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A pet he wanted to put in a cage and keep there for his amusement. That wasn’t love.

It was control.

So, I ran, just like I always had done. I forced myself to move faster than I ever had before, running in the dark like I had become the lead in my own horror movie. I went left instead of right at the bottom of the corridor, and that was sheer luck on my side. Because right went toward the main doors and everybody in that building was headed that way.

Which was what Ghost would also expect.

But I knew another way and right now it was my only chance.

However, I also knew that I needed to give them the slip first, as I didn’t have enough of a head start to make it all the way there without him first catching up to me. I knew that the second I heard their footsteps echoing down the corridor.

“Think, Anna!” I hissed at myself as I scanned my surroundings, seeing door after door that I knew he would check. No, I needed to hide somewhere, and I knew the best place was often the place people least expected… in plain sight.

Which was precisely when I spotted the linen cart parked outside the lower storeroom. I didn’t think twice. Not when I heard boots on the stairs behind me. So, I got one leg over the side of that cart and went in headfirst on top of the sheets, and I got the linen over me. I got my knees up and I put my hand over my own mouth as I forced myself to stop moving.

They came around the corner just a second after I closed the side of the cart. It had fine steel mesh panels, so the linen can breathe, and I have looked at them a hundred times and never once thought about them as a place to hide. Which meant I was hoping someone like Ghost would think the same thing.

Soon the beams came through the side in strips and for a horrifying moment, I thought I had been found. But it turned out that I could see out of it but none of them thought to try to look in it. Not even when the first body came within three feet from my face with nothing but a bit of mesh between.

I stopped breathing entirely and lay there in a pile of somebody’s bedding with my heart going hard enough that I was certain they would hear it.

There were four of them, and then… there were five.

I swear I knew it was him before I even saw that enormous figure come into view. He didn’t even seem to be in a hurry and the moment his voice came into that corridor every single one of them stopped moving.

“Where?” He demanded and it was a voice I had never heard come from him before. Which was when I realized that this was a man used to barking out orders and having them obeyed. This was a man who owned every room he walked into, and everybody standing in it.

“She went left, boss. Sixty seconds.”

“Then she is on this level,” he stated firmly and I heard him move closer… far too fucking close. The light went across the mesh again.

“Yakov. Bring two off the front and put them on the stairwells. Both of them. She does not go up. Am I understood?” It wasn’t a question but more like a law being passed.

“And the floor?”

“Sweep it. All of it. Every single door. If she isn’t running, then she is hiding and I want her found… Now.” The power in his voice almost took my breath away. But then in a tone I have never heard come out of him, he practically growled,

“Nobody touches her.”

Somebody said something I didn’t catch at that.

“I do not care what she does. She can bite, she can scratch, she can put a chair through your fucking face and break it. If she is frightened, you let her be frightened, but you do not put one God-damn hand on her. Now does every man here understand me, or do I need to put a bullet through your brain now to save myself the trouble?” I nearly made a sound at that and admittedly, I also nearly lost my bladder and soaked the sheets beneath me.

I had never heard him so threatening before and he was just as terrifying as his rage had been in the treatment room when cutting a man’s genitals off.

Unsurprisingly, there was utter silence.

“Tell them again,” Ghost said to a man by his side.

“They know, boss,” one said with a heavy accent I couldn’t place exactly but it sounded as if it could be Russian. But Ghost turned his head with a sharp movement and bit out,

“Tell. Them. Again.”

I heard the slightest sigh at this before the man’s voice was heard again.

“If you find her, get on your radio and inform us. Try to keep her contained if you can but touch her and you die.” I swallowed hard and thankfully it was a sound that didn’t carry.

I then watched Ghost hold out a hand and take the rifle he was handed without even needing to ask. He checked it without appearing to even need to look at it, and something in the way he did that finished whatever was left of the man I thought I had been talking to through a door yesterday afternoon.