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PRETENDING TO DIE?
publish date:
2026-06-21 22:03:28
Latest chapter
THE COST OF SAVING HIM I WAS DONE PRETENDING
Nadia's POV"Are you okay?"Kane asked it the moment we were inside, before Lev had even closed the door behind us, and I looked at him and nodded because nodding was something I could manage right now without anything coming apart.He looked at me for a moment. Not the quick assessing look — the longer one, the one that went past the surface and looked at what was underneath, and I held it for exactly as long as I could before looking at the floor."Are you hungry?" he said."No," I said. "I'm going to freshen up."He held my gaze for another second. I could feel him wanting to say something else, wanting to ask something else, and I appreciated that he didn't because I didn't have the answers yet and giving him half answers felt worse than giving him none."Okay," he said quietly.I went upstairs.---The room was exactly as I'd left it.That was the first thing that hit me — it was exactly as I'd left it, nothing moved, nothing changed, my things where I'd put them, the book on the
THE COST OF SAVING HIM HOME AT LAST
Kane's POVThey moved fast through the corridor.Nadia's hand was in his and she kept up without being asked, which he registered and didn't comment on, and Lev was behind them and the two others were on the floor below managing whatever needed managing and the building was staying quieter than it should have which meant they had less time than quiet suggested.He took the stairs two at a time and she matched him and they reached the second floor landing and he stopped.She looked at him. He looked at her ankle.The monitor.He'd forgotten about the monitor. Not forgotten — filed, placed in a category of things to deal with in order, and the order had been get to the room, get her out of the room, and the monitor had been third. It was third now and they were standing on a second floor landing with the ground floor below them and the perimeter outside and the moment they crossed that perimeter the signal would move and whoever was watching the signal would know exactly which direction
THE COST OF SAVING HIM BOTH POV'S
Kane's POVThe wall was four meters of old stone and the gap in the camera coverage was exactly where his man had said it was, and they were over it and inside the perimeter in under two minutes. Kane moved through the garden low and fast and his men moved with him and nobody spoke because there was nothing to say that hadn't already been said in the car.The east entrance was a side door — service access, old lock, the kind that hadn't been updated because nobody had thought to update it because nobody had expected someone to come through it who knew it existed. Kane had it open in forty seconds and they were inside.The ground floor was dim and quiet. Staff quarters on the left, storage on the right, a corridor running straight ahead toward the main house. Kane moved right without hesitating — the main staircase was on the east side of the building, he remembered that, had walked up it twice years ago and the memory sat in his legs more than his head, which was the most reliable kin
THE COST OF SAVING HIM THERE TO SAVE HER
Kane's POVThe moment the gate opened he was already moving.He'd kept the distance deliberate — far enough that the headlights weren't a problem, close enough that losing the car wasn't an option. Lev drove without being told how, matching the pace instinctively, and Kane watched the car ahead move through the streets with the careful speed of people who thought they were being smart about it.They weren't being smart about it. They were being careful, which was different, and careful without knowing you were being followed was just performance.Left out of the gate. Right. Straight for longer than Kane had expected — which told him the second location wasn't close, which told him his father had planned for exactly this possibility, which told him the cat had been a contingency rather than a mistake.His father didn't make mistakes.He made contingencies.The car ahead slowed and turned through a gate that opened before it reached it — expected, which meant they'd called ahead, which
THE COST OF SAVING HIM NO SIGN OF HIM
Nadia's POV"Where am I?" I asked.Nobody answered.The man who had guided me from the car to the entrance had already stepped back, and the two who had brought me inside were doing what everyone in this world seemed trained to do — stand and say absolutely nothing useful. I looked at them and they looked past me and the door behind them was already closed.I looked at the room.Different from the last one. Smaller, plainer, no wardrobe with a box of old photographs on the shelf, no personal anything — just walls and a bed and a window and a monitor on my ankle that had followed me from the last house like something I'd accidentally adopted. The kind of room that existed to hold someone rather than house them, and I'd been in enough rooms like this recently to know the difference immediately."Can someone tell me where I am?" I said, louder this time.One of the men looked at me briefly. Then away."Okay," I said. "Fine. None of you talk. That's fine. That's completely normal."I went
THE COST OF SAVING HIM TAKEN ELSEWHERE
Nadia's POVI heard them coming before the door opened.Not the usual footsteps — those I'd learned, catalogued, filed away over two days until I could tell the difference between the man who brought food and the man who checked the lock and the older man who walked like someone who had never been in a hurry in his life. These were different. Faster. More of them.I sat up.The door opened and two men came in and one of them looked at me and said, "Get up. We're leaving."I looked at them. "Where are we going.""Get up," he said again.I got up slowly, because getting up slowly was the only form of control I had left, and I looked around the room — the wardrobe, the box I'd put back, the photographs I'd handled too many times in the past two days — and then one of them came forward with a blindfold and I stepped back immediately."No," I said."It's not a choice," he said."Everything is a choice," I said. "I'd like to know where you're taking me before you cover my eyes."He looked a
THE COST OF SAVING HIM NADIA
Nadia's POV---Nobody spoke in the car.Lev drove. Kane sat beside me in the backseat, jaw set, one hand pressed against his side in a way that told me the wound was screaming even if his face wasn't. I watched him do it and said nothing because I had already said everything there was to say and n
THE COST OF SAVING HIM NO MORE NORMAL ROUTINE
Nadia's POV I don't know how long we sat like that. Him in the chair, me on the couch with my face in my hands, the apartment sitting in a silence that had too many things moving underneath it. I was running calculations I didn't want to be running — exits, options, how fast I could get to my pho
THE COST OF SAVING HIM MAN
Nadia's POV --- Getting him off the ground was its own ordeal. He was heavy in the way that had nothing to do with dead weight — all of it was solid, deliberate, like even his body resisted being helped. He made it to his feet on the second attempt, one hand braced against the car, the other han
THE COST OF SAVING HIM A STRANGER
Nadia's POV --- "Yuck!" I muttered it under my breath, kicking a pebble off the narrow path as I walked. The shortcut through Delvin Road smelled like wet concrete and bad decisions — which was exactly why I never used it. Except tonight my brain decided to betray me. *Take the short route, Na
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