Chapter 12: Island of No Escape

The jet’s wheels touched sand at dawn.

Not a runway. Actual sand.

Czar had bought an entire private island off the coast of São Tomé and Príncipe: twenty square kilometres of jungle, black-sand beaches, and zero cell signal unless you were standing on the exact spot he allowed.

He carried me down the steps barefoot, still wearing his white dress shirt from the wedding, sleeves rolled, top buttons undone, looking like sin on vacation.

A lone jeep waited. No driver.

He put me in the passenger seat, buckled me in himself, fingers lingering on the seatbelt across my stomach.

“Still no nausea?” he asked, soft.

“Only when I remember I married you twice in forty-eight hours.”

He laughed: low, genuine, the sound I heard maybe once a year.

Then he drove.

The road was barely a path, cut through palm trees and vines. Birds screamed overhead. The air smelled of salt and something sweet and dangerous.

We rounded a bend and the house appeared.

Not a villa. A fortress disguised as paradise: glass walls, teak decks, infinity pool that dropped straight into the ocean. Armed guards in linen shirts who melted back into the trees the moment we arrived.

He killed the engine.

“Welcome home for the next three months,” he said.

I stared. “Three months?”

“Doctor’s orders. No stress. No travel. No Lagos. Just sun, sea, and me making sure you and the baby want for nothing.”

He got out, came around, opened my door, and lifted me against his chest before I could protest.

“I can walk.”

“I know. I’m choosing not to let you.”

Inside, the house was all cool marble and open space. Fresh orchids everywhere. A nursery already half-built at the end of the east wing: pale wood crib, rocking chair, mobile of tiny silver guns spinning slowly in the breeze.

I stopped dead.

“You started this before Paris.”

“I started it the night I put my ring on your finger the first time,” he said quietly. “I just didn’t know how long it would take you to catch up.”

He carried me through to the master suite: bed the size of a small country, doors open to the ocean, white curtains moving like ghosts.

He laid me down, then disappeared into the walk-in closet.

Came back with a small black box.

Inside: an ankle chain. White gold, paper-thin, tiny diamonds all the way around. Delicate. Unbreakable.

He knelt, clasped it around my left ankle.

“GPS,” he said, not even pretending to lie. “Range: the entire island. You step one foot into the water deeper than your knees, I know. You try to swim for the mainland, the yacht intercepts before you clear the reef.”

I stared at the chain glinting against my skin.

“You bought an island to keep me prisoner.”

“I bought an island to keep the world away from you.” He kissed the inside of my ankle, right above the clasp. “There’s a difference.”

Then he stood and stripped off his shirt.

Scars I knew by heart. New bruises from the past week.

He climbed onto the bed, hovered over me.

“Three months,” he repeated. “No phones. No internet unless I hand you the tablet. No visitors unless I approve them. Doctor flies in every two weeks. Chef is Michelin. Staff signed NDAs in blood.”

“And if I say no?”

His smile was slow and lethal.

“You already said yes twice, little saint. Once in a church, once thirty thousand feet in the air with my tongue between your legs. We’re past the part where ‘no’ exists.”

He lowered himself until his weight pinned me gently, reverently.

“Tell me you hate me again,” he whispered.

“I hate you,” I said, voice cracking.

He kissed me until the hate tasted like need.

Later: much later, when the sun was high and the sheets were ruined, he carried me to the outdoor shower.

Warm water rained down from a slab of volcanic rock. He washed my hair himself, fingers gentle, eyes never leaving my face.

“Tell me what you’re afraid of,” he said suddenly.

I laughed, bitter. “Everything.”

“Name one.”

“That you’ll love this baby more than you ever loved me.”

The words slipped out before I could stop them.

Silence.

Then his arms came around me from behind, both hands spread over my stomach.

“Never,” he said against my wet shoulder. “This child is the only thing I’ve ever made that’s pure. You—” his voice cracked, “you’re the only thing I’ve ever wanted that I didn’t know how to keep without breaking.”

I turned in his arms.

“Then stop breaking me.”

He rested his forehead against mine.

“I’m trying, Eden. God help me, I’m trying.”

That night he cooked.

Barefoot, shirtless, standing at the outdoor kitchen while lightning flickered over the ocean.

Lobster tails. Garlic butter. Champagne for him, sparkling water with lime for me.

We ate on the deck, legs tangled under the table.

He fed me by hand, eyes soft in a way that terrified me more than his violence ever had.

After dinner he carried me to the infinity pool.

The water was warm, lit from beneath, stars smeared across the sky like someone had spilled diamonds.

He held me afloat, my back to his chest, one arm under my breasts, the other cradling my stomach.

“Feel that?” he murmured.

I did. The tiniest flutter. Barely there.

Our baby.

He kissed my temple, voice rough.

“I will give you the world on a leash if that’s what it takes to keep you here willingly.”

I closed my eyes.

“Then start by taking the ankle chain off.”

Silence.

Then the soft click of the clasp.

The gold slipped into the water and sank like a secret.

He turned me in his arms, eyes searching mine.

“Run if you want,” he said quietly. “The boat leaves at dawn every day. No guards will stop you. But if you stay—”

“If I stay?”

He kissed me slow and deep and desperate.

“If you stay, I’ll spend the rest of my life proving I can be more than the monster who trapped you.”

I looked at the dark ocean, then back at him.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I whispered. “Not yet.”

His whole body sagged with relief.

Then he smiled: real, rare, devastating.

“Good. Because I wasn’t letting you leave anyway.”

He kissed me again, and the thunder rolled in like applause.

Somewhere in the distance, the ankle chain hit the bottom of the pool.

And for the first time since I’d met Czar Aslanov, I wasn’t sure who was chained to who anymore.

To be continued…