Page 41 of His Stolen Bride

“Do you know someone,” I venture, “who could drive and not ask questions?”

She studies my face. “There’s a man,” she says slowly. “He drove for the house years ago. He was let go quietly because he botched up a delivery job and the boss lost a fair bit of money.”

“Does he hate Mikhail?”

“No,” she says. “He owes me.”

That matters more. At this point, I realize Lira is the only option I have if I want to get out of this place. “Lira,” I say, voice trembling just a little. “I have to go. If I stay here in this state, I could end up dead, and Mikhail⁠—”

“Mikhail may not be able to save you,” she finishes for me.

I nod, grateful that she understands. “No one should be trapped,” she replies quietly. “And no child should be born into this.”

The words hit hard enough that I have to look away. “You’d help me?” I say.

She nods once. “Yes.” And I choose to believe her because I have to.

Over the next week, we build the plan carefully and piece by piece, checking each part against the others. Lira draws it out in pencil on scrap paper she burns afterward. We discuss the method, times, names, and the vehicle. She knows when Mikhail will be away on business—two days, meetings outside the city, with no planned overnight return. That’s my window.

My heart aches a little at the thought of not having him in my periphery, which is odd because we really haven’t spent all that much time together as husband and wife. But there’s no time or room to second-guess myself.

I’ll leave disguised as a staff transfer. Hair covered. Clothes borrowed. I won’t carry anything that ties me back to this place. No phone. No jewelry. No documents with my name. Lira is very nifty in that she gets me an alternate ID within days of forming this plan.

The car will be a service vehicle, one of three scheduled to leave that morning. It will change plates at a rest stop before the secondary road. From there, it heads toward the border under a different manifest.

Lira rehearses the route with me until I can recite it without thinking.

“If anything feels wrong,” she says, “you say nothing. You let the driver handle it.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

She meets my eyes. “He will.”

I prepare quietly.

I pack nothing. Everything I own here belongs to the house, anyway. I focus on what I can control. Sleep. Food. Timing.

The nausea comes and goes. I learn how to breathe through it, and other necessary things like which foods stay down and which don’t. I tell myself I’ll deal with the rest later, when later is possible.

The night before Mikhail leaves, he stops by my room. He stands near the door, hands in his pockets, posture rigid. He looks tired. More tired than I’ve ever seen him.

“I’ll be away,” he says.

“I know.”

“Security will stay tight.”

“I expect nothing less.”

He watches me for a moment. “You’ve been quiet.”

“So have you.”

That earns a brief spark of something in his eyes. “Be careful,” he murmurs. “Don’t get into trouble, Alina.”

I meet his piercing gaze squarely. “I’ll do my best.”

He leaves without another word. I don’t sleep at all, because sleep would mean losing the count, and the count is the only thing keeping this from collapsing. By the time my watch reads 3:04 a.m., the house is in its deepest lull, since this is when rotations overlap and attention thins.