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Then it opened, and finally… it was her.

I had thought about her face more than was healthy, especially for a man like me. I had the whole thing arranged. Every part of it, down to which chair I would be sitting in when that door opened. And I had still somehow failed to prepare myself for what she would look like standing in that doorway with a clipboard against her hip, finding out that the world was not as large as she had been counting on.

The color drained from her face before she turned and ran, which of course, I had expected. What I had not expected was how fast she moved, or how close she got to that handle before I put my hand on the door. Then I got my hands on her at last and lifted her away from that door with her heart beating like a small, trapped animal. But for me, it was the smell of her hair that hit me first.

Fuck, but the scent of her alone nearly had me on my knees.

Sixty days and it was still there. The feel of her, the sound of her startled breaths and the sight of my girl struggling against me. All of it like a drug I wanted to overdose on.

But I needed her to behave for me, and I knew the only way to do that was to use threats. Threats of what terrified her the most. So, I told her I would tell this hospital exactly who she was. I told her that if she ran, my men would take her, and that they would not be as gentle about it as I am.

None of that was going to happen.

Not one word of it.

Because I didn’t know who it was that was hunting her, but I knew he existed and that was enough to sign his own death warrant. That and the four marks he put across her belly. I also knew he must have been capable enough for her to keep running, so I could speculate about who he might be. But speculation wasn’t enough, as I needed a name and before I got his, I would first need hers to lead me to it.

I also knew that when I eventually did find out his name, that he was going to spend a considerable amount of time regretting his own hands.

Which meant that I would sooner cut out my own tongue than say her name to the wrong person. Because it was my responsibility now to protect her, no matter what she had to say on the matter. Which was why I had Yakov sweeping the ground behind her since before she ever knew I was looking. Every trace she left in that state, every record, every camera she walked past in a supermarket, all erased to ensure I was the very last one to pick up the trail.

But she didn’t know that. Which was why she believed every word I told her. Every threat of exposing her doing far more damage than my hands ever could, and all because I needed her compliant. And honestly, I hadn’t expected it to be as hard to watch as it was when I gave her those lies. I hadn’t expected it to seize my chest as I watched her believe it, standing in a treatment room with all the color going out of her face.

And I let it happen.

Because I didn’t own this building.

But now I owned her instead.

It wasn’t something I was proud of, but with that being said, it also wasn’t something I intended to stop. Because a frightened woman did as she was told, as opposed to the woman who was spooked enough to make plans to run.

And that woman of mine, she made very good plans. Which was why I had just spent the worst two months of my life feeling fucking helpless in a prison cell damning her clever ability to run.

Yeah, not fucking happening again!

To ensure this, I had even more men watching her every move, and this time they knew exactly how capable she was. Which was why Yakov sent the update this morning.

Left at 05:11.

Stopped, drive-through, ate in the lot.

Ten minutes.

Arrived 06:19.

She had eaten, and knowing it made me grin. I sat on the floor of a locked room with a burner phone in my hand, which cost a man five thousand dollars and a great deal of nerve to get to me. And I read four lines about a breakfast three times.

She ate because I told her to. She sat in a parking lot in full view of my men and took her time about it. Meaning there wasn’t one chance in this world that she didn’t know exactly who would hear about it.

Good girl.

Although the pleasure of it didn’t last as long as it should have. Because when I put my hands on her waist in that treatment room, the first thing I felt was not the heat of her. It wasn’t the way her breath went, or even one of the many things I had spent two months thinking about.

No… It was bone.

My hands went where they had been before and there was less of her to fill them. The second I felt her ribs under my thumbs where I had not felt them in the shower stall, something happened in my chest that I have no name for. Something I didn’t enjoy in the slightest.

Then I really looked at her and it was all there. The shadows under her eyes. The way she had been holding herself upright all afternoon on nothing but nerve and sugar. Hands that would not stay still and a woman who told me it was stress, in the tone of a woman who had been telling herself that for weeks.