“What did they look like?” he asks.
Bella shrugs. “I’m not sure.”
My father gestures to me, and then tips his head towards Bella. The words are written in the air between us. Scare her. Hurt her. Get the information.
Bella hears the silent command too, and she begins to shake. Any façade of toughness falling away. “They were tall men in suits. They looked normal. I didn’t pay much attention, except ... ”
Her voice trails off, and her face goes blank. Her eyes are miles away, focused on another place, another time.
“Except what?” my father hisses.
“They had pins,” Bella says as if she’s recovering the memory like a fossil in the ground, sifting dirt away from it bit by bit. “They wore them on their lapels. Red squares with a winged animal inside of them. I thought they were maybe some government organization, but then I realized it wasn’t an eagle, but a dragon. With two heads.”
My father looks up at me and then back at Bella. He’s like a dog with its hackles raised. On edge, alert. “You’re certain?”
Bella twists around, brows pulled together. “Yeah. What does it mean?”
“It was lovely to meet you, Bella,” he says, smiling that idiotic smile again. “I do hope we’ll have a chance to talk again.”
“No, wait—” Bella starts, but before she can say any more, I grab her arm and haul her to her feet.
We’re at the door when my father speaks again. “Get her somewhere safe.”
I nod and drag her down the hallway. This time, Bella doesn’t resist.
Chapter Five
Yuri
When I drop Bella back in her cell, someone has brought a cot down for her to sleep in, but she won’t need it. Not for long anyway.
She has questions. I can see them written in her expression, in the nervous tangle of her fingers. But she doesn’t speak them. She probably doesn’t think I’ll answer them. Smart girl.
I leave her in the cell and spend the next hour preparing things. When I return, she’s asleep.
“Wake up.” I look up towards the ceiling as she opens her eyes. Watching her wake up feels too personal. “We have to go.”
She jolts up and readjusts her dress, pulling the neckline up to cover her pale pink bra. “Go where?”
I move forward to grab her arm, but she pulls out of my reach and stands up. “You don’t have to drag me around.”
“I wouldn’t if you’d cooperate.”
She narrows her eyes. “Asking questions doesn’t make me uncooperative.”
“No, it just makes you slow,” I say. “And we don’t have time.”
The hour it took me to arrange for the car and lodging and secure our perimeter took too much time already. I need to get Bella out.
“Is my father coming for me?” she asks.
I make to grab her arm, and she pulls away again, backing into the corner and holding up her hands like she might try and punch me if I get too close. I fist my hands at my side and take a deep breath. “Not in the way you think.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking,” she says.
But I do. I can see her hatred for me in every line of her face. And I know that hatred is only going to grow as I advance towards her, cornering her like an animal, and wrap my hand around her upper arm. Bella tries to shake me off and pulls at my fingers with her own, but my grip is iron tight.
“Just tell me what’s going on and maybe I’ll go with you willingly,” she says. “Have you ever thought that forcing people to do what you want might not be the best way?”
I lead her into the hallway and she tries to turn towards the stairs, but I drag her in the opposite direction, deeper into the basement.
“I’ve never had that thought.”
People rarely do what I want them to. Bella certainly doesn’t. If she did, she’d talk a lot less often. Forcing them is the fastest way to get things done, especially now, when efficiency is the name of the game. So, I drag Bella down the hallway and through what looks like a normal door, but is actually another hallway shooting off to the right.
“I thought this was a dead-end,” Bella says, looking around.
We move to the end of that hallway and through another door to the left that opens to another hallway. The space was designed to be deliberately confusing. Each hallway looks identical, and if someone who didn’t know their way around stumbled through them, they’d get so turned around they wouldn’t know which way was up. I can tell Bella is feeling the same way when we come to the door at the end of the last hallway. When I open it and an evening breeze fills the hallway, Bella inhales sharply.
Then she jerks against my grip.
I haul her against my chest and then press her into the doorframe. She struggles for a moment before going limp, her entire face sagging in disappointment.
“Try to run, and I’ll kill you,” I whisper solemnly. “Don’t make me do that.”
Her face snaps up to mine, and I see for the first time that there’s a ring of yellow around her irises like a silver lining around a cloud. “So, if you kill me, it’s my fault?”
I grip her arm once again and move her through the door and towards the waiting SUV. The windows are deeply tinted and the engine is already running. I open the passenger door and, before she can resist, I grab her waist and lift her into the seat. She kicks frantically for a second and then scowls at me as I pull on her seat belt and gesture for her to put it on.
“If you try to run, I’ll have to kill you,” I explain.
I shut the door and walk around the car. I’m in front of
