Page 15 of Inked Athena

He says he came to this cabin to keep me safe and take care of me, but all he’s done is muddle my head even more than it already was.

I thought I understood who he was. I thought he’d press a gun to my temple the first time he laid eyes on me again.

Instead, he’s making me bite back his name in the bathtub and carrying me off to unknown second locations.

I thought I knew Sam, but I’m not sure I know anything anymore.

“Somewhere dangerous then,” he deadpans.

If I didn’t think it would only hurt me more than it would him, I’d slap his chest. As it is, I hang uselessly in his arms as he carries me down the front steps and across the lawn.

He ducks through a break in the foliage, shielding me from the twigs and branches. When we come out on the other side, a hulking gray jeep with tires up to my waist is waiting for us.

He cradles me with one arm and opens the passenger door with the other, then tucks me inside.

“You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”

He reaches across me to buckle my seatbelt, his hand brushing across my chest. “Correct. Because telling you would actually make this dangerous.”

When he opens the door to get behind the wheel, I keep firing questions. “Is it dangerous because you can’t trust me? Or because I can’t trust you?”

He turns the key in the ignition and takes off down a dirt road. “Trust is apparently a rare commodity these days.”

If there was any doubt about whether he bought my story last night or not, it’s gone now.

He was probably on the fence, waiting for an explanation from me. Then the half-assed one I gave last night convinced him of my guilt.

I’m a spy. This is my last ride.

“Can I at least call Hope and Grams?”

“No.” His eyes stay fixed on the road. “You can’t call anyone.”

The walls of the Jeep press in, suffocating. “You said you were doing this to keep me safe, not to keep me prisoner. This isn’t a hostage situation.”

“It’ll become one if you can’t cooperate. You got yourself into this mess, and now?—”

“You think I asked for this?”

Samuil’s jaw tightens before he answers evenly. “I think you’re uniquely good at attracting the wrong kind of people. I do what needs to be done to protect you. Abduction included.”

“I’m not surprised,” I grumble. “It runs in the family.”

When he finally looks away from the road, his icy eyes locked on mine, I know I crossed a line. He sucks his cheeks in like he’s tasting something sour, and as much as I want to take it back, I don’t.

Samuil isn’t Ilya, but I’ve bartered away too much of my pride already. If I hand over any more, there will be nothing left of me. And I won’t do that. Not even for Samuil.

His grip tightens on the wheel until I swear I hear the leather creak. We spend the next half hour marinating in thick silence, the only sound the crunch of gravel under tires. When he finally turns off the single-lane road, a warehouse looms in the distance like a metal coffin.

“Thisis where we’re going to lay low? A warehouse in the middle of nowhere?”

It looks like a remote building where no one would hear me scream.

I begin rehearsing a better explanation—one that might spare me. I don’t want to die.

Sam raps his knuckle against the glass, pointing out the open field next to the warehouse. “We’re not staying here. It’s just for takeoff.”

“For taking off what?”

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