Borrowed Night Book 2 - Five Days of Freedom

“What would he say if he knew?”

Elara’s voice was quiet, almost thoughtful, like she was asking the question to herself rather than to him.

Ivan didn’t answer. His grey eyes stayed on the road, one hand loose on the steering wheel, the other resting on the console between them.

“His fiancée,” she continued, ticking it off on her fingers like she was making a list, “and his son. Driving to a town in the middle of nowhere. Together. Alone.”

She let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “He’d probably have a heart attack. Or hire someone to kill us both. Hard to say with Victor.”

“Neither,” Ivan said.

She turned her head. “What?”

“He wouldn’t kill us. Too messy. He’d find a way to make our lives miserable instead. Cut off funding, threaten people we care about, drag it through the courts for years.” He glanced at her, quick and sharp. “He’s patient. That’s what makes him dangerous.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

“I am.” He paused. “I’ve been on the wrong side of his patience before.”

She studied his profile—the tight jaw, the way his fingers drummed once on the steering wheel before going still. “What happened?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Everything about you matters to me right now, Ivan. We’re in a car, driving away from the city.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then the corner of his mouth twitched. “I was twenty-three. I made my first big investment without consulting him. A tech startup in Berlin. He didn’t yell. He didn’t punish me. He just... waited. Six months later, the company folded—not because it was a bad investment, but because he quietly pulled the funding from their secondary backers. He let me fall flat on my face, then showed up at my door and said, ‘Next time, you’ll ask first.’”

Elara stared at him. “He sabotaged your own deal? Just to teach you a lesson?”

“He wanted me to learn that nothing I built could survive without his blessing.” Ivan shrugged. “He was right, at the time. I was twenty-three and arrogant. I thought I knew everything.”

“And now?”

He glanced at her, a small, sharp smile. “Now I know I don’t know everything. But I know enough to keep him from doing it again.”

She looked down at her hands. They were clasped in her lap. She forced them to relax.

“So you know what it’s like,” she said quietly. “Being trapped by him.”

“Different kind of trapped. I know.” He paused. His voice dropped lower. “But this time is different.”

She looked at him, waiting. He didn’t elaborate. Just stared at the road ahead, jaw tight.

The car’s Bluetooth screen lit up.

Incoming call: Victor.

Ivan didn’t reach for it. His hand stayed on the wheel, fingers loose. Elara watched the screen flicker four times. Each ring felt longer than the last.

Then the ringing stopped. A voicemail icon appeared. Before Ivan could press anything, the car’s audio system automatically played the message through the speakers—Victor’s voice, calm and clipped, the way he talked when he assumed he was being recorded:

“Ivan. Tomorrow’s board meeting is moved to three o’clock. The finance team re-ran the Berlin projections—they’re not happy with the return. You weren’t here, so I killed it. We’ll talk when you’re back.”

A click. The message ended.

Elara stared at the screen as it dimmed. Her hands had retreated into her lap without her noticing.

“He doesn’t know,” she said quietly. Not a question. A test.

Ivan reached over and turned the screen off. “He knows I’m not in the office. That’s all.”

“He didn’t ask where you are.”

“No.” He pulled his hand back to the wheel. “He doesn’t need to. He only cares that I show up where he tells me to show up.”

She turned to look at him. “That’s worse, isn’t it?”

He was quiet for a moment. Then his mouth moved, just slightly—not a smile, not a grimace. Something in between.

“Yeah,” he said. “It is.”

He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t explain. He just let the word sit there.

Then he glanced at her—quick, almost apologetic, like he’d let too much air out of the room.

“I booked a villa at a lakeside resort about twenty miles north,” he said. Paused. “Secluded. Staffed. Off the grid.”

Elara turned back to the window. The trees were thicker now, the road narrower. They were deep in the valley, the hills rising on both sides. She watched the familiar landscape scroll past—the old stone wall she’d climbed as a kid, the bent oak that had been struck by lightning when she was twelve, the rusted mailbox that had belonged to the Millers before they moved away.

Then she saw it. The gravel road. Almost hidden by overgrown brush. The wooden sign was still there, half-rotted, the paint long since faded. But she knew what it said. She’d painted that sign herself when she was fifteen.

Her breath caught.

“Ivan, pull over,” she whispered.

Ivan slowed the car but didn’t turn yet. He looked at her, one eyebrow raised. “Where’s that go?”

“My grandfather’s house.” Her voice caught, just slightly. “Our house. Where I grew up.”

He was quiet for a moment. “You rarely mention your grandfather.”

“I don’t mention a lot of things.” She paused. “He fell ill three years ago. He’s in a care facility now.”

Ivan frowned slightly, his fingers tightening on the steering wheel. “Elara, that house has been empty for a long time. There won’t be any electricity, no heating, no food.”

“I know.”

“So we stay at the resort—”

“I don’t want a resort, Ivan.” She reached across the console and laid her hand over his. Her grip was firm, her eyes bright with something that was almost desperate. “The resort is just another cold place. Another room I don’t belong in. But this house—” She nodded toward the gravel road, toward the trees, toward something he couldn’t see. “This is the only place I’ve ever felt like myself. I just want to go home. For a little while. Please.”

He looked at her for a long moment. Then he nodded. Slow.

“Okay.”

He turned the steering wheel, and the heavy tires crunched onto the gravel path.

---

The SUV came to a halt at the edge of a vast, open meadow.

Sitting in the middle of the clearing was a modest two-story wooden cottage with a wraparound porch and a stone chimney. It looked peaceful. And lonely. The kind of lonely that wasn’t sad—just waiting.

They stepped out of the car. The air here smelled completely different from Manhattan—crisp pine, fallen leaves, damp earth. Elara breathed it in, let it settle in her lungs.

She walked up the creaking wooden steps of the porch, her heart pounding. The boards groaned under her weight. She reached under the railing, fingers finding the hidden magnetic box. The key was still there. Still rusted. Still working.

She turned it in the lock. The heavy front door swung open with a low groan.

As they stepped inside, a heavy silence rushed to greet them. The air was thick and stale, illuminated by slanting beams of twilight that revealed a thin, undisturbed layer of dust covering everything. The furniture was shrouded in white sheets, looking like a collection of quiet ghosts waiting for their masters to return.

Elara stood in the doorway, letting it wash over her. The dust motes danced in the fading light. The floorboards creaked under Ivan’s weight as he stepped in behind her—the sound was deeper, heavier, more deliberate. It echoed through the empty house like a question.

“It’s cold,” he noted softly. He was already scanning the structure—checking the windows, the corners, the ceiling for leaks. “I’ll see if the water line is still active and look for some firewood.”

“Thank you,” Elara whispered—but her feet were already moving.

She bypassed the living room, walked past the kitchen, past the bathroom where her grandfather used to sing off-key in the shower. Her feet carried her up the narrow, creaking staircase, drawn toward the small bedroom at the end of the hall.

When she pushed the door open, a sob caught in her throat.

This was her room.

After she graduated from college, she had barely been back. Yet despite her long absence, the room remained a flawless time capsule of her past. The wooden desk with the cracked ceramic mug filled with old pens. The stack of university textbooks, spines cracked from use. The wall covered in faded charcoal sketches—flowers, the meadow, a bird she’d tried to paint at twelve that looked more like a potato.

And the photograph on the bedside table.

She walked toward it, her legs feeling disconnected from her body. She picked it up. Her grandfather in his oversized flannel shirt, grinning at the camera, holding up the crooked birdhouse they’d built together. She was next to him, no older than ten, her face flushed with pride, her arms wrapped around his waist.

A single hot tear spilled over her lashes, leaving a clean track through the dust on her cheek. She reached out, her trembling fingers lightly tracing the edge of the photograph.

This—this fragile, dusty house—was the only place where she had ever truly been alive.