Chapter 21

Two and a half months later

Madrid had learned her silence.

The apartment no longer felt like a place- it felt like a pause. A holding breath stretched too thin, too long, until even breathing feel like effort. Innara sat near the window where the light was weakest, the curtains drawn just enough to let the city leak in through silver lines. Her body had changed so much in two and a half months that sometimes she didn't recognise herself unless she avoided mirrors altogether.

Her belly was heavy now- round, heavy, taut and undeniable. It pulled at her spine, when she stood, made her legs ache, stole sleep from her nights. The child inside her moved too often, restless and strong, and each movement reminded her that she was no longer just carrying weight- she was weight. Agustin had tried to convince her otherwise. But silence has a way of speaking louder than reassurance.

She shifted carefully on the couch, one hand instinctively bracing the curve of her stomach. The apartment was immaculate, too immaculate- every surface polished, every corner guided by quiet vigilance. Cameras hidden behind smoked glass. Locks that whispered when they sealed. Men stationed outside, never inside. Always respectful. Always distant. They didn't look at her longer than necessary.

They didn't speak unless spoken to. Still, she felt watched- not by them, but by the space itself. By how much of it she occupied now. She used to move quietly, take up very little room. Now the room bent around her. Agustín had left early that morning. A sudden call. Family business, he'd said, already pulling on his coat, jaw tight in that way she recognised now.

He hadn't looked at her- when he said goodbye- not because he didn't care, but because he cared too much. Because every time he looked at her, something in his eyes cracked open and stayed that way long after he left. He was trying not to feel anything for her but his emotions wasn't in his control. He didn't want to overwhelm her with his emotions when she had a lot on her plate already besides the feelings were growing not strong- yet.

"I’ll be back before night, you should rest." he'd said, his hand warm on her shoulder, careful not to linger too long.

She'd nodded. She always nodded.

Rest had become her full-time occupation. Not because she was weak- but because she was in the way. The more her body grew, the quieter Agustín became. Not distant. Not cold. Just… stretched. Like a man constantly recalculating space around a fragile object he didn't know where to put it without breaking something else. She noticed things now.

How he took calls in other rooms. How conversations stopped when she entered. How security doubled without explanation. How the air felt heavier every time she struggled to get up without help. Everything was getting suspicious for her. As if a constant threat was looming over their heads which he was trying to hide from her. He was trying his best not to pressurize her with concern and fear.

Once, two weeks ago, she was roaming around in the apartment trying to keep herself calm and patient. When she reached towards his room she overheard the raised voice of him through the wall- as if he was talking on a call with someone. It looked Agustín and someone else, arguing in sharp, controlled tones. She hadn't meant to listen, but her name, had floated through the door like a bruise.

"She's not a liability." He had said.

Then silence.

"She's not." Then again his voice came. The words stayed with her longer than he knew.

Now, alone in the apartment, the quiet pressed in. Innara shifted again, wincing slightly as a dull ache rolled through her lower back. She exhaled, slowly, counting, grounding herself. The doctor Agustín had brought- private, discreet- had said stress wasn't good for her. She'd wanted to laugh then and there because stress was the only thing that hadn't abandoned her since she was twelve or thirteen she guessed.

She rose carefully, one step at a time, moving towards the kitchen. The floor was cool beneath her feet. She moved slowly now, deliberately, like someone afraid of knocking into the world too hard. A glass of water. That was all she wanted. She didn't hear the first disruption. Not the way one expects danger- with alarms or shouting or chaos. It was subtler. A shift in pressure. A pause in air, like the apartment itself had inhaled and forgotten how to exhale again.

Innara froze half-way across the kitchen.

Her skin prickled.

She stood still, not listening with her ears, but with the Instinct that had kept her alive far longer than comfort ever had. Something was wrong, not loud. Not obvious. Wrong in the way silence turns intentional. She turned her head slowly towards the hallway. The lights were still on. The hum of the refrigerator steady. The clock ticking. Everything normal. Too normal.

Her hand tightened around the counter as another sensation crept in, something colder than fear. Recognition. The kind that didn't come from memory but from the body, from scars that remembered before the mind could catch up. Footsteps. Soft. Controlled. Not the heavy rhythm of Agustín's men. These were measured. Always polite. Her heart began to pound.

"Innara." Chills ran down her spine.

Her name taken gently- too gently- made her breath caught painfully in her throat. She turned fully now, stomach pulling, pulse racing, and saw them. Three men stood at the end of the hallway. They weren't dressed like intruders. No masks. No weapons drawn. Black suits, clean shoes, calm eyes. Professionals. The kind of men who didn't rush because time always bent for them.

Her body reacted before her thoughts could. She backed away instinctively, one hand cradling her belly, the other bracing against the counter. She tried to back away but there wasn't enough space left for her while the men in front of her stood calmly as if they were trained to be calm and they had enough time to escort her from there.

"Stop! You are not allowed here." Her voice was hoarse but steady. One of them inclined his head slightly, almost respectfully.

"We are not here to hurt you." He said but the words meant nothing.

"Agustín will- You can't be here. There are cameras. Security-" Her voice faltered despite herself. She swallowed at her own broken sentences.

"They are asleep." Another man replied calmly completing her sentence.

That did it.

Cold flooded in her veins.

She reached for the emergency panel under the counter which Agustín had shown her for the emergency. But before her fingers could touch it, the third men stepped forward. Not rushing. Just closing the distance with quiet inevitability.

"No alarms. It'll upset the baby." He said gently. Her breath hitched violently.

The more calm and gentle their words were the more cold, distant and mocking their eyes looked. As if silently warning her to test their patience and she would have to pay the consequences with the life of her baby. Now that seriously scared her, at the mention of her baby shr stiffened and show her head in denial wrapping her arms around her swollen belly protectively.

"How do you---" her words broke off as a sudden wave of dizziness washed over her. Panic. Fear. Rage. All tangled together, making it hard to stand, hard to think.

"We know this has been difficult for you." The first man spoke again, his voice smooth and practiced. She shook her head backing away until the counter pressed painfully into her spine.

"You are tired. You are uncomfortable and you can feel it. Can't you?" He continued. She didn't answer. He again spoke.

"You don't belong here." The words landed harder than any blow. Her chest tightened.

"You see it in his eyes. The way he watches you like he's afraid you'll break. Like you are something fragile he didn't plan for." The man went on softly.

"No." She whispered, though doubt curled in her stomach like poison.

"He didn't choose this... And now his entire world has to rearrange itself around you." Another one added quietly.

"Stop." Tears burned behind her eyes, unbidden and furious.

"But you already know. You've always known when you were in the way, of his work." The first man said, clearly manipulating her through emotions. That was crueler than violence.

Her knees trembled.

Innara doesn't know about manipulation and how the words can play with emotions. She had always been alone in a room after the torments, there was no one to talk, no one to share feelings. So, she easily got manipulated by the words. The child shifted inside her, a strong roll that stole her breath. Her hand pressed more protectively against her stomach, instinct screaming run, though there was no where to go.

"Who are you? And what do you want?" She finally asked, voice breaking.

"You already know who sent us? We are here to take you somewhere safer. Quieter, somewhere you won't feel like a burden." The words echoed in her mind.

She already knew?

Who might that person can be?

Maybe the owner of that hellhole brothel- Patrick.

But he was dead already.

The wheels in her head were turning.

Her vision blurred.

She was a burden.

Who would like to keep a stranger woman, who doesn't have any existence, above that heavily pregnant. Who would accept her illegitimate child? Agustín absence yawned around her like an open wound. He wasn't there. He couldn't be. And even if he were- what then? More men. More blood. More danger circling around her because of what she carried. The men didn't touch her at first. They waited.

"What if I say no?" She tested slowly murmuring which made the men's lips to turn into a mocking smirk.

"Then you will lose your baby's life as well as the men who has provided shelter to you. You know it very well, you aren't in a condition to fight back or run anywhere safer. So in this situation, be wise, and come with us." The man said clearly stating the facts. She had no other option than following them silently without resistance.

They waited as her resolve cracked under the weight of exhaustion, guilt, fear and the unfamiliar ache of being unwanted without anyone ever saying it outright. Even if she tried to fight and stay back, she would gain nothing but the loss of her unborn child's life as well as the men who wished well for her always. She didn't want to pay him back like that. Her shoulders sagged.

"I'll come with you." She said looking down with a small sigh feeling defeated.

"Of course you have to." One of the men said cockily breaking her heart.

Even if she escaped that hellhole, there was no freedom to her. Her past would keep looming over her and her unborn child's head. She believed that she can't escape the roots of that brothel which was her whole childhood. She felt something breaking inside her, she thought she was free and safe but she wasn't. The darkness of that brothel still didn't leave her.

"I can't walk fast." She said quietly taking a small step forward.

"That's fine." One of them said and they made a space for her to start walking ahead of them.

"And what if I refuse now?" She tested not able to make her heart agree to go with them.

"You won't." The first one smiled faintly.

She knew he was right, she wouldn't risk her baby and Agustín's life even if it takes to be away from him. When they finally moved, it was gentle. One on each side, careful not to startle or scare her, not to touch her belly as per the instructions. They guided her through the apartment she'd never truly felt was hers. She walked past the door Agustín had walked out of that morning, past the quiet cameras that stated blindly now.

Outside, the hallway was empty.

Too empty.

She saw his Agustín's men laid their unconscious. Of course, these men did something to them. She felt really bad and the decision to leave with them became more firm because she didn't want- the same to happen with Agustín. The elevator doors slid open without a sound. As they stepped inside, Innara looked back once- at the closed door, at the life she hadn't chosen but had begun to believe might protect her. The doors slid shut.

And somewhere deep inside her, beneath fear and shame and the weight of the unborn child, something old stirred. Not hope. Memory. Where she was being abused, forced and tortured. Her childhood spent between men and scandalous women. Men bidding prize of them and they sold to those men like some toy for a night. The fear of her child's future was back. How would she save her baby from the monsters around her.

The elevator descended without a sound.

Innara stood between them, the mirrored walls reflecting her from every angle- pale, swollen, smaller, somehow despite the life she carried. Her breathing was shallow. Each floor passing beneath her feet felt like a layer of her life being peeled away. The man on her left watched the panel. The one on her right watched her- not hungrily, not cruelly, but attentively, like someone assigned to protect something fragile rather than capture it.

She broke the silence.

"Why always me?" She asked quietly already replaying her life in her mind.

Her voice didn't shake this time. Shock had burned itself out, leaving behind something colder and steadier. Survival.

"If this is about Agustín then you are making a mistake. I don't know anything. I've never known anything." She said knowing Agustín also had many enemies after seeing all that security and power of his.

The man in front of her- tall, salt-and-pepper hair, eyes unreadable- turned slightly. Not fully. Just enough to acknowledge her question.

"This isn't about what you know, it's about what you are." He said. Her throat tightened.

"I'm not anything. I'm just--- I didn't ask for this." She replied. Her hand moved unconsciously to her belly.

"That's precisely why." He answered smoothly.