Chapter 23
AURORA
Iwake to the smell of mildew, dust, and old water damage.
I ache everywhere, wrists burning from the cord, side throbbing from the struggle, and for a few seconds, I don’t know where I am.
Then the memories reassemble in the wrong order, first with the van, then the marina, the metal floor, and the hand over my mouth.
I force them into sequence and hold them there until the timeline makes sense.
Marina. Van. Long drive. Gravel near the end. Somewhere secluded.
I’m lying on a concrete floor in a dim room with no windows.
The light comes from a single bulb recessed into the ceiling behind a wire cage, and it casts a sickly yellow that makes everything look older and dirtier than it already is.
My wrists are bound behind my back with nylon cord, snug enough to restrict circulation without cutting off blood flow entirely.
Whoever tied these knots wanted me restrained, not damaged.
That tells me something about my at least short-term value to whomever is running this.
I don’t panic. I listen, detecting no traffic or nearby voices.
There’s a low mechanical hum that could be a generator or an HVAC unit, and the faint sound of water against something solid, which means I’m near the coast. At least one heavy door stands between me and open air, because the outside sounds are muffled, suggesting concrete or metal walls.
I press my forehead against the wall. The concussion from the van floor is still punishing me, and when I try to get to my knees, the room tilts.
I brace one shoulder against the wall and push myself upright, then sit with my back against the concrete until the dizziness settles into something I can manage.
I look around the room more carefully. It’s a storage space, maybe fifteen by twenty feet, with industrial shelving along one wall and a rusted drain in the center of the floor.
The shelving holds nothing except dust and a few corroded brackets.
The door is metal and windowless. I test my restraints by pulling my wrists apart, and the cord has a small amount of give, maybe half an inch.
Not enough to slip free, but enough to work with if I find something to cut against.
I press my bound hands against my stomach. Both babies are still in there, and I’ll do whatever I can to protect them.
After a half-hour or so, the door opens, and Eric walks in.
He looks different from the last time I saw him.
The professional composure is gone, and so is the detective’s wardrobe.
He’s wearing dark civilian clothes, a holstered weapon on his hip, and looks like he’s standing on the wrong side of a line, trying to convince himself that the view is better.
“You’re awake.” He closes the door behind him and stands three feet away, looking down at where I’m sitting against the wall. “I didn’t want it to happen like this.”
“You kidnapped me, Eric.” I keep my voice level because giving him my fear would be giving him what he wants. “You used my mother as bait, orchestrated an ambush at a public café, and had your men assault my security team. Which part of this didn’t you want?”
“I gave you chances to come to me willingly. You ignored every one.”
“Because I don’t want to come to you. I told you that when I left you two years ago, and I’ve told you through every unwanted conversation, blocked number, and message since. You chose not to hear it.”
He crouches so we’re at eye level, and the intimacy of the gesture repulses me because he used to do this during arguments in our apartment. He’d crouch beside me on the couch and speak quietly, reasonably, as though proximity and soft volume were the same as kindness.
“Adrian is using you.” He says it with the earnest concern that fooled my mother, his lieutenant, and me for two years.
“He killed Dominic, and he’s keeping you close because you’re a witness he can control.
Everything he’s given you…the houses, the money, and the protection…
is leverage. When he doesn’t need you anymore, you’ll disappear, and nobody will find you because he’ll make sure of it. ”
“You’re describing yourself, Eric. You’re describing exactly what you’re doing right now.”
He looks wounded. “I’m protecting you.”
“You tied my wrists, locked me in a storage room, and partnered with Karpov, whose criminal organization you were supposed to be investigating. That’s kidnapping, conspiracy, and obstruction at minimum.
” I hold his stare. “You threw away your badge, your career, and your freedom for the chance to lock me in a room and tell me you’re protecting me. Does that sound rational to you?”
The question reaches a part of him that the rest of my words didn’t.
He wavers for one second, uncertainty breaking through.
Then he hardens again, the mask resettling, but I saw the crack.
He knows what he’s done. He just can’t afford to admit it because that would mean accepting everything he’s told himself since I left him was a lie.
“Karpov is temporary,” he says. “He’s leverage. Once Adrian’s operation is exposed and his organization is dismantled, Karpov’s value disappears, and we leave Miami together. I have enough saved for a year, and after that, we’ll build something real.”
I snort, though regret it when the pain in my head flares.
“You and I building something real?” Shaking my head, I say, “You kidnapped me, partnered with a criminal syndicate, abandoned your career, and locked me in a storage room. You’re sitting here describing a future where we live together?
You’re either on drugs or out of your mind. ”
He stiffens. “I did what I had to do.”
“You did what you wanted to do. The difference is the entire reason I left you.” I lean forward. “I am never going with you. There is no version of my life that includes you, and every second you spend in this room trying to convince me otherwise is a second Adrian gets closer to finding us.”
He stands abruptly, and the crouch-to-standing transition is the same one he used to make when a conversation stopped following his script.
He paces two steps, turns, and looks at me with an expression I haven’t seen before.
The concern is still there, but underneath it is something rawer and less guarded from the frustration of having dismantled his entire life around a plan that requires my cooperation, only to realize I will never give it.
“You’re carrying his children.” He says it flatly. “Twins. Karpov told me.”
That makes me freeze. Karpov knows about the pregnancy, so Eric knows about the pregnancy and it’s twins. The babies are now intelligence in the hands of two men who want to destroy their father. “How does Karpov know?”
“Does it matter?”
I let out a sound of exasperation. “It matters because someone in Adrian’s circle leaked it, and that person put my babies at risk.”
Eric’s expression flickers. The word “babies” makes him flinch, and then his expression hardens. It’s a brief, involuntary recognition the woman he’s trying to reclaim is pregnant with another man’s children, and the children make the reclamation messier and more unlikely than he planned.
“He won’t protect them.” Eric leans forward. “He can’t. His world is built on violence, and violence always finds the people closest to the source. You know that. You saw what happened to Dominic.”
“Dominic was a traitor who recorded his own clients and sold the information to Karpov. He sold me out too, so don’t expect me to have any sympathy for that man. Adrian stopped him while you partnered with the same organization Dominic was feeding.”
He grabs my arm above the elbow and squeezes hard enough that I’ll bruise. The grip is possessive and stripped of every pretense he’s maintained since walking through the door. This is Eric without the performance, and the man underneath is exactly what I always feared he was.
“You don’t get to choose him.” He says it through clenched teeth, and the sound of his voice, pressurized and vibrating with the effort of restraint, is one I remember from the worst nights of our relationship, the nights when his corrections became loud enough that the neighbors heard.
“You don’t get to carry his children, live in his houses, and pretend he’s different from every other man who’s ever controlled you.
He’s worse, and you can’t see it because he’s better at hiding it. ”
“Let go of my arm.”
“Not until you listen…”
The door opens. A heavyset guard steps in, with a shaved head and a tattoo on his neck that I can’t clearly make out in the dim light.
He looks at Eric’s hand on my arm and speaks with a thick accent.
“Karpov says she stays undamaged for now. You want to talk, talk. You touch her again, I call him.”
Eric releases my arm and steps back. The transition from aggression to compliance is instant and humiliating.
He accepted a subordinate position when he made this deal, and he’s only now discovering what that entails.
He traded his badge for a leash, and Karpov is holding the other end. “We’re not finished,” Eric says to me.
“We’ve been finished for two years. You just refused to accept that.”
He walks out. The guard gives me a cold, professional look I recognize from Adrian’s operatives. This man has a job. Hurting me isn’t part of it, at least not yet. The “for now” in Karpov’s directive tells me my undamaged status has an expiration date that depends on whatever leverage I represent.
He closes the door, and the lock clicks from the outside.
I sit in the silence and let the adrenaline drain. I ache where Eric gripped my arm, my wrists still sting from the cord, and the concussion keeps up a steady pulse behind my right eye. I inventory the damage because counting hurts less than screaming.
When the pain starts to fade, I look at the room differently. Not as a prison, but as a workspace.
The industrial shelving along the wall is bolted to the concrete, but the brackets connecting the shelves to the uprights are individually mounted with standard hex bolts.
Most of them are corroded from the salt air and moisture.
The third bracket from the bottom on the nearest unit is the worst, and the bolt holding it has worked loose; I can see a gap between the metal and the wall.
If I can work that bracket free, I’ll have a piece of metal approximately six inches long with a sharp edge where the corrosion has eaten through the coating.
I shift my position until my back is against the shelving unit and my bound hands can reach the bracket.
The cord bites into my wrists as I stretch, and the angle forces my shoulders into a position that makes my injured side scream, but I grip the bracket with my fingers and twist. The metal groans softly, and I freeze, listening for any reaction from outside the door.
Footsteps pass in the corridor, pause, and continue, but nothing more.
I count to thirty before trying again. I go slower this time, working the bolt back and forth with a steady rhythm that minimizes noise.
The corrosion helps. Each rotation loosens the threading a fraction more, and rust flakes fall onto my fingers as the bolt gives way millimeter by millimeter.
The work is painful and essential. I lose track of time.
Five minutes pass, or maybe ten. I cramp twice and have to stop to flex my fingers against the cord before continuing.
Adrian will come because he will tear the world apart to find me. Viktor is already hunting, Grigor is already tracking, and every man in Adrian’s organization is mobilizing because I’m now the mission.
If I get a chance to hurt Eric before they reach me, I’ll take it.
Eric grabbed my arm while I’m carrying twins, looked me in the face, and told me I don’t get to choose to be with the father of my children.
He made this personal in a way that went beyond kidnapping or control, into the territory where I stop being careful and start being dangerous.
The bracket comes free with a final twist. I hold it against my palm, corroded and sharp at one end where the rust has eaten through the protective coating.
I position the sharpest edge against the nylon cord binding my right wrist and start sawing.
The angle is awkward, and I nick my own skin twice, but the cord frays with each pass.
I work in silence, pausing whenever footsteps pass outside the door. The guard walks by twice. The second time, he stops, and I freeze with the bracket pressed flat against my wrist, hidden under the remaining cord. He moves on, and I take a moment to breathe before I start sawing again.
Finally, the cord splits. I pull my right hand free, and the rush of blood returning to my fingers is painful enough to make me clench my teeth.
I leave the cord dangling from my left wrist so it looks intact from the doorway, and I slide the bracket into my palm where I can grip it without being seen.
I flex my free hand. Feeling comes back in stinging waves, and within a minute, I can make a fist. I adjust my position against the wall so I look the same as when Eric left, with my wrists behind my back, head bowed and looking defeated.
I’m not defeated. I’m ready. I’ve been surviving unpredictable men my entire life, and Eric is about to learn he isn’t the most dangerous person in this room.