Raina's POV
The panic-room lights always hum softly, a warm white glow designed to soothe anxiety.
Tonight, the sound grated.
Tonight, the glow felt like interrogation.
My body had turned to stone the moment Ethan showed me the message on his phone.
"They know she still has it."
Seven words.
Seven words that gutted everything inside me.
My throat closed.
My chest tightened.
My fingers curled into fists so tight the nails dug crescents into my palms.
I couldn't breathe.
Ethan didn't reach out.
He didn't calm me.
He didn't touch me.
He just waited.
Silent.
Still.
Controlled in a way that made my panic rise even faster.
It was the silence that did it...his silence.
Because Ethan never went silent unless he was hiding the truth behind it.
My breath hitched once.
Twice.
Then I reached under the hem of my sweater, into the hidden lining I stitched myself two years ago...because paranoia taught me to sew secrets into cloth.
My fingers wrapped around the velvet pouch.
My heart cracked.
I pulled it out, trembling violently.
The real necklace.
The weight of all my mistakes, all my danger, all my nightmares wrapped in one deceptively beautiful object.
I didn't look at him when I held it out.
I couldn't.
I felt exposed.
Naked.
Ungrounded.
He extended his hand...not urgently, not gently...just with a quiet certainty, like he had always known I'd give it to him.
And I did.
I placed the necklace into his palm.
The moment my fingers left the velvet pouch, I felt a coldness sweep across my skin as if I'd surrendered more than an object. Like I handed over a piece of myself.
I accidentally let out a gasp...so small no one else would've heard it.
But Ethan heard everything.
Still, he said nothing.
Nothing at all.
He just closed his hand around the necklace.
His jaw clenched once.
His eyes darkened.
Not with triumph...
with something deeper, heavier, painfully internal.
Then he turned and left.
No words.
No questions.
No reassurance.
No explanations.
The steel door slid shut again with a soft hiss.
And I was alone with my terror.
I sank onto the nearest seat and pressed both palms against my face.
My heartbeat was a violent thing inside me, pounding in my throat, in my ears, in my stomach.
It felt like I had been running for hours, yet I hadn't moved an inch.
I dropped my hands and wrapped my arms around myself.
The panic room wasn't small, but the walls felt closer tonight.
As if shrinking around me.
Every breath trembled.
Every thought spiraled.
What had I done?
The necklace…
That necklace…
I thought keeping it hidden kept me safe.
I thought switching it with a fake protected Ethan.
I thought maybe..
just maybe...I could outrun my past if I buried the right pieces deep enough.
But all I had done was drag it further into the present.
I pressed my back against the wall, hugged my knees to my chest, and shut my eyes.
Try to calm down.
Try to breathe.
Try to make sense of...
A memory clawed up from a place I had buried so deep even nightmares couldn't find it.
Russia.
Snow hitting the windows like shards of ice.
The cabin so warm inside but suffocating.
The scent of cold vodka on my husband's breath.
His fingers trembling as he clasped the necklace around my throat.
"Don't take it off, Rai. Never."
The way he said it...shaky, reverent...made my skin crawl even back then.
"What's wrong with you?" I had whispered.
He didn't answer.
Because his phone lit up at that exact moment.
A number with a +7 country code.
Russian.
He answered instantly.
Not like a man taking a call.
Like a soldier answering a superior.
His posture stiffened.
His tone shifted.
"Yes… yes, sir," he said quietly, eyes darting toward me.
I remembered the sweat on his temple, even in the cold.
I remembered the tremor in his voice.
"She has it," he said.
"She's wearing it."
My stomach flipped now as the memory replayed.
Who was he talking to?
He hung up and turned toward me, face pale.
"Just listen to me," he whispered.
"All you have to do is wear it. That's it."
I remember touching the necklace, confused.
"Why? Who cares?"
His jaw locked.
"I care."
But he was lying.
He wasn't wearing fear because of himself.
He was wearing fear because of the voice on the other end.
A voice he never named.
A voice I couldn't hear.
A voice that made him shake.
The panic room blurred back into focus.
My breathing sped up.
My ex-husband wasn't terrified of enemies.
He wasn't terrified of the Italians.
He wasn't even terrified of the Russians he claimed to know.
He was terrified of one man.
One voice.
The man who had spoken on the phone that night.
And then another memory slammed through me...so violent I grabbed the wall for balance.
Not the words.
Not the tone.
A single syllable.
I didn't recognize it then.
But I did now.
Because I had heard it tonight.
Da.
I lifted a shaking hand to my mouth.
No.
No, no, no..
This couldn't be real.
The man Ethan called tonight…
the man who answered with "Da"…
the one whose breath could silence Italian underbosses…
It was the same man my husband once talked to in Russia.
The same man who told him..
"Protect her."
My heart dropped into my stomach.
My hands shook uncontrollably.
"Oh my god…" I whispered into my palm.
My vision blurred with tears.
If Ethan called that man...
if he invoked that voice...
then the promise made back then was awake again.
Alive again.
This wasn't about mafia wars.
This wasn't about the necklace alone.
This was about something older.
Darker.
Bound to Ethan long before I ever knew him.
And somehow..
somehow...
I was in the center of it.
The panic room suddenly felt like a coffin.
I pressed both hands over my mouth, eyes wide, trembling violently as realization consumed me:
The man Ethan called "Da" was the same man my husband once feared.
And now Ethan owed him something.
Something that terrified even him.
Something that involved me.
"Oh god…" I whispered again, clutching myself.
"What have we gotten into?"