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AS I HELD HER IN MY arms, for a moment, I wondered if I should have known better than to come here.
I knew it was dangerous. I knew that we could be busted at any moment. But here, now, with her so close to me, none of it seemed to matter. None of it could. Nadia was here, in my arms, where she belonged.
I pulled back to plant my lips against hers, needing to taste her, to feel her so close to me again. Nothing mattered, nothing could, but the feeling of us coming together like this. She kissed me back, and it felt like a dream – something out of a fantasy that I had never been able to live out before, being in love. Being with a woman who loved me just as much back.
She clasped my face in her hands and gazed into my eyes as though making sure I was really there. I knew how she felt – it almost seemed impossible, as though we didn’t stand a chance of this being real. But, as I gazed at her, took in all the details on her perfect face, I knew she was here. That we were here, together – and nothing else in the damn world mattered other than that.
I brushed my nose against hers, and she smiled.
“I can’t believe it,” she murmured. “You’re here. You’re... you’re actually here.”
“You really thought you were going to get rid of me that easily?” I asked her as I pushed the door shut behind me. Even though I was well-aware that we working against the clock here, I wanted to take a moment to show her how much I had missed her. If I could have carried her to that bed and proved it to her properly, I would have, but I knew I had to hold back, at least for now. At least until we were out of here.
“Thought I might,” she joked back, and I chuckled. Even in the midst of the chaos that was unfolding around us, she still knew how to make me laugh, and I couldn’t think of anything better than that. The reason I had come here, because our connection ran deeper than just the physical – we knew that we shared something profound, and nothing was going to get in the way of us enjoying it.
“We need to get out of here,” I told her urgently, and she shook her head.
“How the hell are we going to do that?”
I pulled the bag that I had draped over my shoulder around to my chest, and pulled out the stuff I had managed to grab before I had come out here. It might not have been a lot, but it was something – the best that I could come up with on short notice.
I handed her a men’s shirt and blazer, along with the smallest pair of men’s pants that I had been able to dig out - I was sure that they would still swamp her, but it was the best I could do right now. And then, I pressed some scissors into her hand as well.
“What’s this for?” she asked, furrowing her brow. I took a deep breath, knowing that she wasn’t going to be happy with what I said next.
“You need to cut your hair off,” I explained. “I’m going to disguise you as a waiter, one of the staff for the wedding – it’s the best chance we have of getting out of here in one piece.”
Her eyes flickered with doubt for a second, but it was soon replaced with sureness. She tensed her fingers around the scissors, then handed them to me.
“Here, take these,” she told me, as she pulled her hair into a ponytail. I was surprised that she wasn’t putting up more of a fight right now, but she likely knew as well as I did that we were going to have to move fast if we were going to get through all of this in one piece. I had no idea what the stakes were for her, no idea if she had any clue what Nikita had planned for her, but she was still treating this as a matter of life and death.
“Cut here,” she told me, pointing to the base of her ponytail. I didn’t need to be told twice. Every second that we were here was another second that someone could walk in and find us, and there was no way that I was going to let anything stop me getting her out of here alive.
I snipped her ponytail, cutting it off as quickly and as neatly as I could. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy for her, but she didn’t even flinch – she looked at her reflection in the window as she pulled away her ponytail in her hand, her eyes not giving away any sadness.
“I need to change,” she told me, as she stuffed the ponytail down the side of the bed – good plan, since she knew that anyone who came in here looking for her after she fled would be searching for any small detail that they could to find out where she had run to. She clasped the clothes to her chest and headed for the bathroom. She could have stripped in front of me, but I knew that would have made it all too easy to get distracted, and both of us needed to keep our heads in the game right now.
I glanced back and forth as I listened to her changing, wondering how long we had before someone spotted something going on. Surely, people would be keeping an eye on her in this room, making sure that she didn’t try to make a break for it. Or perhaps Nikita was already certain he had her where he wanted her. Did he realize she was looking for the first way out that she could find? I almost wanted to tell him, but I knew we couldn’t blow it open like this, not so close to getting out in one piece.
When Nadia emerged, she looked totally different – she had done her best to tighten and fit the clothes to her body, and, with her newly-short hair slicked back, she could have passed for a member of staff. I took her hand and pulled her towards the door. She hesitated.
“I – I don’t know if I can do this,” she admitted, her eyes wide with fear. “My father—”
“Your father’s going to be fine,” I swore to her. “But right now, we need to get you out of here. Okay?”
“Okay,” she replied, with a nod, even though she still didn’t sound sure. I knew it was going to take her a while to be certain of what she was doing, but I would take care of her. I would make sure she had no reason to doubt this, or any choice that she made with me. We were going to get her out of here, and then, we were going to take Nikita down any way we could.
I pushed open the door, glanced back and forth, and found the place empty. Okay. We just needed to get to the bottom of the stairs, out the door, and there was a car waiting just down the street to whisk us away from here, thank goodness. I could feel my heart thumping in my chest as she followed close behind me, her breath coming hard and fast. I knew she was scared, but I would do anything I could to make sure she got out alive. She had to trust me. And I knew I had to earn it.
We headed along the corridor to the top of the stairs, where one of the guards was slumped over – I’d taken him out on the way up, shutting him down for at least the night, and Nadia looked at him fearfully.
“He’s not going to stop us,” I promised her quietly. “Come on, we have to keep moving.”
We arrived at the top of the stairs, and I peered down into the darkness to make sure that there was nobody there waiting for us. There didn’t seem to be. If we just got outside, we would be in the clear, and we were so close to that already. Just a few more steps, and I would get her out of this place. I could almost smell the cool city air beyond the door, and I knew she could, too. We were so close...
We took the stairs two at a time, and I wished that I could clasp on to her hand as we went, but I knew that might blow our cover. As soon as we were out of here, we would be able to do anything we wanted. We just had to hold out for a little while longer—
“Hey, hold up!”
A voice cut through the dimly-lit corridor that led to the front door, and I froze on the spot. Shit. Someone had seen us. I had no clue who it was, who might have been talking around these corridors this late at night and what they might have been looking for, but we had to think fast.
“Hey,” I called back, trying to sound as casual as possible. “You okay, dude?”
“What are you doing here?” the voice continued, and a man emerged from the shadows beyond us to attach himself to it. He was shaven-headed, his eyes squinting at me in the half-darkness. Nadia drew back a little behind me, knowing that if anything was going to tip him off, it would be her.
“We were sent down by Nikita to pick up some clothes for tomorrow,” I replied, as smoothly as I could. I had already considered the possibility of being caught out by someone down here, and I figured that the best way to deal with it would be to pretend we were staff. She could almost pass as some random waiter, with her new short hair and men’s clothes, and I had to hope that this guy didn’t bother to look too closely at the two of us right now.
“What are you picking up?” he asked, tilting his chin up as he continued to eye me.
“We’re picking up an outfit for the bride to change into after the wedding,” I explained, and I raised my eyebrows at him. “Something that Nikita is very much looking forward to. I don’t think he’d be happy to hear that anyone had gotten in the way of that.”
The man paused for a moment, and for a second, I thought that he was going to argue with me – but instead, he shrugged, clearly thinking better of it than to argue about something Nikita apparently wanted so badly.
“All right,” he muttered. “Well. Make it quick. I don’t want people coming in and out of here all night.”
“We’re leaving now,” I assured him, and Nadia strode over to the door. The man glanced at her, and I held my breath, waiting for him to click that this was the woman he was meant to be keeping an eye on – but he didn’t seem to notice anything. She didn’t wait, pushing the door open and waiting for me to join her.
As soon as we were out on to the street, I hustled her towards the van I had waiting for us. I glanced behind me, to see the man who had been talking to us watching as we headed for it.
“What if he sends someone after the van to find us?” she breathed. Her voice sounded like it had caught in the back of her throat, and I knew she had every reason to be scared right now.
“He can’t,” I assured her. “We have a few other vehicles waiting for us. This is just the first one.”
She nodded, and I pulled open the back of the van and guided her inside. I was so relieved that she was here with me, I almost couldn’t put it into words. I had really believed, for a long while there, that she was gone from my life, that we might never get a chance to see each other again. Now that she was here, with me, where she belonged, all of that seemed to just fall away like it was nothing. Her closeness reminded me why I had done all of this in the first place – that I would have done it all again if that’s what it took, because I was always going to find a way back to her.
I was always going to find a way to keep her close to me.
I pulled her close in the back of the van, as it pulled away from where she had been held. The driver was one of my own men, and he knew where we were going. There were a few more stop-offs waiting for us before we got to the town car that would whisk us out of the city, but the hard part was over now. I had gotten her out of that building, and I couldn’t think of much more in the world that mattered than that.
“Are you okay?” I murmured to her, and she nodded.
“I will be,” she replied. “I – I thought I was going to have to marry that piece of shit...”
“I would never have let it happen,” I promised her. She grinned at me, looking at me sideways.
“You came there even though you didn’t know what I thought,” she remarked. “What if I’d wanted to spend the rest of my life with that guy? Would that have stopped you?”
“It would have made me question the hell out of your taste,” I quipped back. “But it wouldn’t have stopped me.”
She leaned her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes.
“I’m so glad you came back for me,” she murmured. “I thought I would never see you again.”
I wrapped my arms around her, too exhausted to think of much more to say to her than that. The fact that she was here and she was with me seemed to be all I could focus on right now. As long as we had each other, we would make it through this whole mess, I was sure of it. We just needed to keep the wheels turning underneath us, and we would survive. Survive together.
The van stopped at a drop-off point just outside of the city, and I ushered Nadia to our next vehicle, a small minibus that would give us plenty of space to hide. She didn’t let go of my hand the entire time, her eyes fixed to the window as the city sped by outside, and I watched her carefully. I knew she had to be going through a lot right now, but I wanted her to know that she would be able to trust me through all of it. I was going to get her, and her father, out of here totally and utterly safe, and nothing was going to get in the way of that. I loved her, and I was going to ensure that she was okay, no matter how much it took out of me.
The bus stopped another half-hour or so outside of the city, pulling to a halt next to a small, sleek black car; I recognized the driver in the front seat as the one Leo had introduced me to before all of this had started, and I opened the door for Nadia and helped her in.
“Is this the last one?” she asked, and I nodded.
“Just one more, and then we’ll get to the safe house in New Jersey.”
She nodded, looking relieved. I knew she had been through it these last few weeks, and the last couple of hours in particular, but now that she was here, she was safe. I needed her to believe that.
I squeezed her hand from the other side of the back seat, and she looked up at me as though she could hardly believe that this was really happening.
“You came back for me,” she murmured, and I nodded.
“I always will,” I promised her. “You have nothing to worry about. I’m always going to come back for you.”
That seemed enough to sate her for the time being; she returned her gaze to the window once more and watched the scenery whipping by outside, a promise that we were leaving far behind us anything and everything we could to get away. She never had to worry about Nikita again. I was here for her, and I would always get her out – always find a way for her to escape, no matter how hard it might be.
And maybe, by now, she was starting to believe it. Even though it must have been hard – even though she must still have been scared. I was going to get her out, no matter what, and soon, we would be able to talk about it all properly.
She skimmed a hand over her newly short hair, and waited for us to arrive wherever we were going.
