Page 120 of The Harbinger

“I’m not going with him.” I reversed my course and walked two steps up the stairs when Katya zipped in front of me, halting my retreat.

“He has to go.”

I cast her a glare and crossed my arms over my chest. “I thought this was to make me feel better?”

“It is.” She took hold of my arm and walked me outside, my hands shaking. “You won’t even know he’s there.”

I laughed and settled into the back of the Mercedes SUV designed to withstand a car bomb, I was sure. “It’s impossible to miss the broody oaf.”

“Well, I guess you could fix your garden,” she said, buckling her seat belt.

I left my belt alone, as Sacha had told me. “No.” I’d never touch my garden again. Not after finding him in the dirt like that. Not to mention the flower war I’d had with her mother.

Did she know about that?

Vlad and Ivan sat in the front, with Vlad behind the wheel.

“It was just a cat, Mia.”

“To you.” I narrowed a hard glare at her. “To me, he was a precious kitten who brought light into a dark situation.” I wrung my hands in my lap and swallowed the lump in my throat. “How can you be so callous?”

“We aren’t to intervene in matters such as these. It wasn’t right.”

A red-hot vibration seared my insides as I let the silence bleed between us. The desolate road gave way to the stark reminder that I was in the middle of nowhere and at the mercy of his kindness.

The back roads turned to city streets, and soon we were on a multi-lane highway with traffic for days.

“Well, this was fun,” I said when the car stopped in the middle of the road.

“Look on the bright side. At least you’re out of the house longer.”

“Right.” I rolled my eyes. Weren’t we supposed to go someplace small? “Then he’ll come home and find me missing. I wonder what fun he’ll have teaching me to obey then.”

Vlad gave Ivan a look, and with an angry tone, he turned to Katya, his voice rising.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as Vlad turned back in his seat, his hand gripping the steering wheel.

“He’s not happy that I lied,” Katya said as she adjusted her purse in her lap.

“Lied? Lied about what?”

The walls in the SUV pulled in closer. My heart constricted against the confines of bone and arteries tethering it into place. “Where are we going? Where are you taking me?”

I turned in my seat and took in the city surrounding me.

“Relax, Mia.” She put her hand on my arm, soothing away the panic, but it remained dug in tight, its claws heavy in my chest. “I may have told them you were allowed to leave the house.”

Ivan’s voice growled as we weaved through the traffic.“Katya, ty obmanula nas, da?”

Katya flinched, her voice shaking. “She was so unhappy.”

Ivan let out a string of curses in Russian and English, his hands clenched in the air. “Ty durachok.”

“You’re the one acting like a fool. Calm down.”

My gaze beamed between them arguing as Vlad worked through the traffic onto a side street. “We can turn around now,” I said, touching Vlad’s shoulder. “He’ll never know.”

Vlad scoffed. “Nothing gets past him. You should know that by now.”