Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Nina’s POV

The sound of the gunshots followed me into my bones.

They echoed over and over in my head as the door flew open and men in black rushed into the little room where I stood with my palm still stinging from slapping Josh.

“Miss! Are you okay?” one of them shouted.

I didn’t answer. My ears were ringing. My heart was pounding so hard it hurt. Somewhere outside, people were screaming. More shots. A woman sobbed, high and sharp.

“Get her out of here!” another voice barked.

Hands grabbed my arm, my shoulder, my waist. I didn’t know who was touching me. My back slammed into someone’s chest. I smelled cologne and sweat and gun oil.

“What’s happening?” I tried to ask, but my voice came out thin and broken.

“This way, Miss. Keep your head down,” someone ordered.

The next few minutes were a blur of movement. Corridors. Bright flashes. The heavy slam of doors opening and closing. My heels slipping on wet tiles. My fingers clutching a stranger’s arm like it was a lifeline.

I saw a glimpse of the burial ground through a window, black umbrellas scattering, security dragging people behind cars, my mother’s coffin still hanging above the grave.

Then nothing made sense.

A blast of wind. The smell of rain and gasoline. A car door opening. My body is being pushed inside.

“Nina, get in!” someone shouted.

I think I did. I think I curled up on a seat. I think someone threw a jacket over my head and told me not to look.

Somewhere far away, my father’s voice roared, “Move! Move!”

And then everything turned into noise and color and dark.

When my eyes opened again, I was home.

I blinked at the ceiling of my bedroom, at the crystal chandelier I had stared at a thousand times when I was younger and bored.

For a second, I wondered if I had dreamed the whole thing.

Then I heard my father’s voice from downstairs. Loud. Sharp. The way it sounded when he spoke at rallies, not at the dinner table.

“I don’t care what it costs,” he barked. “I said I want the best security firm in the world, do you hear me? The best. I don’t want local boys. I want professionals. Ghosts. Men no one can buy.”

His words rolled up the stairs and into my room.

My heart dropped.

I sat up. My dress was still damp. My hair was half dry, frizzing around my face. My hands were shaking so badly I had to press them against my knees.

“Mom,” I whispered to the empty room. “Why is this happening?”

Gunshots at a burial. At my mother’s burial.

Who would want me dead so badly they’d risk attacking at a cemetery full of cameras and important people?

My father had enemies. Everybody knew that. You don’t become a powerful politician without stepping on necks.

Still, hearing the word “assassination” from journalists was one thing. Feeling bullets slice the air near you was another.

My door opened without a knock.

“Princess,” my father’s voice called.

I turned my head.

He stood there in the doorway, still in his soaked white outfit, now stained and wrinkled. Drops of rain clung to his lashes. His bodyguard hovered behind him, hand on his earpiece.

My father’s eyes swept over me, quick and clinical, like he was checking a report.

“You’re okay,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“I… I think so,” I managed.

He nodded once and stepped into the room, already pulling his phone away from his ear.

“No, listen,” he said to whoever was on the line. “I want them today. Tonight, if possible. Fly them in if you have to. I’ll double it… yes, double. I am not losing my daughter too.”

The words hit me harder than the gunshots.

“I’ll leave this line open,” he snapped, then ended the call and shoved the phone into his pocket.

He came closer. For a second I thought he was going to hug me. Instead, he stopped a few feet away and just stared, like he was trying to memorize my face.

My hands shook even harder.

“Dad,” I whispered. “What happened? At the cemetery… was it really…?”

“An attack,” he said. His voice was flat. Tired. “Targeted. They wanted to make a point.”

“A point?” My laugh came out shaky. “They were shooting at us.”

“At me,” he corrected.

The room felt smaller all of a sudden.

“At you,” I repeated.

“Yes.” His jaw flexed. “And now they will come for you. Because that’s what vile men do when they cannot touch a man directly. They go for his heart.”

His heart. That was me, apparently. Funny. He never had time for family dinners, but now suddenly I was his heart.

“Why?” I whispered. “Why do you have enemies like that?”

He gave me a look that said, You know why, and also, Don’t you dare ask.

My throat closed up. I wanted to cry, but the tears were stuck again. My body was shaking like crazy, but my face stayed dry and cold.

“Dad, I don’t want bodyguards,” I said.

He blinked. “What?”

“I don’t want strangers following me around,” I said quickly, words spilling over each other. “I can stay in school, I’ll be careful, I’ll…”

“Shut up, Nina,” he said.

The words cut through me.

I stared at him.

He didn’t raise his voice, but something in his eyes turned sharp and dangerous. The way it did when he was warning reporters they had asked one question too many.

“You are not only getting bodyguards,” he said slowly. “You are going to disappear for a while.”

My stomach dropped. “Disappear?”

“We will move you somewhere safe,” he said. “Somewhere no one can find you. Not the media, not my enemies. Not anyone.”

My breath stuttered. “I have med school. My exams… my patients, my classes, my whole life !”

“They can wait,” he cut in. “Your life cannot.”

“I don’t want to hide,” I said. My voice broke. “I don’t want to live in some hole because of your politics.”

His expression hardened.

“This is not up for discussion.”

I shook my head, feeling my chest swell with panic. “You can’t just…”

“Enough, Nina.” His tone snapped like a whip. “I just buried my wife. Men with guns tried to kill me in front of her coffin. I will not stand here and argue with you about bodyguards like you’re asking to borrow the car.”

I flinched.

His shoulders dropped a fraction. For a second, I saw the exhaustion under the anger.

“It’s for your own good,” he said, quieter now. “You may hate me for it, but you will live to hate me. Do you understand?”

I didn’t answer.

He sighed and turned away, already reaching for his phone again.

“Get the house locked down,” he told the guard at the door. “Check every entrance. No one comes in without my approval.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And when they arrive,” my father added, “bring them straight to the living room.”

“Who?” I asked, even though I already knew.

He didn’t look back at me when he answered.

“The men who are going to keep you alive.”

It felt like hours passed. It was probably less.

The house, usually loud and full of staff, felt like a prison. Security guards moved around with their guns out. I could hear orders being shouted at the gate, cars turning away, journalists screaming questions.

Josh was nowhere.

I checked my phone, half sick, half hopeful. No calls. No messages.

Good, I told myself. He can go to hell.

Still, a tiny part of me kept listening for his voice in the corridor. It didn’t come.

I stood by my window and watched the rain slow to a drizzle. The city outside looked washed out and tired.

“Miss?” one of the housemaids whispered from the door. “Your father says you should come downstairs.”

My throat tightened. “They’re here?”

She nodded, eyes big with fear. “Yes, ma.”

I swallowed hard and followed her.

Each step down the stairs felt heavy. My hand shook on the railing. I could hear murmurs from the living room. Male voices. Low. Calm. Professional. The kind of calm I didn’t trust.

I stepped into the doorway and froze.

Three men stood there.

They didn’t look like the security my father usually hired. Those men wore matching uniforms and carried themselves like they were part of the decor. These ones… these ones looked like trouble.

Two of them wore fitted black suits, jackets open, ties loose. The third wore a black leather jacket over a dark shirt, his hands in his pockets like he was bored at a funeral.

They were tall. Broad. Hefty in that way that made the space around them feel smaller.

Tattoos snaked up their necks, peeked out from their open collars, wrapped around their hands. One had ink crawling from his fingers to his wrist, words in a language I couldn’t read.

Another had something sharp and dark curling behind his ear.

Their faces were sharp too. Strong jaws, straight noses, eyes that missed nothing. One was clean-shaven with ice blue eyes, another had dark stubble and thick lashes, the third had a faint scar cutting through one eyebrow.

They looked dangerous.

Deliciously dangerous.

My stomach flipped, and I hated myself for noticing.

My father stood with them, phone in hand, talking in a lower tone than usual. He glanced at me once, then looked away, like he couldn’t stand to see my face while he did this.

“We have an agreement then,” he said.

The man in the leather jacket nodded. “We’ll take it from here.”

My father reached out and shook his hand, then the other two. Their grips looked firm, like deals signed in blood.

Then he pointed at me.

It was such a simple gesture. Just his hand lifting, finger extended in my direction.

But my whole body reacted. My heart lurched. My knees wobbled.

“No,” I said automatically, tears already burning my eyes. “Dad, no. Please.”

He didn’t look at me. He stared straight ahead, jaw locked.

“It’s for your own good,” he repeated.

“Dad,” I begged. “I’ll be careful, I promise. I’ll stay home, I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t send me away with strangers. Please.”

He turned his head slightly then, but not enough to meet my eyes.

“I can survive their hatred,” he said. “I cannot survive burying another child.”

His words should have warmed me. Instead, they felt like a stone dropping in my stomach.

One of the men in suits moved toward me. I smelled him before he got close clean, dark cologne that wrapped around me, expensive and addictive.

“Miss,” he said, voice low and deep. “We need to go.”

I took a step back. “No. I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Another one came up on my other side, boxing me in. His presence was overwhelming. Heat. Strength. The subtle brush of his sleeve against my arm.

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” he murmured.

I looked up at him, at the hard line of his mouth, the shadow on his jaw. There was something almost gentle in his eyes, but it didn’t make me feel better.

“I don’t know you,” I whispered.

“You will,” he said.

Big hands closed around my elbows. Firm. Careful, but not soft. They guided me toward the door.

“Dad!” I cried, twisting to look at my father one last time. “Please, don’t do this to me!”

He turned his face away.

That hurt more than anything else.

Tears spilled over at last, hot and fast. I didn’t even try to wipe them.

Outside, a black Hilux waited, engine running. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still heavy, clouds stacked like bruises.

One of the men opened the back door. The other gently pushed my head so I wouldn’t hit it on the frame as I climbed in.

“No, no, no,” I muttered, gripping the edge of the seat. “You can’t just kidnap me. I’ll call the police.”

“We are the people your father calls before the police,” the driver said, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. His voice had a lazy drawl that didn’t match the hard look in his eyes.

I sat between the two others. Their thighs brushed mine. Their shoulders boxed me in. I could feel their body heat through their clothes. It made my skin prickle.

“I don’t want this,” I whispered, wiping my eyes angrily. “Let me out. I’ll pay you. However much he’s paying, I’ll double it. Triple it.”

One of them huffed out a quiet laugh. “You don’t have that kind of money, princess.”

“You don’t know what I have,” I shot back, even though he was absolutely right.

The man on my left rested his arm along the back of the seat behind me, not quite touching my shoulders, but close enough to make me feel caged.

“We’re not for sale,” he said simply.

Everyone was for sale in my father’s world. But something about the way he said it made me believe him. And that scared me even more.

The car pulled away from the house. I watched my home shrink in the back window, watched the tall iron gate close behind us like the mouth of a beast.

I cried quietly for a while. Not loud sobs. Just silent tears that wouldn’t stop.

No one told me to stop. No one tried to comfort me.

After some time, the rhythm of the road, the low hum of the engine, and the heat from the bodies beside me started to blur together. My eyes burned. My head throbbed.

I told myself I would stay awake. That I needed to know where they were taking me.

But somewhere between one breath and the next, darkness rolled in. My head tipped sideways, brushing a hard shoulder. A deep voice said something I couldn’t catch.

Then nothing.

When I opened my eyes again, I was lying on a bed I had never seen before.

The room around me was big and plain, but not cheap. White walls. A wide bed with soft gray sheets. A thick rug under my bare feet when I swung my legs over the side. A flat-screen TV on the wall, turned off. A single large window with heavy curtains half open.

I stood up slowly, heart racing.

This wasn’t my room. It wasn’t any hotel I recognized. It was… nowhere. Expensive nowhere.

I walked to the window, my steps light on the rug. My knees still felt weak. My dress had been replaced with an oversized T-shirt that smelled faintly of laundry soap and something masculine.

Panic clawed at my throat.

I gripped the curtain and pulled it fully open.

Outside, I saw the sky and vast sea. A line of sand. Waves crashing against the shore. No neighboring houses in sight. No city lights. Just endless blue and white and the distant crash of water.

My chest tightened.

He didn’t just hide me.

He buried me.

I looked down. The window stretched from my waist to the ceiling, but there was a ledge just wide enough to sit on. Below it, maybe a one story drop to a patch of grass.

My pulse hammered.

I could jump. I could land, maybe twist an ankle, scrape my knees, but I’d still be alive. Then I could run. Somewhere. Anywhere.

“Okay,” I whispered to myself. “Okay, Nina. You can do this.”

I pushed the window open. Warm salty air rushed in, whipping my hair around my face. The sound of the sea grew louder, like it was calling me.

I hoisted myself up onto the ledge, my hands slipping a little on the smooth frame. My heart was beating in my ears now, drowning out everything else.

“Just land and run,” I muttered. “Land and run.”

I swung one leg out, then the other, my bare feet searching for air.

I closed my eyes and let go.

But before I could jump, strong, large arms caught me before my feet hit the floor.