Chapter 284: We can run

"Are you okay?"

Viktor said it quietly, with his arm around her waist. They were moving south along a narrow, dim corridor, and Sienna held the tablet up in front of her with both hands. The blueprint glowed on the screen. A thin white line showed the way, and she followed it with her eyes.

"I’m fine."

"You said that an hour ago."

"And I was fine an hour ago." He did not argue. He only tightened his grip a little, and they turned a corner. Then the tablet blinked.

It was a small thing, one pulse of red light across the screen. The blueprint froze. A message slid down from the top in bold white letters, and Sienna’s eyes tried to read it and could not.

The words slid sideways.

Her knees went soft. The corridor tilted, just a little, like a boat on a wave, and she felt the floor rush up and then fall back. She put one hand on the wall. Beside her, Viktor stopped so fast that his shoes squeaked.

"Sienna."

"Wait." She shut her eyes. She counted, one, two, three, the way she always did, and the world slowly settled back into its place. When she opened them, the message was clear.

ACCESS REVOKED.

"I’m fine," she said again. She shook her head hard, as if she could shake the dizziness out like water from her hair. "I’m fine. But I lost access to the system. The doors are locked." Viktor’s face did not change. He looked at the tablet, then down the corridor, where a small red light glowed above a door.

"Did Konstantin find out what we did?" he said slowly. "Or has Kalisto taken charge of the system?"

"I don’t know."

"Which is worse?"

"I don’t know that either." If it was the Don, then he knew they had gone dark. He knew about the cameras, the guards, and the missing daughter. If it was Kalisto, then he had the whole house in his hand, and every door was a wall.

Neither answer was good. "It does not matter," Viktor said. His voice was low and quiet, with no heat in it at all. It sounded like a promise.

"We are getting out of here tonight. We will find your mother, and we will leave. And if I have to break every door in this house down with my own hands, I will."

Sienna looked at him.

He meant it. She could see it in the set of his shoulders and the cut over his eyebrow, still wet. He was tired and bruised and a man short of a jacket, and he would walk through a wall for her if she asked.

"I need a minute," she said. "Just one. To get back in."

She sat down on the floor with her back against the wall, the tablet in her lap. Her fingers began to move.

They flew over the glass, fast and light. Windows opened and closed. Lines of code ran past in white on black, and she read them as easily as words. She had learned this the same way she had learned everything, by staying up too late and refusing to quit.

Viktor stood over her with the silenced pistol in his hand and watched the corridor.

It was while she worked that he heard it. Footsteps. Not the heavy march of the Don’s men, but something lighter, quicker, with a rustle of silk. Voices spoke low, and a woman’s heels clicked on stone.

His gun came up. Three figures came around the bend, and he lowered it again at once. "Your mother is coming," he said.

Sienna did not look up. Her thumbs kept moving.

Carina came first, small and sharp in her silver-white dress. Behind her, in the pale gown, came Helena, with her skirt gathered in one fist and her hair half undone. A young guard walked at the rear with his gun held in both hands.

Helena saw them and stopped. Her whole face changed. The mask came off all at once, as if someone had pulled a string. She crossed the last few steps in a rush and dropped to her knees beside her daughter.

"Are you okay, baby?" Sienna did not answer.

She did not mean to be unkind. She was far away, inside a thousand little lines of code, with her mind pinned like a butterfly to the work. She could hear her mother’s voice, but it came to her thin and strange, like a voice at the end of a long tunnel.

Helena put a hand on her cheek. Sienna’s skin was clammy. Carina turned to the young guard. "Go to the Don," she said. "He will need all the help he can get." The guard hesitated. "Miss, I was told to stay with you."

"I am telling you to go." He swallowed. He gave a quick nod, turned, and ran back the way they had come, his boots pounding down the long stone hall until the sound faded.

Carina watched him go. Then she turned back, and her face was calm. Helena’s eyes had dropped.

She was looking at the front of the white jacket, and the gown beneath it where the sleeve had fallen back. There was a dark stain on the cuff, and another on the hem. The red had dried to the color of old wine.

Her breath stopped. "What happened?" she whispered. "Sienna. This is blood. Whose blood is this?" Sienna’s fingers finally stilled.

She looked up. Her eyes were red-rimmed and dull, and there was a smear of gray dust along her jaw. She did not look like the girl who had walked down the stairs in a crown. She looked like someone who had walked through a fire and come out the other side.

"There is no time to explain," she said. Her voice was flat. "Shemmel is dead. So is Aliya." She closed the tablet. "And we are getting out of here. Follow me."

Helena stared at her.

Aliya. Dead. She said nothing. She had known that girl and she had never liked her. But she heard the way Sienna had said the name, and something in her heart folded in on itself.

Viktor was already moving. He reached down and took Sienna’s hand and pulled her gently to her feet. She swayed. He caught her.

"Let’s go," he said. "I cannot leave." It was Carina who said it. She stood a little apart from them, in the dim light of the corridor, with her hands folded in front of her. Her face was pale and quiet. She was looking at the floor, not at any of them.

"This is all I know," she said. Sienna turned her head.

"This house. This family. It is the only thing I have ever had." Her voice was steady, though it cost her. "I do not know how to be anywhere else. I will go and help Don finish this."

She lifted her eyes. They were dry and clear, and there was something in them that Sienna had never seen before. It was not hate or fear. It was almost peace. Sienna was not surprised.

She did not ask her to come. She had not meant to. She looked at Carina for a long moment, and then she nodded, once, as one woman nods to another across a wide river.

She turned to her mother. "Mother. Let’s go. We are leaving this place." Helena did not move. She was looking at her daughter’s face.

It was a long look, deep and slow, the kind a person gives to a thing they are trying to remember. Her eyes traced Sienna’s brow, the line of her cheek, the stubborn set of her chin. She was memorizing it. "I am sorry, Katty," she said.

Sienna went still. "My dear. I am so sorry." She took one of Sienna’s hands in both of hers. Her fingers were icy, but they held on tight. She turned her head, and her eyes found Viktor, and her voice dropped low and steady. "Viktor. Get my baby out of here. Make sure she is safe."

"Mother, no." Sienna pulled back, but Helena did not let go. "No. We are leaving together. All of us."

"I cannot."

"Mother..."

"I cannot leave here, Katty." The words came out soft and fierce. "Not now. Not when victory is within my reach. Konstantin has to sign those papers. Tomorrow, in front of the lawyers, with his own pen." She drew a breath. "If I fly tonight, and he lives, he will hunt us down. He will hunt us until the end of the world. You know it."

"We can run."

"You said you were tired of hiding." It hit Sienna like a slap. She had said it. Not to her mother, but in her own head, on a hundred nights, with her face in a pillow. She had said it so many times that the words were worn smooth.

"Let Mama finish this," Helena said. Her voice broke on the last word.