Page 109 of Scarlet Thorns
“Is good now,” he says finally, loading his tools back into the van. “But you be careful, yes? Someone who does this…” He shakes his head. “They try again.”
The mechanic drives away, leaving me standing in the parking lot with a car that’s been sabotaged and a mind that won’t stop racing.
Someone just tried to kill me.
The words echo in my head, surreal and terrifying. Three weeks ago, I was a broke digital nomad whose biggest issue was paying the rent. Now I’m standing beside a luxury car that someone has deliberately sabotaged, in a country where I barely speak the language, funded by money that came from… what exactly? While planning to have the baby of a Russian “businessman” of dubious background.
How the hell did I get here?
I check my watch. Ten-thirty. I have an hour and a half before my appointment with Dr. Varga, but the thought of sitting in some café, pretending to be normal while my hands shake around a coffee cup, feels impossible.
I climb back into the Jaguar still shaken, hyperaware of every sound the engine makes as I start it. The mechanic said it was safe now, but how can I trust that? How can I trust anything?
The drive toward the city center becomes an exercise in paranoia. I check the mirrors obsessively, noting every car that seems to maintain the same distance behind me. A black sedan stays three cars back for several blocks before turning off, andmy heart races until it’s gone. A motorcycle passes me on the left, and I tense until the rider disappears around a curve.
Is this what Dad felt like in those final weeks? This constant looking over his shoulder, this sense of invisible enemies closing in?
Jason’s warning feels more urgent now.
Are you prepared for the possibility that whoever killed your father might not want us digging around?
But which daughter are they after? The one who’s funding an investigation into her father’s death? Or the one who’s sharing a bed with a man whose business dealings are conducted in whispered Russian behind closed doors? Which role would put a target on my back?
Maybe both.
I think about the money sitting in my account— five hundred thousand Euros that appeared with suspicious efficiency. Money that’s already flowing to Jason, funding his investigation into a death that powerful people wanted buried. What if those same people are watching me, tracking every transaction, every phone call, every move I make?
I park outside a small boutique in downtown Pest, but I don’t get out immediately. Instead, I sit there scanning the street, looking for anything that seems out of place. A man in a dark coat reading a newspaper at a café table. A woman with sunglasses despite the cloudy sky. A van parked with its engine running.
Everything looks normal.
Everything looks suspicious.
I force myself to get out of the car and walk into the boutique, but my skin crawls with the feeling of being watched. The saleswoman greets me with a smile, and I manage to browse through racks of maternity clothes, but my attention keepsdrifting to the window, to the street beyond, to shadows that might hide threats.
I buy a few things without really looking at them, almost dropping Osip’s credit card as I hand it over. The saleswoman doesn’t seem to notice my distress, chattering pleasantly in Hungarian-accented English about the lovely weather and how exciting it must be to be expecting.
Expecting.
I’m sure it’s too early for that but how will it feel when that becomes a reality?
Back on the street, every face in the crowd seems potentially dangerous. That man in the business suit— is he walking too close? The teenager on the bicycle— is she circling back around the block? The elderly woman feeding pigeons— is she watching me from the corner of her eye?
I duck into a pharmacy and buy vitamins I don’t read the labels of, antacids I’m not sure will help, anything to keep moving, to avoid standing still long enough for someone to get a clear shot or plant another device or do whatever it is that people who sabotage cars do next.
I’m not cut out for this cloak and dagger shit, dammit.
My phone buzzes with a text from Dr. Varga’s office, confirming my appointment. The normalcy of it— the professional courtesy, the routine medical care— feels surreal against the backdrop of my paranoia.
I check my watch again. Still forty-five minutes until I can sit in Dr. Varga’s office and pretend that my biggest concern is unexplained nausea and endometriosis medication.
But what if whoever tried to kill me knows about the appointment? What if they’re waiting for me there, in the parking garage or the elevator or the sterile hallway outside his office?
What if nowhere is safe anymore?
Chapter Forty-Three
Ilona
