Raina's POV
The door closed behind me with a metallic thud that felt too final, too heavy, too much like the end of something.
Lana guided me into the hidden corridor, her face soft, gentle, almost comforting.
But I couldn't feel comfort.
My heartbeat was too loud.
Like the sound of a fist against a locked door.
The room itself didn't look like a bunker.
Ethan had designed it to look warm...wood panels, soft lighting, a small bed, a mirrored closet, shelves with books.
But beneath it all, beneath the disguise, it was a cage.
A safe one.
But still a cage.
"Please sit," Lana said quietly. "Everything will be all right."
She said it like someone who had said the line many times.
Someone trained to soothe.
I wanted to believe her.
But I'd lived around liars before.
Lana locked the interior latch and stepped back.
She bowed slightly.... a gesture of respect I didn't understand ....and left me alone in a room built to hide me from men who wanted me dead.
Or wanted something much worse.
My breath hitched.
I sat on the edge of the bed, fingers trembling.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then the memories began.
Not gentle.
Not slow.
They came like a broken dam.
The necklace.
The one I kept.
The one worth more than my entire life.
My hand instinctively reached for the small velvet pouch tucked inside my coat pocket.
The weight of it.
The coldness of it.
It wasn't just jewelry.
It was a curse.
I never told Ethan I still had it.
I never told anyone.
But how could I forget?
The Russians didn't fight wars over men.
They fought over diamonds.
Stolen ones.
Cursed ones.
Ones with blood so old it no longer stained.
My ex-husband...God, just thinking of him made my stomach twist.... was not a normal man.
Not normal, not innocent, not poor.
Not even close.
He hid behind the image of a middle-class man with big dreams.
But dreams didn't pay for five-star Russian resorts.
Dreams didn't pay for private cabins or helicopters.
Dreams didn't buy diamonds that looked like stars frozen inside glass.
Dreams didn't make a Russian mobster bow his head to him.
I remember it now.
Too clearly.
We had flown to Russia....I thought it was a honeymoon.
He said it was a special trip he saved for.
I believed him because love makes fools out of smart women.
The resort was carved into snow like a palace.
He didn't blink at the bills.
He didn't blink when a man in a fur coat and a scar across his face approached him with reverence.
"Dobro pozhalovat, gospodin," the man said.
Welcome, sir.
Sir.
Not "friend."
Not "customer."
Sir.
Later that night, my husband had come into the room with the necklace.
It shimmered like it was alive.
"Try it," he whispered.
I remember touching it...
cold, heavy, almost like it was breathing.
"What is this?" I asked.
He smiled too easily.
"A gift."
"A gift worth a car?" I teased.
He only smiled wider.
A gift worth a car.
I was naive.
It was worth more than a city.
And the Russians wanted it back.
The Italians wanted it too.
Two families, two nations, two empires locked in a silent war over a stone that had passed through blood.
Somehow…
the necklace ended up in my possession.
Somehow…
my husband died.
Somehow…
everyone believed I knew more than I did.
Maybe I did.
I pressed my palms to my face.
"Oh God," I whispered into the silence.
"This isn't just about the video.
This is about the necklace."
My heartbeat accelerated... too fast, too sharp... pounding at my ribs.
They weren't after just revenge.
They were after what I had in my pocket.
And Ethan…
Ethan didn't even know the full truth.
I flinched as a faint sound echoed through the hidden vents...
a voice.
Low.
Male.
Outside the farmhouse.
I pressed my ear against the wall.
"…Hale… deal… now."
That was Luciano.
I recognized the accent... that slippery Italian-American tone that sounded like charm sharpened into a weapon.
Another voice.... Ethan's.
Cold.
Controlled.
Deadly.
But muffled.
I couldn't hear every word, but the tension in his voice reached me even through soundproof steel.
He was negotiating.
Fighting.
Stalling.
For me.
A tear slid down my cheek.
I wiped it violently.
I shouldn't cry.
Not now.
Not like a child.
But I was terrified.
Terrified for myself.
Terrified for Ethan.
Terrified that this was all spiraling into a storm I couldn't escape from.
My fingers moved to the velvet pouch again.
The necklace inside felt like a beating heart.
My ex-husband died for it.
The Russians wanted it back.
The Italians wanted to steal it.
And whoever killed him assumed I knew something I didn't.
Maybe I did.
Maybe I always did.
A sudden dull thud echoed through the hallway outside the bunker.
I froze.
Then another.
A muted, heavy sound... like a body hitting a wall.
My breath stuttered.
"Ethan?"
Silence.
Then footsteps.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Approaching the corridor outside this secret room.
My pulse spiked so fast I felt dizzy.
The necklace in my pocket suddenly felt like a bomb.
Footsteps stopped right outside the hidden wall.
I covered my mouth with my hands.
Please don't open.
Please don't find it.
Please don't find me.
Through the steel, through the thickness....a voice seeped in.
Not Ethan's.
Not Mike's.
Not Luciano's.
A low whisper, close enough that my soul froze:
"Malishka…"
Baby girl… in Russian.
My heart stopped.
No.
No.
No.
I stepped back, stumbling into the bookshelf.
I knew that voice.
Even in hell, I would know it.
My ex-husband's right-hand man.
The man who watched me like I was something he owned.
The man who disappeared the night my husband died.
The man who knew the necklace more intimately than any gem dealer.
His whisper came again, closer, almost tender:
"We know you're here…"
My vision blurred.
My breath vanished.
The Russians were here too.
Not just Italians.
Everybody wanted what I had.
Everybody wanted me.
And Ethan....
Ethan was out there.
Alone.
Fighting them all.
I pressed against the far wall, trembling so hard the room seemed to tilt.Tears were burning at the side of my eyes. I was hyperventilating. My breath was hitched I wasn't breathing...
"Ethan…" I whispered, choking.
Because suddenly ...horribly... it struck me:
What if he wasn't coming back?