Page 187 of Mile High Ex's Dad
My own phone vibrates in my pocket.
The address.
He says, “Thirty minutes.”
The line goes dead.
27
SIENNA
I wake up slowly,and at first I don’t understand why everything hurts.
Not the normal post-surgery pain. I already know that pain now. It sits low and deep in my body, heavy and hot and wrong, but familiar enough that I can place it.
This is different.
My shoulders ache. My wrists burn. My mouth is dry. My head feels thick, like someone has packed it with wet cotton and left me somewhere too cold.
I try to move, but my hands don’t come with me. Panic cuts through the fog at once.
I blink hard, forcing my eyes open, and the room swims into shape around me.
Not a hospital room.
Concrete floor. Bare walls. A long metal table against one side. Old shelves with paint cans and torn cardboard boxes stacked unevenly. A single bulb hangs from the ceiling, throwing hardyellow light over everything and leaving the corners dim. It smells of dust, damp wood, old oil, and something chemical underneath, sharp enough to make my stomach turn.
A storage room. Or a workshop.
Somewhere forgotten.
I’m in a chair, my wrists tied behind my back, rope or plastic biting into skin already tender from the IV tape they pulled off me. My ankles are tied too. Not tightly enough to stop blood, but tight enough that when I jerk against it, pain shoots through my legs and up into my belly.
My belly.
My daughter.
The thought hits so hard I nearly stop breathing.
“No,” I whisper.
I look down.
I’m still in the hospital gown under a coat someone has thrown over me. My abdomen is sore, bandaged beneath the fabric, and every breath pulls at the incision. I remember the NICU. Her tiny hand around my finger. Alina in the corridor. The nurse wheeling me back.
Then nothing.
Oh God. Someone took me from the hospital.
I pull at the restraints again, harder this time, and a sharp pain tears across my lower body. I gasp, teeth clenched, my vision going white around the edges for a second.
“Don’t do that.”
The voice comes from the doorway.
I go completely still.
A figure stands there, half in shadow. Tall. Broad through the shoulders. Dressed in dark clothes. His head is covered, face hidden by some kind of black cloth or mask pulled low enough that I can’t see anything useful. Only the shape of him. The way he holds himself.
