The road beyond the iron gates lay out too narrow and dark. I hated what I had to do to escape from that gate.
But I needed to hurry. I only had an hour or maybe a couple of hours to get as far away as I could before he’d wake up and start hunting me like an animal.
And when he did…God, I tried not to think of that.
I sprinted to the car I had stashed days earlier, half-buried under the shade of a nearly vine-covered fence beside the back door. It wasn’t much—an old black Volvo. But it would have to do.
It would get me far enough to breathe and think.
My fingers trembled as I fished the keys out of my pocket. It fell out of my hands. “Shit,” I spat, stooping to pick up the key, my heart pounding as headlights whizzed by a few blocks off.
I climbed into the car, closed the door behind me hard, and stuck the key into the ignition.
The engine sprang to life.
And only then did I let out the breath I’d been holding since I’d left him on the floor.
***
The pill bottle was still in my coat pocket. I hadn’t even known what it was at first. I thought it was just another line of backup painkillers tucked deep in the mansion’s guest bathroom cabinet.
But rich, guarded homes like the Yezhov estate always had medical cabinets stocked to the brim for migraines, allergies, gunshot wounds, and nervous wives.
I’d googled the marking on the pills after we got home from the party. It was Diphenhydramine Benadryl. An over-the-counter antihistamine. It was safe in small quantities, but toxic in large ones.
I’d crushed three pills with the rim of a spoon, mixed them into the drink I’d given to Matvey.
For a moment, I’d been afraid he would see through me. Honestly, I thought a part of him had been suspicious, but he underestimated me, and that was his downfall.
It hadn’t been simple. I’d fought myself the whole way through, my mind at war with my heart, my pulse trapped in a struggle between guilt and survival.
But I’d had to do it.
He left me no choice. He would not have let me go.
Not over the baby.
Not over what I knew of Yulia.
I clung to the wheel, attempting to focus as I inched out onto the road. I’d done what needed to be done, and there was no going back now.
I kept glancing repeatedly from the road open before me to the rearview mirror, again and again, as if someone would suddenly appear behind me.
Matvey would definitely start hunting me down the second he recovered from the effect of the drugs; that much I was sure of. How far away I could get before that happened was all that mattered.
I’d timed it right. Left the door locked. Kept my head down. Crushed just enough pills to sedate, not kill.
But logic didn’t matter when your heart was breaking and your stomach felt like it was being carved open from the inside.
Everything hurt.
The silence in the car was too loud.
Every turn, every mile between me and him, felt like both freedom and a knife in my ribs.
I had nothing but a phony ID I used to sneak into bars back when I was still too dumb to worry about consequences, a pile of cash I’d stolen from the safe under Matvey’s desk drawer, and a tiny black bag containing two sets of clothes.
That was what running looked like, and there was nothing glamorous about it.
