Zariah didn't move for a solid minute after the line went dead.
Not the dramatic kind of pause movie heroines do for effect — the real one. The kind a woman takes when reality swings a blade too close and misses by a breath, leaving wind instead of blood. Her heart was hammering violently, but her body had gone eerily still. Shock didn't manifest in tears, not anymore. Zariah had learned early that crying didn't return stolen things — rage did.
Adrian watched her like a man observing a storm form over frozen waters.
No words. No pity. Just attention. Calculated and sharp.
"You're doing it again," she said without blinking. "The silent statue thing. Blink twice if we're about to die, Volkov."
His lips twitched faintly. "Not today."
She scoffed, breathing out shakily, dragging her palms down her face. "You know what's messed up? I thought I married a man with issues. Turns out I married a man with departments of issues."
Adrian stepped away from the ICE table, hands in his pockets, posture lax but eyes lethal. "That's a creative way to phrase organized crime."
"Don't correct my metaphors," she snapped. Then she pointed at the grid where her pulse coordinates had flashed earlier. "So what exactly is their plan? Sit around and watch until I evolve into Borrowed Wife 2.0?"
Adrian shook his head slightly. "No. They confirmed you have survival potential, which makes you valuable. Now they move from observation to acquisition."
Zariah stared at him in disbelief. "Acquisition? I'm not Wi-Fi subscription, Adrian. I am a human stress package with trauma as the bonus feature."
"Yes," he said. "Which is why they want you before you become harder to retrieve."
She forced a laugh. "Retrieve… like luggage?"
"Like debt," he corrected.
Zariah flopped onto one of the ICE chairs, spinning slightly, incredulous. "Then it means I'm not just fighting betrayal anymore, I'm fighting an entire human leverage procurement effort."
Adrian nodded once. "Precisely."
Her eyes burned. "So if they now own one of my liabilities under family collateral, it means this is personal on a level even I didn't budget for."
"You budget everything," Adrian observed.
"And yet here I am," she shot back, "financially bleeding, emotionally dehydrated, and hunted by luxury ghosts. Life is a limited-time free trial and the fee is death. Fantastic."
Adrian leaned slightly, palms pressing the table, gaze narrowing. "There's one thing you are forgetting."
Zariah raised a brow. "Oh? Enlighten me."
"You are not alone in this contract," he said. "And the ICE Network issued its first move. When systems greet you directly, that's no coincidence. That means they already set pawns in motion."
Zariah exhaled sharply, eyes darting to the grid screen again. "Pawns like?"
Adrian tapped again. Icons switched.
A list of operational access permissions appeared — digital keys activated through social engineering proxies rather than hacks.
"You are being pursued through integrated networks. Cleaning staff, communication nodes, elevator operators, fiber conduits… they rewrite access without breaking locks. That is ICE methodology."
Zariah leaned back, letting that truth sink in like cold water flooding lungs.
"You say it casually," she whispered. "But this means someone in your tower was paid. Or pressured. Or purchased. And they're walking around right now pretending to wipe floors or fix cables but actually holding the key to my abduction."
Adrian gave a thin, calm nod. "That is security through human invisibility."
Zariah stared at him. "Then it means I need a new skill: spotting the unspottable."
"That," Adrian said, "is exactly what your lessons were preparing you for."
Zariah swallowed that like ice shards falling down her throat. Third chapter reference, learned strategy — it was all intentional. She had been trained to prepare for enemies that didn't feel like enemies until they were inside your walls.
She stood abruptly, pacing.
"You know what's funny, Adrian?" she said. "Debt nearly destroyed me. Betrayal sharpened me. Survival trained me. But now… someone thinks they can just bag me like premium collateral?"
Adrian said nothing, but his slight head tilt urged her to continue.
Zariah laughed again, but this time properly. The dark kind. The one that doesn't come from humour but the audacity of being underestimated.
"They picked the wrong woman," she said, turning to him, eyes blazing. "I refuse to be collected like overdue paperwork."
Adrian pushed off the table, walking toward her slowly. "You refuse many things. But you only fight the ones that injure you past logic."
"They bought one liability," she whispered, voice sharpening. "Family. The thing I thought was already gone."
Adrian stopped right in front of her, towering slightly, breath visible in the cold vault air. "Then you understand the stakes now."
"Yeah," she said. "Cold debt. Hot blood."
The tower door hissed open again.
Cold corridors. Humming machinery. Adrian led without ushering, and Zariah followed without asking. If ICE operated in shadows, she had to become brighter than shadows could conceal.
They arrived at a storage unit again, but not the public one. This was deeper. Undocumented. A floor that didn't exist in brochures or security maps.
Inside the room were cases marked with encrypted handles:
Survival packs
Covert comms devices
Burner passports
Emergency extraction vests
Debt-transfer blocking seals
Biometric counterfeit scramblers
Black-office authorized resource kits
But Zariah didn't look at equipment.
She looked at the one thing that mattered most.
A sealed black envelope resting alone on the desk. No grid. No stamp. No coding.
She opened it.
A photograph slid out.
A younger version of herself. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. Eyes soft back then, not steeled like now. Sitting beside her cousin who had let her drown in debt. What chilled her wasn't the cousin — it was the timestamp on the back of the photo:
Cold Acquisition Log — Reviewed and Approved for Binding
Zariah staggered slightly, catching herself on the table.
Adrian watched her expression carefully. "They considered you long before the contract marriage offer. Debt was not the chain — just the confirmation."
She inhaled sharply. "So it means… they've been watching me longer than I've been surviving."
"Yes," Adrian said softly. "And the contract marriage simply placed you inside another cage — one they could control proximity to."
Zariah exhaled violently. "I can't believe I signed papers that turned into target beacons while trying to escape target beacons."
"You signed survival not surrender," Adrian corrected.
"Says you," she snapped. "From your fancy cold mafia boardroom. You know what I was signing? Hope. Hope that tasted like escape, not hunting season kickoff invitation."
Adrian let that silence form again — but this time it felt different. Not dismissive, not cold — just a man allowing her to rage until precision emerged from it.
Zariah eventually looked up at him, breath calmer, heart still blazing.
"Tell me," she said, lowering her voice to a simmer. "If ICE erases footprints and binds humans by paperwork chains… what erases ICE?"
Adrian's lips barely moved as he said:
"War that never files reports."
Zariah nodded slowly, absorbing that. A smile formed — real, small, dangerous. "Then good. Because paperwork betrayed me. But war? War has always known my name."
Adrian watched that smile without reacting. "Then you are ready."
"No," she said sharply. "I've been ready. I just didn't know I was fighting an entire liability marketplace."
He nodded once. Approving.
She walked over to the desk again, grabbing the equipment case and slinging it over her shoulder. Her hand hovered over the survival pack, but she didn't pick it.
"I'm done surviving," she said. "I want to start winning."
"You can do both," Adrian said.
"That sounds exhausting," she smirked. "But fine, give me the combo package."
Adrian reached to activate another screen. But before he pressed the key, Zariah stopped him.
"One thing," she said.
"What?"
"So if I get myself in one wrong move that might be my dead end?"
"Most likely," Adrian said quietly.
Zariah exhaled. "Then let's move before winter emails my abduction invoice."
A final vibration hit her main phone.
Different signal. Unhidden. No photo. No threat.
Just a line that made her whole spine snap rigid:
Cold assets move at 0600… extraction window opens shortly.
Zariah looked at Adrian, jaw clenched.
"They're not waiting anymore."
Adrian pulled his coat from the rack near the door, shoulder-checking it on. The cold mapping grids reflected in his eyes like glaciers on steel.
"No," he said. "They're not."