As long as it doesn’t park in the spot opposite me, I should be fine. It’s more logical to pick one of the countless spots near the entrance.

The sound gets closer and I catch sight of the black car. I shrink in the tight space between a Hyundai and the wall, thanking everything that’s holy for my small frame. It helps in my invisibility scheme.

But in doing this, I’ve blocked my vision of what the car is doing. For long seconds, there’s no sound. Not the opening of doors or the beeping of a lock.

Crouching down, I peek under the car and see one pair of men’s feet standing right in front of the Hyundai. I place a gloved hand to my mouth to smother any sound I might make.

The rotten smell from whatever shit I’ve been touching triggers a sense of nausea and makes me want to retch.

I breathe through my mouth while I keep watching his feet. He’s wearing brown shoes and he’s not moving, like he’s waiting for something.

Go away. Go!

I repeat the mantra in my head over and over again as if that will make it happen.

Mom used to tell me that if you believe in something strongly enough, it’ll come true.

And just like magic, the brown shoes walk away. I release a breath of relief, but it’s cut off when a strong hand yanks me up from behind the car by my hood.

The force is so strong that I’m momentarily suspended mid-air, before a bulky man with scary features says with a Russian accent, “Got her, Boss.”

4

Winter

Got her, Boss.

I don’t pause to think what those words could mean. My first and most important role in life is survival. I’m not living for myself. I’m living on behalf of my baby girl. For the life she couldn’t have.

The man who’s captured me is bulky and as big as a mountain. His expression is stern, harsh, like he was born with a permanent scowl. His hair is short, white-blond, and his light eyes are as cold and merciless as ice.

As soon as he puts me on my feet, I wiggle to slip out of the hold he has on my hood. Twisting and squirming, I grab his hand and try to yank it away, but I might as well be a mouse fighting a cat.

He appears utterly uninterested as he pulls me along, my struggle not deterring him at all. I step on his foot, but he merely grasps my hood tighter as he continues to take me away. My feet drag on the floor and I lose one of my shoes.

“Help!” I scream at the top of my lungs. “Help—” The man places a stone-like hand on my mouth, cutting off any sound I can make.

Unlike the stench of my rotten gloves, his hand smells of leather and metal. Despite the somewhat tolerable odor, it’s still stifling as if I’m being stuffed in a small place where I don’t fit.

My limbs shake at that prospect. I attempt to wrench my mind from it, but it’s already grown and expanded, tearing through flesh and bones to materialize in front of me.

I’m in a closed space, it’s so dark, so very dark that I can’t see my own hands. The odor of urine fills my nostrils and my own breaths sound like the red-eyed monster from my most terrifying nightmares.

I’m trapped.

I can’t get out.

“Let me out…” I whisper with hoarse desperation. “Please let me out…”

“Where is the little monster?”

No!

I scratch at the hand holding me, at the one who will kill me. I won’t let them.

I have to live.

Before I know it, I’m shoved into the back of the black car. I must’ve been so caught up in that moment from the past that I didn’t pay attention to the distance he’d dragged me. Bulky Blond releases me and slams the door shut.

My fingers are shaking, and the remnants of the flashback of that dark, tight space still beats under my skin like a demon about to rear its ugly head. Usually, after such episodes, I run into an open space and keep running and running until the air burns my lungs and erases the image.

Not now, though.

Now, I need to force my body to be on a high so I can survive.

Survival comes before everything. Before pain. Before mental prisons.

Everything.

I attempt to open the door before Bulky Blond can get in the driver’s seat and take me to God knows where.

But he doesn’t climb into the car.

Instead, he stands in front of it with his back to me. Another man joins him and when he turns to the side, I catch a passing glimpse of his profile. He’s shorter in size and appears younger than Bulky Blond. His physique is also on the leaner side and his suit jacket doesn’t cling to his shoulders like that of the larger man. He has long brown hair that’s gathered in a low bun and a crooked nose that I’m sure I’ve seen before, but where?

The moment of hesitation vanishes when Crooked Nose and Bulky Blond both face away from me.

I tug on the handle, but the door doesn’t open. “Shit.”

Jamming my sock-covered foot against it, I push, then pull until heat rises up my cheeks. I click the button to lower the glass, but it’s also locked.

“It’s useless. Save your effort.”

I flinch, my movements coming to a screeching halt. In my adrenaline-induced haze, I failed to notice that someone else was in the back seat with me.

Still gripping the handle, I slowly turn my head, hoping to hell that what I just heard was a play of my imagination.

That I’ve thought about him for so long, I’ve started hallucinating.

I’m not.

My lips part as I’m wrenched into those intense gray eyes from this afternoon. They appear darker, more shadowed, as if the night has cast a spell on them.

I cut off eye contact as soon as I make it, because if I keep staring, my skin will crawl, my head will get dizzy, and I’ll feel like vomiting my empty stomach out.

Using my foot on the door, I pull and push on the handle with all my might. At first, I thought the bulky man could be with the police and that he’s picking me up for killing Richard, but there’s no way this Russian stranger is a cop.

He doesn’t look like one.

Maybe he’s a spy, after all. This seems oddly similar to the beginning of some spy movie about an underdog—me—who will be recruited to work in secret for an intelligence agency.

When all the pushing and pulling doesn’t bring me any results, I jam my elbow into the glass. A zing of pain shoots through my whole arm, but I won’t stop, not until I’m out of this place.