Page 9 of Scarlet Chains
The plastic cracks under the impact, but I barely notice. My entire focus is on the sound of Radimir typing again, faster now, probably pulling strings with contacts in places that don’t officially exist.
“What the fuck do you think I’m doing?” Radimir fires back, his own frustration bleeding through. Good. At least he understands the stakes.
“Found anything yet?” I yell back, knowing I’m being unreasonable, not caring.
“You think it’s that fucking easy to find one person at an international airport?”
His words hit me like a physical blow. Of course it’s not easy. The airport is massive— tens of thousands of people pass through those gates every day. She could be anywhere. She could already be gone.
Without responding to Radimir, I slam the heel of my hand against the steering wheel one final time and explode out of the car. My legs are moving before my brain catches up, carrying me through the parking garage and toward the terminal like they have a mind of their own.
But instead of heading for the departure boards or ticket counters, something pulls me toward the viewing patio. Call it instinct. Call it the same sixth sense that’s kept me alive through fifteen years in the Bratva. Call it desperation so complete it’s turned into something else entirely.
The viewing patio is nearly empty— just a few families with children pressed against the windows, watching planes with wide eyes. The sight of their innocent excitement makes something twist in my gut. This should be me and Slava someday, watching planes together, maybe planning trips to places where no one knows the Sidorov name.
But I push past them without a glance, my eyes scanning the tarmac below. The massive aircraft sit like sleeping beasts under the harsh airport lights. Some are boarding, their jetbridges extended like mechanical umbilical cords. Others are already pulling back from their gates, beginning the slow taxi toward the runway.
And then I see it— a plane lifting off. The aircraft rolls slowly toward the runway, its engines building to a rumble that I can feel in my bones even through the thick glass. The sound is like thunder, like the promise of storm and destruction.
That’s when it hits me.
The feeling comes from somewhere deeper than logic, deeper than rational thought. It settles in my chest like a stone, cold and heavy and absolutely certain.
She’s already gone.
You’re too late, dolboyob.
I don’t know how the fuck I know it, but I do. Maybe it’s the way the plane moves with such purpose, such finality. Maybe it’s the timing— how long it took me to get here, how long she’s been gone, how efficient she is when she sets her mind to something.
She’s up in the air already. She’s not here. And we can’t track her. My phone is useless in my pocket, Radimir’s efforts suddenly feeling like trying to catch smoke with bare hands.
My hands find the metal railing, gripping it so tight the cold steel bites into my palms. I watch planes disappear into the clouds, and somehow, I know with absolute certainty that she’s not on any of them.
Could I be wrong? Could she be on one of them? That Lufthansa flight banking left toward Western Europe? The Emirates jet climbing toward the Middle East? The Aeroflot heading to God knows where?
My chest tightens with every second that passes. The pressure builds until I can barely breathe, until each heartbeat feels like it might be my last. The plane— whichever one she might be on— becomes smaller and smaller until it’s just a silhouette against the Budapest sky.
And then it’s gone completely.
Just like she is.
And I might never see her again.
The thought doesn’t just hurt— itdestroysme. It reaches inside my ribcage and tears out everything that matters, leaving me hollow and bleeding and broken in ways that bullets and blades never could. I’ve been shot seven times, stabbed four, beaten unconscious more times than I can count. But none of that—noneof it— compares to watching the sky swallow the woman I…
What?
The question stops me cold. What is she to me? More than a contract. More than the surrogate who was supposed to carry my child. Something that defies every category I understand, something that makes me want things I’ve never wanted before.
I’ve never felt this way about anyone. This crushing need to protect, to possess, to keep someone close, not because they’re useful or profitable, but because the thought of existing without them feels like death itself.
Whatever this is— this feeling that’s eating me alive— it’s rewritten everything I thought I knew about myself.
The irony would be funny if it weren’t so fucking tragic. Osip Sidorov, who’s spent his entire adult life taking what he wants, who’s built his fortune on the principle that everything has a price and everyone can be bought or broken— and the one thing that matters most to him has just walked away on her own two feet.
The viewing patio suddenly feels like a cage. The families with their children, their normal lives, their simple problems— they’re all too much. Too bright. Too innocent for the darkness that’s eating me alive from the inside out.
I turn away from the window, away from the sky that took her from me, and start walking. I don’t know where I’m going. Don’t care. All I know is that standing still means accepting defeat, and I’ve never accepted defeat in my entire fucking life.
