Page 160 of Hidden

I pulled my hand free and forced myself to focus. “I need to get my mum out too.”

Natalie’s face changed again. It twisted, and I felt that awful, devastating kind of understanding that tells you someone isabout to say the thing you already know but can’t bear to hear out loud.

“Gabby…” she said softly. “You can’t.”

My throat tightened immediately. “Don’t. I can and I will.”

“You can’t,” she repeated, firmer this time, stepping closer. “Not tonight. Not like this.”

I shook my head, even though I already knew she was right.

“She can barely stand,” Natalie said, and there was no cruelty in it, only urgency. “I’ve seen her. I’ve been sneaking her what I can for weeks now, and even with that, she’s hanging on by a thread. If you try to move her tonight, you won’t get her to the end of the hallway, never mind off this compound.”

I stared at her, my whole body locking up as the words landed exactly where they were meant to.

“She’s my mum,” I whispered.

“I know she is.”

“I can’t leave her.”

Natalie’s expression crumpled for the briefest second before she grabbed both my hands in hers and held on so tightly it almost hurt.

“If you try to take her now, you will both get caught,” she said, her voice low and fierce and completely steady despite the tears gathering in her eyes. “And then what? What happens to her then? What happens to you? What happens to any chance either of you have of getting out of here?”

I didn’t answer.

Because she was right, and I hated her for being right, and I hated myself even more for already knowing it.

Natalie squeezed my hands harder. “You need to get out. You need to get free. You need to go to Vienna. He will help you, we both know it. And his club will help because they love him and he’s their Vice. And once you have all the pieces in play, then you can come back for her.”

“How can we even be certain?” I whispered before I could stop myself. “After what I did. After what I took from him.”

Natalie’s expression sharpened with something almost offended. “Are you joking?”

I let out a shaky breath that might have been a laugh in another life.

She shook her head. “That man would burn this place to the fucking ground if he thought it would get you out. Stop letting the past define you, Gabby. Vienna isn’t fucking stupid. He’ll know there was more to it. You two were nauseating together. He knows you loved him—still love him.”

I nodded. She was right.

“I’ll go to Vienna,” I whispered.

“You go to Vienna,” Natalie whispered back, forcing me to look at her again. “You get out of here. You get to him. You tell him everything. And then the pair of you come back for us.”

Us.

For my mum.

For Natalie.

For every part of me that had been buried alive in this place.

“I can’t just walk out the front gates,” I said quietly, forcing myself back into the practical side of things before emotion drowned me completely. “He’s got too many men on watch. He’s expecting me to run.”

Natalie went still. She looked toward the door again, then toward the small chest of drawers beside her bed, her expression tightening as though she were arguing with herself.

Then, without a word, she crossed the room and pulled open the top drawer.