Page 43 of Santa Daddy
Locked.
Of course.
Balcony.
Locked. Tiny red light on the alarm panel glowing smugly.
Every window, every door, every possible exit: sealed. The service entrance I’d glimpsed on my tour was barred with what looked like it belonged on a panic room, not a home.
I wasn’t a guest here.
I was a possession in climate-controlled storage.
Panic started as a cold trickle at the base of my spine and crept up vertebra by vertebra. My breaths went shallow. Walls seemed to tilt in, this beautiful glass box shrinking one inch at a time.
This wasn’t just being trapped.
This was being erased, piece by piece, repackaged as whatever Konstantin Zverev needed.
Think, Dani.
There’s always a way.
If I couldn’t go through the door, I’d make my own.
His office door stood slightly ajar. Inside, a sleek desk, absurdly large screens, more leather and wood than any one man needed. On the corner of the desk: a crystal paperweight the size of a fist, refracting the weak winter light into a dozen sharp little rainbows.
I picked it up.
Heavy. Solid.
The window looked like any other pane of glass from this side. A thin, invisible barrier between me and the snow-glazed city.
Glass was glass, right?
I took aim and swung.
The impact rattled all the way up my arm, jarring bone. The paperweight bounced off the window like it had hit a steel plate, not glass. It ricocheted back and clipped my hand, sending a hot sting across my knuckles.
“Shit.”
Blood welled up instantly. Bright red beads against my pale skin, stark and obscene on the white marble when they started to drip.
The window?
Not a scratch.
Of course they were bulletproof. One more layer in his little snow-globe hell.
I stood there panting, hand throbbing, shards of pain and humiliation mixing in my chest.
I wasn’t getting out.
Not through windows. Not through doors. Not with 911 and my contacts erased and his reach inside the police station.
I was well and truly caged.
You’re a bird in a penthouse, Dani. And the man who clipped your wings owns the sky.
