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Ifeel so sick with nerves by the time the taxi gets to my apartment that I could faint. I scramble out as fast as I can, handing him a crumpled up bill that’s far too much for the ride, but I don’t dare wait for change.
He speeds off without a question, and I hurry across the street to the one ATM that I know is in this neighborhood, intending to pull all the cash out of my bank that I can. It’s always full of sketchier types, and my heart is pounding in my chest at the thought of pulling out so much money near so many other people, but I don’t have much of a choice.
Fuck. There’s a transaction limit. Of course. I pull out the maximum amount that it will let me at once, stuffing the bills into the shabby purse I’d been using that first day Levin had snatched me at the train station, and wait a few minutes, feeling like every second that ticks by is an hour.
I try again, but it won’t let me do another transaction.
Shit.
I lick my lips nervously, approaching the burly-looking man behind the counter. “Excuse me,” I say as politely as I can. “Could you tell me where there’s another ATM nearby?” I try to keep my voice low, so as not to draw attention, but I’m fairly sure everything about me screamsdesperate girl on the run.
“There’s one a few miles from here. Other side of town. Five miles maybe?”
Fuck.
My brain feels like a constant litany of curse words at this point. Five miles is too far. I could take a taxi—but any second now, Levin will be on his way to find me, if he’s not already.
And my apartment is going to be the first place he looks.
“Thanks!” I manage, leaving as quickly as I can and hurrying across the street to my building. I hang back a little, doing a quick scan of the front. I don’t see Levin, but that doesn’t mean anything—he could be waiting for me in the stairwell, outside my door, he might have broken in already and be waiting for me inside.
All I can do is either choose to run now, or go up and take my chances.
I go up.
No boogeyman jumps out to grab me. I unlock my door with shaking fingers, slamming it behind me as I dart into the frigid apartment, looking around as I lean against the door with my heart pounding and lock it behind me.
The apartment, which I’d hated for so long, suddenly feels like a place I don’t want to leave. Yes, I’m freezing as soon as I go in, and yes, it’s shabby and never looks nice no matter how much I clean it, but it’smine. Mine as long as I pay the rent, anyway, not some luxurious place owned by a man who turned out to be married or a hotel room occupied by a man who’s blackmailing me.
It’s not aniceplace by any stretch of the word, but it suddenly feels like home, and I don’t want to leave. I want to barricade myself in here and hide, but of course that won’t work.
I have to get out of here, get mybabushka, and we have to run.
I don’t know how I’m going to convince her of it, but that’s something I’ll worry about later.
There’s one duffel bag underneath my bed, and I grab it, throwing whatever clothes I have left here into it, a few books, and the stack of bills that I had hidden in a box deep in my closet. Everything else I own is back at the hotel with Levin, and there’s no chance I’m going backthere—
“Going somewhere?”
I freeze in place, my shaking hands the only part of me that moves. I know who it is from the voice before I even turn around.
He’s found me.
The boogeyman.
Of course, never in any fairy tale was the boogeyman as sinfully hot as the man standing in my apartment, his gloved hands shoved deep in his coat pockets as he looks at me almost disappointedly from the kitchen.
“I really didn’t think you’d be foolish enough to run, Lidiya.”
Levin strides across the room towards me, and I try to dart away from him but he catches me, his hands on my upper arms as he pulls me towards him.
“What are you doing?” he almost shouts it as he shakes me, hard enough that my teeth chatter, his blue eyes blazing with a fury that I haven’t seen before. “I should put you over my lap right now and spank you. Do you understand what you’ve done?”
Something about the way he says that, though it’s not meant to be sexual, sends a shiver of desire through me. Every time he touches me it feels like that, too, and it makes me feel like I’m going insane.
You would have the best chemistry of your life with your fucking kidnapper.
“I—” I don’t know what to say.I can’t do thissounds like a broken record, the same thing I’ve been saying over and over and yet it doesn’t seem to matter. Whether or not I feel like Icando it, it seems like I won’t get a choice, whether I try to run or not. Every time I try to escape, it feels like he’s right there, one step ahead of me all of the time.
