Page 74 of The Devil's Thorn
Rafael’s voice slices through the silence again. We stop. He doesn’t look away from the glass in his hand. But I feel his eyes on me.
“What’s your name.”
My breath catches. NotNatasha.Not the name I chose for the lie. But the one that’s mine. The one I buried. The one he’spulling back up.
I hesitate for half a second. But I know it’s time. So I say it.
“Isabella.”
It hangs in the room like a trigger pulled. He finally turns to face me. His expression unreadable. But something flickers behind his eyes.
“Isabella,” he repeats slowly. Testing it. Owning it. Then he nods once. “We’ll be in touch.”
The doors close behind us with a weightedclick.
The second they do, I exhale. Only then do I feel how tight my shoulders had been. How the blood on my arm has started to dry. How the weight of that room is still clinging to my skin.
We step into the elevator, the silence heavy.
Ash’s jaw is locked tight. Kellan presses the button for the garage without a word.
As the elevator begins to move, I close my eyes for a second, breathing in slow.
“That was fucking insane,” Ash mutters finally.
Kellan scoffs. “You think?”
Ash turns to me. “You okay?”
I nod once. “Yeah.”
But none of us believe it.
“You gave him your name,” Kellan says quietly. “That’s a big deal.”
“He was going to find it anyway,” I answer. “This way… I gave it to him.”
A beat of silence.
Ash lets out a bitter laugh. “And now we work for the fucking Bratva.”
Kellan mutters, “It was that or die.”
I shrug. “We’re still alive.”
“Yeah,” Ash mutters. “But the question is… for how long?”
The elevator dings. We step into the garage, fluorescent lights flickering overhead. The space is silent, every footstep echoing.
We walk toward the car in silence. No guards. No one stops us. But it doesn’t feel like freedom. It feels like a leash we haven’t felt tugyet.
As we approach the car, Kellan presses the unlock on the key fob. The headlights blink once. They both glance at me, waiting.
I slide into the back seat, letting the door shut behind me. My heart still hasn’t slowed. Because we walked out. But we’re not out. We just steppeddeeper in.
The car door clicks shut behind me, sealing out the world with a low, muffled finality.
Kellan slides behind the wheel, jaw tight, one hand gripping the leather so hard the veins in his forearm bulge. Ash drops into the passenger seat with a grunt, dragging his hand down his face before slamming the door.
