Chapter four

~A STRANGER IN BLACK~

I lowered my eyes and swallowed the truth.

I was planning to disappear, to save my daughter, to choose life for the first time. But none of that mattered here.

He reached into the pile and pulled out my phone. My screen was cracked from where Brown had thrown it weeks ago.

“Unlock it.”

I hesitated.

The click of a gun being cocked shattered the silence.

Ariel whimpered against my chest.

My shaking fingers reached for the phone. I entered the passcode.

“Call your husband.”

Every part of me recoiled.

The thought of begging Brown for help felt worse than death. But the gun, the room, the child in my arms, those things mattered more than pride.

I pressed his name.

The contact name mocked me.

The line rang once, twice, then a third time.

No answer.

I called again. Voicemail.

My stomach twisted because I knew exactly where he was. Probably drunk in another woman’s bed, laughing, while I sat in a freezing room with our daughter and guns pointed at us.

The leader snatched the phone from my hand.

“What game is this?” he growled.

“I swear, I’m calling him,” I said quickly. “He’s just not answering.”

He dialed himself and put it on speaker.

It rang severally. Then voicemail.

The room changed instantly. The men stopped joking, and their patience evaporated like smoke. One kicked over the chair beside him; another cursed under his breath.

The leader turned slowly toward me.

And though I couldn’t see his face, I felt his anger like heat.

“Your husband doesn’t seem eager to save you.”

My throat tightened. “He will,” I whispered, though I no longer believed it. “He will answer.”

He stepped closer until the barrel of his gun rested lightly beneath my chin.

“Then pray he does soon.” His voice dropped to something terrifyingly calm. “Because men who waste my time usually lose something valuable.”

His gaze slid to Ariel in my arms.

My blood turned to ice. He snatched the phone from my hand so hard it nearly flew across the room.

“This is ridiculous.”

He typed Brown’s number into his own phone and pressed call, pacing once across the concrete floor while the line rang. Every second felt like a countdown to our deaths.

Then a robotic voice blasted through the speaker.

‘The caller you are trying to reach is currently unreachable.‘

The room went silent.

My lungs forgot how to work. Oh God. Brown had turned off his phone.

They forced me to call my family. I tried my parents, but the line just rang into the void. I tried my sister; the same robotic voice told me she was unreachable. I was completely alone.

My heart pounded so violently I thought it might burst through my ribs. If these men couldn’t get what they wanted… then we were worthless.

The leader slowly lowered the phone.

Then he hurled mine onto the metal table. It shattered against the edge and clattered to the floor in pieces.

“Your husband turned his damn phone off,” he said, voice shaking with fury. “And that pisses me off.”

One of the others stepped forward. “Boss, let’s just wipe them and go. We have the cash and the jewelry. We can’t leave witnesses, and we can’t afford mistakes that trace back to us.”

The words sliced through me.

As if Ariel and I were stains to be cleaned.

The leader nodded once.

My knees gave out. I dropped to the floor with Ariel clutched against me.

“Please!” I screamed, crawling toward him. “Please, you can kill me if you want, but let my child go! She’s just a baby! She knows nothing—please!”

Tears blinded me.

Ariel began sobbing wildly in my arms. “Mummy! Mummy!”

The sound seemed to snap the last thread of patience inside the leader.

“Shut her up!” he roared.

He cocked the gun. Then aimed it directly at us.

Time stopped.

I wrapped my entire body around Ariel, covering her head, her chest, every inch of her I could reach. My bruised back arched over her like armor.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

Please let it be me. Please not her. Please not her.

Two gunshots exploded through the room.

My body jerked. Then… nothing.

There was no pain, no darkness, and no blood spilling warm across my skin.

My heart thundered as I opened my eyes.

Ariel was crying beneath me, but alive.

I pulled back frantically, checking her face, her little arms, her chest. No blood. No wound.

Then a groan cut through the room.

I looked up. The leader was on the floor.

Blood spread beneath him in a dark pool, his gun skidding across the concrete.

The other masked men had frozen, hands half-raised, because at the doorway stood men with weapons trained on them.

And in the center of them.

He was a man of imposing height and broad shoulders, dressed in black so sharp and clean it made the room look dirtier. He held a gun loosely at his side, as if violence weighed nothing in his hand.

I could barely make out his face at first, only the outline of power in the dim light.

He didn’t shout. He simply stepped into the room like he already owned it.

“Take them out,” he said.

His voice was low, calm, and absolute.

His men moved instantly, dragging the masked criminals away while the wounded boss screamed curses into the floor.

Then the stranger turned to me and crouched.

The shadows shifted. For the first time, I saw him a little more clearly.

A face too handsome to belong in a place like this. Sharp jaw. Dark eyes. Cold, unreadable, fixed on me with unsettling focus. The kind of man women fantasized about… and sensible people feared.

He looked at the bruises on my face. The child in my arms. The blood on my dress.

Then his gaze returned to mine. “You’re safe now,” he said.