Page 141 of No Longer Mine

“You’re angry,” I said, voice low and calm. “Because I made you bleed. Not publicly. Not yet. But it’s coming, isn’t it? You can feel it.”

His eyes narrowed. The lines in his jaw locked.

“You always wanted a soldier,” I continued. “But I became something you never expected. That’s why you hired Cassie. That’s why you tried to break me because you couldn’t control me anymore.”

“That mouth of yours?—”

“—Is still speaking,” I cut in, taking one step forward.

The gun didn’t waver. But his hand did.

I was close enough now to hear the faintest click from the hallway behind me.

Right on time.

I exhaled through my nose, slow and sure. “You think you’ve won. But Scarlett’s still alive. You made a mistake bringing her here.”

He laughed—cold, cruel, practiced. “I made no mistake.”

And that was the last thing he said before the hallway door exploded open.

Don came in like a grenade—shoulder to the first guard’s throat, blade to the second. The gun fired, but the bullet went wide, smashing into the wall behind me.

I was already moving. I grabbed my father’s wrist before he could get another shot off, and slammed it down onto the wooden bed frame with a sickening crack. The gun hit the floor. His howl of pain followed. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop.

Every punch was for my mother. For Scarlett. For every woman he’d hurt, every deal he’d brokered, every drop of blood he thought he had the right to spill.

His body hit the floor hard, but I didn’t feel it. I was already running—through the apartment, through the chaos, calling out the only name that mattered anymore.

“Scarlett!”

Chapter Sixty

Scarlett

It didn’t matterhow much I screamed or fought the bindings.

They were tight and unrelenting. The duct tape across my mouth muffled every sound, turning my cries into pathetic gasps that disappeared into the walls. My wrists burned. My shoulders ached from being twisted behind me for so long. Every inch of me trembled—not just from fear, but from fury.

The secret room Sinclair had thrown me into was narrow, lined with steel and concrete. No windows. No cameras that I could see. Just that awful chair, the cold bite of metal, and the faint smell of mildew and old cigars. It was one of the old servant hallways turned into a cell.

I closed my eyes and focused on the rhythm of my breath. One in. One out. My pulse was racing, but I tried to slow it. I thought about everything I knew. Every secret passage. Every route in and out of Sinclair’s apartment. I thought about the last time Dimitri held me. I imagined his eyes when he was gentle with me and when they were full of desire.

There was a small panicked part of me that wondered if I would ever see him again.

The ropes around my wrists had rubbed my skin raw, but I flexed against them again, twisting my wrists, trying toangle the tape across my mouth against the rough edge of the chair. I pressed my face down, scraping. Pain lanced across my cheekbone, but I didn’t stop.

The sirens started faintly.

A door slammed somewhere in the apartment above me. Heavy boots pounded the floor overhead. Something was happening. I paused and strained to listen.

A voice—low, deep, and unmistakable—cut through the chaos above.

Dimitri.

God. He was here.

I thrashed harder, tears springing to my eyes, not from fear—but from relief. A desperate kind of hope filled my chest.