Page 44 of Secret Baby of the Bratva
I tell myself I’ll forget her. That she’ll be nothing more than another mistake I corrected before it could destroy me. Theache in my chest will fade, and I’ll return to what I was before she stepped into my world. Cold. Untouchable. Unmoved.
I’m lying to myself.
When I close my eyes, I don’t see the folder or the photographs. I see her—eyes wide, mouth trembling, fingers clawing at my arm as though she could tether me to her with nothing more than a plea.
I slam the glass down on the desk, liquid sloshing over the rim. My chest tightens, breath catching hard. I whisper the only lie I can cling to.
“I don’t care.”
I don’t care.
I don’t care.
If I say it enough, maybe it will become true.
As dawn bleeds pale light through the curtains, the hollow inside me doesn’t shrink. It grows. I know the truth I’ll never speak aloud: Annie Vale is gone, but I am the one who feels abandoned.
Chapter Nineteen - Annie
The car ride is silent. Dimitri’s men don’t look at me, don’t speak. They sit like shadows in the front seat, eyes fixed ahead, hands steady on the wheel and the weapon holstered beside it. I don’t ask where we’re going. I already know.
When the car slows, my stomach turns. We’re in the city, a side street damp with rain, bins overflowing, graffiti scrawled across crumbling brick. The door opens, a hand gripping my arm, shoving me out into the night. My feet stumble on the uneven pavement, palms scraping the wall to steady myself.
The door slams. Tires screech. The car is gone before I’ve even turned around.
The street is empty. The night air is freezing, biting straight through the thin blouse I clutch tighter around me. I shiver, but it isn’t the cold that hits hardest. It’s the silence. The absence. Dimitri didn’t even come himself. No final words. No last look. He’s truly finished with me.
I stand there, breathing in shallow bursts, waiting for something—anger, tears, anything. Nothing comes. Instead, there’s a numbness that spreads until it feels like my chest is hollowed out.
Streetlights flicker in the distance, pale and unreliable. I force myself to walk. One step, then another. Mechanical, like my body’s moving without my mind. I don’t remember how long it takes, only the rhythm of my shoes striking wet concrete and the ache building in my legs.
By the time I reach my apartment, the adrenaline that kept me upright is gone. I unlock the door with fingers that barely feel real and step inside. The space is small, suffocating inits familiarity. The walls close in around me, pressing tight, too quiet. Too empty.
I’ve been gone two months, but it’s like I never left. Apparently, Dimitri’s been paying my bills, because the lights turn on like I never left.
It isn’t like the estate. Dimitri’s house was never silent—guards shifting in the halls, doors opening and closing, the low hum of life, of danger, of him. His presence filled every room, even when he wasn’t in it. Here there is nothing. Just the sound of my own breath.
I drop onto the bed without undressing. My coat stays wrapped around me, damp and heavy. I stare at the ceiling until my eyes ache. Tears never come. Hours pass, or maybe minutes—it blurs. When dawn finally creeps pale across the window, I’m still awake, frozen in the same position, my body aching from stillness.
Days bleed together after that. I go through the motions: work, eat, sleep, repeat. But my appetite dwindles. Food turns to ash on my tongue. Sleep comes in restless snatches, broken by shadows that press close and the phantom weight of his voice in my ear.
The adrenaline that once burned in my blood—the thrill of defiance, the fear, the tension—fades into something duller. A hollow ache that never leaves, an emptiness lodged deep in my chest.
Still, I move. One step, then another. If I stop, I’m afraid I’ll collapse completely.
I throw myself into work with a desperation that borders on madness. The more exhausted I am, the less I think about him. I volunteer for late shifts, take on projects no one else wants, let my calendar fill until there’s barely room to breathe. IfI keep moving, keep working, maybe I won’t hear his voice in my head or see his eyes when I close mine.
The city isn’t free of him. It never was. His shadow stretches over everything. In bars after work, I catch his name in hushed conversations, whispered over glasses of whiskey.
On the news, the ticker scrolls past with reports of unexplained violence, coded enough that most people won’t notice, but I do. Every mention is a blade twisting deep, a reminder that while he’s erased me from his life, he still owns this city.
Part of me still belongs to him.
Mia notices before anyone else. She always does. One evening, she sets down takeout on my desk and studies me too long. “You’re not eating,” she says quietly. “You’ve lost weight. Your cheeks are hollow. I don’t know why you vanished when you did, but it’s killing you.”
I laugh it off, brittle, the sound scraping my throat. “It’s stress. Deadlines. You know how it is.”
She doesn’t push, though her eyes linger, worried. I keep my smile plastered on until she looks away, and then it crumbles, leaving me empty.
