want to think of what Rick would agree to in order to protect me.
So I remained quiet and still, even though it killed me to do so.
Besides, Rick’s voice was too far away, as if he was in a whole different part of the building. How big was this place anyway? I tried to remember the blueprints that had been in the brewery’s folder.
This was the area we had planned on turning into the speakeasy. Portions of it connected to the main facility that was currently in use.
Roughly five thousand square feet hadn’t been touched when Marcus and his partner had purchased the defunct bottling facility a few years back.
Then I remembered the area where Rick had created the digital hidden doorway from the main building into this area.
The very spot we had planned on making the entrance into the speakeasy.
Glancing around, I found the spot. If I could just get there, I could escape.
I watched Leonard’s shadow disappear. Taking a chance, I sprinted toward the door.
“Sofia!” Rick’s baritone voice boomed through the darkness, laced with a raw, terrifying panic that broke my heart.
I opened my mouth to scream for him, to tell him where I was, but a sudden shadow shifted just a few feet away.
I froze, locking my jaw shut. Leonard was standing right at the edge of my aisle, his silhouette framed by a distant beam of light. His gun was clenched in his right hand. I tucked my body between a few barrels and watched as I held my breath.
If I made a single sound, he would be on me before Rick could ever reach us.
I began to back away from him, keeping my eyes locked on his shadow. I stepped blindly into a narrow, unlit doorway that led into a large, pitch-black storage room. I took one more cautious step backward—
Clink.
My heel caught a stray crate of empty glass beer bottles. The sudden, sharp clatter of glass echoing through the empty room sounded like a gunshot.
A second later, I heard Marcus’s voice calling out saying something about finding footprints. They were in here. They were looking for me. Marcus called out from the hallway just outside the storage room, his flashlight beam cutting across the ceiling.
I saw Marcus round the corner, his phone light illuminating the corridor. Relief flooded my veins. I stood up, preparing to rush out to him—
But Leonard was faster.
He materialized from the blind spot behind the door frame like a nightmare. Before Marcus could even turn his head, Leonard swung the gun up and then down, hitting Marcus just over his ear. There was a sickening, wet thud as it connected with the side of Marcus’s head.
Marcus let out a breathless grunt, his phone spinning out of his hand and clattering across the concrete floor as he collapsed against a rusted support beam, slipping into unconsciousness.
A gasp caught in my throat, and I instinctively threw myself behind a stack of heavy plastic pallets, pulling my knees to my chest. My body was trembling so violently I had to clamp both hands over my mouth.
“Leonard!” Rick’s voice roared from the corridor, closer now, dripping with a lethal, unadulterated fury that shook the metal rafters. “This isn’t going to end well for you! Let Sofia go!”
I crouched low in the pitch-black storage room, tears finally stinging my eyes as my chest tightened with a crushing wave of emotion.
Hearing Rick’s voice so raw, so filled with a terror I had never heard from him before, shattered something inside me.
For the past month, I had been so hurt by the distance he’d kept, so discouraged by the corporate walls he had put back up between us.
But hearing him right now, I realized how incredibly stupid I had been.
He didn’t care about the board. He didn’t care about the lawyers. He was here, risking his life in a blinding blizzard to find me.
And the thought of losing him—the terrifying realization that a bitter, unhinged man like Leonard could steal our entire future before I ever got the chance to tell Rick that I loved him—fueled a sudden, fierce spark of determination.
I wasn’t going to let Leonard win. I wasn’t going to let him take away the life we were supposed to build together.
I tried to think.
Suddenly, an idea came to me. If I was out of the way, Rick and Marcus could just leave back the way they came. Then the police could get Leonard, ensuring all our safety.
When I found my opening, I was going to try to make it to the door once more. Now, however, I scrambled backward into the deep darkness, my hands scraping against the dusty floor.
I remembered the inside joke we had shared over the campaign pitch—the phrase we said would be the literal password to escape into the brewery’s hidden speakeasy whenever corporate stress got to be too much.
“Rick!” I called out, my voice throwing across the concrete rafters. “The boss is wrong!”
I shouted it with everything I had, praying that he understood the hidden message—that I was referencing the speakeasy, and that I was going to try and escape through the hidden passage that led to the secure side of the active building.
For a fraction of a second, the warehouse went dead silent. Then Rick’s voice boomed back, instantly catching on to the code, his tone hard and fast.
“Sofia! You’re fired!”
It was our matching punchline. I smiled through the dark, the fear completely evaporating from my limbs. Seeing my opening while Leonard spun toward the sound of Rick’s voice, I bolted from behind the pallets and rushed toward the door.