The voice is wrong. Low. Rough. Distorted somehow. Maybe through fabric. Maybe on purpose.
But there’s something in it. A rhythm I almost recognize.
My throat tightens. “What’s going on?”
He steps inside and closes the door behind him. The click of the latch sounds too final.
I try to keep my breathing even, but fear is already climbing through me too fast. My body is weak from surgery. My daughter is in the hospital without me. Viktor doesn’t know where I am. Or maybe he does. Maybe that’s why I’m here.
The man walks toward the table and sets something down. A phone, maybe. I can’t see clearly from this angle.
“What do you want?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer immediately. Instead he turns toward me, head slightly tilted, as if he’s studying the damage before deciding what to do with it.
“You should have stayed out of it,” he says.
That voice again.
My skin prickles. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“No,” he says. “You never do.”
The words are bitter. Too intimate. Too familiar in a way that doesn’t make sense.
I tug at the bindings again, smaller this time, testing them. The rope at my wrists shifts but doesn’t loosen. My left thumb can move a little. Not enough.
He notices. “Don’t.”
I stop.
Not because he told me to. Because he takes another step closer, and something in his body makes every instinct in me scream.
“Please,” I say, hating the crack in my voice. “I just had surgery. My baby is in the NICU. I need to go back.”
At the wordbaby, his shoulders shift.
He comes closer. Too close now.
I can see the dark fabric over his face move slightly with his breathing. I still can’t see his eyes properly. The light is behind him, and the mask hides too much.
My pulse is pounding in my ears. “If this is about Viktor?—”
“It is always about Viktor.”
The way he says it makes my blood run cold.
“He’ll come for me,” I say.
“I know.”
Those two words terrify me more than anything else he has said.
This isn’t random.
This is bait.
I jerk against the chair again, panic finally breaking through common sense. The legs scrape hard against the concrete. Pain flares through my abdomen, sharp enough that I cry out, but I don’t stop. I twist my wrist, trying to find slack, trying to pull one hand free, trying anything.