Page 48 of Bound Vows
I stop at the bedroom door and look at her. “Your cooperation makes everything easier, Maya. But your compliance isn’t negotiable.”
“There’s the honesty I’ve been waiting for.” Maya heads toward the bed, moving with the careful gait of someone fightingvertigo. “At least you’re finally admitting that I’m still your prisoner.”
I follow her into the bedroom and watch as she climbs under the covers. I sit on the edge of the bed and smooth her hair back from her forehead. “Sleep now. Tomorrow, we begin the process of reclaiming what belongs to us.”
As I watch Maya drift into uneasy sleep, Alexei’s words echo in my mind like a warning I’m not ready to hear. The organization is fracturing, enemies are moving against our territory, and my most trusted lieutenants are questioning my leadership. Everything I’ve built since my family’s massacre is threatened by my decision to prioritize one woman over the empire.
But looking at Maya’s face in the darkness and watching her struggle with symptoms that have worsened daily, I know I’ll make the same choice again. Some things are worth more than territory, revenue, or even survival.
The question is whether I’ll still believe that when the consequences become unavoidable.
Chapter 21
Maya
Pretending to be more broken than I actually am while genuinely suffering from debilitating headaches has been my strategy for surviving the past two days, so naturally, I choose 3 a.m. to prove just how spectacularly this plan can backfire by crashing through Andrei’s first-floor window.
The window I’ve been studying during my daily walks around the house represents my best chance at freedom—ground level, partially obscured by landscaping, and positioned at the corner where security camera coverage has a blind spot. I’ve been tracking patrol patterns between my performances of fragility, noting that the guards rotate shifts at 3:15 a.m. and leave a narrow window of opportunity.
My plan seemed foolproof: Continue amplifying my real symptoms to appear defeated while secretly preparing for escape during the shift change. What I didn’t account for was attempting to shimmy through a cracked window while battlinggenuine vertigo and splitting headaches that make coordination nearly impossible.
Glass explodes around me as my body weight shatters the reinforced pane, and I hit the rocky slope outside his fortress with enough force to knock the breath from my lungs. Real pain shoots through my arm where jagged shards slice deep into my flesh, and my ankle twists at an unnatural angle that makes me bite back a scream.
Blood pools under my arm where the glass opened veins, and I force myself to roll behind the nearest boulder before his security team spots me. The headaches plaguing me are genuine enough, but I’ve been exaggerating their severity to appear defeated and compliant. Now, actual dizziness from blood loss mingles with the symptoms I’ve been dramatizing.
Twenty yards from the house, my ankle gives out, and I collapse behind a fallen log with a strangled cry that I pray doesn’t carry back to the compound. The cuts on my arm burn like fire, and warm blood soaks through my torn sweater.
“Brilliant plan, Maya,” I whisper as I assess the damage. “Escape through a window you can barely fit through while you can barely see straight. What could possibly go wrong?”
The headache that’s been building since yesterday detonates beyond anything I’ve been pretending to experience. Black spots dance at the edges of my vision, and I press my good hand against my temple while I fight waves of nausea that are definitely not part of my act.
Movement in the distance catches my attention as flashlight beams sweep across the mountainside. Andrei’s men have begun their search, and I have maybe ten minutes before theyreach my hiding spot. In my current condition—genuinely dizzy, legitimately bleeding, and sporting a twisted ankle that throbs with each heartbeat—continuing deeper into the wilderness would be suicide.
The nearest town is hours away on foot through terrain that would challenge a healthy person. Attempting the journey while experiencing symptoms that make walking straight nearly impossible would guarantee my death from exposure or blood loss before dawn.
“This is not going according to plan,” I breathe as the flashlights move closer.
I consider my options, which are limited and uniformly terrible. Surrender and face Andrei’s fury while revealing how much of my recent behavior has been a performance, or continue fleeing and probably die in the mountains before sunrise. Neither choice appeals to me, but bleeding to death alone definitely loses to facing my furious husband.
The irony cuts deeper than the glass. I’m about to voluntarily return to the man I was desperately trying to escape, and I’ll have to do it while genuinely experiencing the breakdown I’ve been faking.
“Here!” I call out as loudly as my damaged lungs allow. “I’m over here!”
Two security guards reach me first, and their tactical gear makes them look like military operatives rather than household staff. They assess my injuries before radioing for backup and medical supplies.
“Boss is going to want to see you immediately,” one informs me as he fashions a makeshift splint for my ankle. “He’s been searching since he heard the window break.”
“I’m sure he has.” I wince as they help me stand, and pain shoots through my leg. “Nothing ruins a perfectly good kidnapping like an escape attempt.”
The walk back to the house takes forever, with guards supporting me on either side while I fight dizziness that’s no longer part of any performance. Blood from my arm drips in the snow, leaving a trail behind us.
Andrei waits in the main entrance, and his face cycles through relief, fury, and concern as he takes in my battered condition. He’s thrown on jeans and a sweater, and his hair is disheveled from what was probably restless sleep before my dramatic exit.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he demands as the guards help me into the house. “You could have been killed attempting something so reckless.”
“I was thinking that dying in the wilderness seemed preferable to slowly losing my mind in your mountain prison.” I slump against the wall and slide down until I’m sitting on the floor, no longer able to distinguish between genuine exhaustion and the weakness I’ve been faking. “Clearly, my risk assessment skills need work.”
Andrei kneels beside me and examines the cuts on my arm with gentle fingers that belie his angry tone. “You’re bleeding all over my floor. Some of these are deep enough to require stitches.”
