The interior of the car was a sensory vacuum. The moment the heavy door sealed, the chaotic roar of the Vancouver rain and the rhythmic splashing of the puddles vanished, replaced by a silence so thick it felt pressurized. The air-conditioning hummed at a perfect, clinical 22°C, smelling of expensive leather and a hint of ozone.
Hannah, however, was far from calm. She was vibrating—a physical, jagged energy that felt like a live wire thrashing in a small box. She scrambled against the seat, her wet denim jacket leaving a dark, weeping stain on the pristine cream upholstery.
Then, she saw him.
In the driver's seat, framed by the rearview mirror, were the cold, calculating eyes of the man from the shipyard. The "Attorney." The man with the cream-colored paper. The architect of her second life sentence.
"You!" Hannah screamed. The sound was raw, the vocal cords of a woman who hadn't had a real conversation in years suddenly pushed to their limit. "You're with him! You're his dog! You lured me out there like a piece of meat!"
The driver didn't blink. His hands, clad in black leather gloves, remained at ten and two on the steering wheel as he pulled the car away from the curb with a sickeningly smooth acceleration.
"Stop the car!" Hannah lunged forward. She didn't think; she only felt the animalistic urge to strike the person who had tricked her. Her fingers clawed at the air, reaching for the driver's neck, her body half-vaulting over the center console. "Let me out! I'll kill you! I'll rip that smug look off your face!"
Before her fingernails could graze the driver's collar, a pair of arms—solid as industrial piping—wrapped around her waist.
"Hannah, enough."
Dermin didn't just pull her back; he hauled her. With a strength that was effortless and terrifying, he yanked her backward into the deep curve of the rear seat. The sheer momentum of it forced the air out of her lungs.
"Don't touch me!" she shrieked, her voice cracking. She thrashed against his grip, her elbows swinging wildly. One caught him in the shoulder, but he didn't even grunt. "Get your filthy, blood-stained hands off me! You're disgusting! You're both disgusting!"
Dermin finally released her waist, raising his hands in a mock gesture of surrender, though his eyes remained fixed on her with a predatory intensity.
Hannah scrambled into the far corner of the seat, pressing herself against the door. She pointed a shaking finger at the driver. "And you! You're a parasite! What kind of man does this? Does he pay you enough to kidnap women? Does he pay you to lie to starving people? You're a hollow, pathetic excuse for a human being! Say something! Look at me!"
The driver remained a statue. The car glided through the streets of Gastown, the neon lights of the city blurring into long, distorted streaks of red and blue against the rain-slicked windows.
"He won't answer you, Hannah," Dermin said, his voice a low, vibrating cello note in the confined space. "Arthur is a professional. He executes instructions. He doesn't engage in... emotional outbursts."
"Instructions?" Hannah turned her fury back to Dermin. Her chest was heaving, her hair plastered to her forehead in wet, dark clumps. "Is that what I am now? A set of instructions? A line of code in your 'Doren Tech' empire?"
She leaned forward, her eyes wide and bloodshot with exhaustion and rage. "You think because you've built some glass towers and put your name on a building that you own the world? You think you can just reach back into the past, pull out the girl you betrayed, and put her on a shelf like a trophy? I am not a company, Dermin! You can't acquire me! You can't merge with me! I will find a way out of this. I will find every lawyer in this city who hates you, and I will tear that marriage certificate into confetti!"
"Hannah, breathe," Dermin said, his tone infuriatingly patronizing. He reached out as if to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
"Don't!" she barked, flinching away so hard her head hit the window. "I would rather rot in a hole with rats than have you touch me. You're a coward. You were a coward ten years ago when you ran, and you're a coward now because you're too afraid to face me without a hundred-million-dollar shield. You're small, Dermin. Beneath the suit and the car and the money, you're still just that pathetic boy who couldn't handle the heat."
The insults poured out of her like a dam breaking. She called him a vulture. A thief of time. A hollowed-out shell of a man. She mocked his success, calling it "blood-money" built on the decade of life he had stolen from her. She screamed at the back of Arthur's head, calling him a "glorified jailer."
The tirade went on for minutes, her voice growing hoarser, her words becoming more jagged as she searched for the verbal equivalent of a knife. She wanted to see him bleed. She wanted to see the mask of corporate cool crack.
Dermin's jaw tightened. A small muscle in his temple began to throb. The calm, calculated CEO was beginning to fray under the relentless, high-decibel assault of her hatred.
"You're a monster," she gasped, leaning in close to his face, her breath hot against his skin. "A beautiful, expensive monster, and I hope you—"
Suddenly, the space between them vanished.
Dermin's hand moved faster than she could track. In a heartbeat, his palm was pressed firmly over her mouth, silencing the next insult before it could leave her throat.
Hannah's eyes went wide. She tried to bite him, but his grip was firm, pushing her head back against the leather headrest. He leaned in, his face so close that she could see the flecks of gold in his icy blue irises. The air between them was electric with a decade of unspoken history and current, violent resentment.
"That is quite enough, Hannah," Dermin whispered. His voice had lost its warmth; it was now a sharp, dangerous edge.
He looked at her—his gaze raking over her pale skin and her defiant, tear-streaked eyes.
"It's a tragedy," he said, his thumb brushing against the corner of her jaw, just below where his hand muffled her voice. "It is a profound shame that a woman as beautiful as you has spent so much time learning how to spit venom. You've forgotten how to be taken care of."
Hannah tried to muffle a scream against his palm, her muffled protests vibrating against his skin.
"We are going to my home," Dermin continued, his eyes locked on hers. "You are going to bathe. You are going to eat. And you are going to realize that the world you knew is dead. I am the only thing standing between you and a return to that cell. So, you will be quiet. Do you understand?"
He didn't move his hand. He waited, staring her down until the sheer physical dominance of his presence forced a momentary, flickering silence from her.
"Good," he murmured, though he didn't pull his hand away immediately. He seemed to enjoy the silence, his eyes lingering on her face with a look that was part triumph and part something much darker.