LOGINPOV: Felix
She is so stubborn...She never seemed to get tired of putting up a fight. All the time, she kicked and thrashed about until she got tired and finally gave up trying to break free. Her struggles remind me of the fire I saw in her eyes the day we met. It’s the same fire that drives my desire to have her. That night had been magical.
It was a snowy night, and I was attending a banquet to showcase the newest designs of jewelry from my company. As a Jewelry designer, Selina Nash attended a banquet at the invitation of her friend Simon Wilson, with the purpose of observing and learning from the jewelry designs of high society ladies, so to speak. For some weird reason Selina, who is supposed to be paying attention seems uninterested in the topics of conversation. As fate would have it, she chose to go outside to build a snowman for her amusement. I was in my private room when I spotted this vixen, playing around in the snow and giggling happily. I envied her, I would give anything to be so happy and carefree. I loved and hated her free spirit. From within the darkened room, I watched her through the window and took a special interest in her. Then I instructed my PA John, to investigate Selina's personal background. “I want to know everything there is to know about her.” I instructed him firmly while I gazed at her longingly. He took one look at her and turned to stare back at me in silence. He could tell that I was smitten by her, I guess it’s a feeling I cannot hide even if I wanted to. Everyone knows I don’t take no for an answer, I’m a go-getter. I always get what I want, and this will not be an exception. I heard the door shut, and I knew John had gone to carry out my instructions. I could not move away from that window, not when I was staring at the most beautiful woman that had ever walked this earth. I stayed glued to that window, watching her have fun all by herself. A warm smile spread across my face as I watched her act like a kid in the snow. She is so beautiful and she tends to give it her all when she sets her mind to a task. I noticed she took her time to build her snowman and it turned out beautifully. I imagined this same scenery but in a different location. This time I’ll be standing right by her side as we both build a snowman together. We’ll probably have some kids running around, gathering the snow, and making it more fun. That would be a perfect picture, one that I would cherish forever. I kept watching with a smile plastered on my face, and just as I began to create a mental picture of a perfect family, a guy walked out from the banquet hall and hugged her from behind, making her giggle excitedly. The smile on my face disappeared immediately and I folded my knuckles and scrunched up my face in anger, “Who dares to touch my woman?” I thought within me as she played with him in the snow. They seem to enjoy each other's company and that made me so fucking furious. I know that idiot, his name is Simon Wilson. His family held a prominent position in my company and they are well-known domestically. He has an arranged fiancée through his family. They are engaged to be married soon and everyone knows about it. Why would she be fooling around with someone’s fiancé, is she not aware of their engagement? I was fuming in rage as I saw them having fun together. My eyes did not leave their sides for even one second. I focused my gaze on them, glaring at Simon and wishing to punch his face and break the hands he had used to hold her. I want her all to myself, if only I could cut off her ties to everyone else and keep her all to myself. My searing gaze could be felt by Simon, I could tell from my position that Simon sensed that someone was watching him and Selina from the darkness. He looked towards the building, looking up to my office where I stood by the window unmoving. I did not flinch at his gaze, I needed him to see me looking his way, I needed to arouse fear within him. By now he should know that no one dares to cross my path. I knew the moment that he realized that the unlit room belonged to me. The fear in his eyes was evident, but he tried so hard to hide it from her. Even though he was aware of my identity, he opted not to reveal this to Selina and instead escorted her back to the banquet hall, hiding the fact that he was scared of my anger. But, she is smart… She is so smart and observant. He tried to hide it, but she caught him staring that way and she must have felt my gaze too. Her curiosity was piqued, she wanted to know what was going on and she kept asking him several questions he led her back to the banquet hall. Just before she entered the door leading to the banquet hall, she stopped for a few seconds and she looked up in my direction, spotting my figure in the dark. She had no idea what that simple act of hers did to my body. I felt a strong desire to hold her in my arms and kiss her until her lips bruised. It was at that very moment that I knew that I would do anything to have her by my side. I won’t take no for an answer and I certainly won’t let anyone stand in my way. I want her and I’m going to get her. She will be mine, I’ll make sure of that. I decided to take steps to ensure that she would stay by my side. The first step is to go down there and make sure no other man gets anywhere near her. To think that I never even wanted to be here. Now my excitement is unmatched and I’m beginning to fantasize about her already. When I arrived at the banquet, I made my way through the crowded hall, acknowledging the greetings of my subordinates and partners. I saw Simon and that is why I decided to head this way and make know that I am a rare of his hidden feelings for Selina. She may be naïve and carefree, but I can see the way he looks at her when she is not looking and that is very annoying. I stopped when I got to where he was standing and I gave him a look that said, “Don’t fucking dare me!” He looked nervous and he tried to walk away. But I blocked the path with my shoulder and forced him to stand before me and shiver like a chicken as I glared dangerously at him, “The next time you lay your hands on Selina would be your last. I’ll fucking cut them off!” I told fiercely, threatening him. He wanted to respond, but she walked over and stood between us, looking like an angel. “What's going on here?” she asked innocently, looking a bit puzzled. I was not listening to her or anyone else, I was lost in those eyes. There is a fire within her orbs, and I got sucked into it.POV: Felix "MARCO." I didn't raise my voice. I didn't need to. "Tell them to move. Now. All of them." I ordered. Marco was already on the radio. What followed came to me in fragments through the phone, shouting, a crash of something falling, Coleman's voice raised for the first time, the particular chaos of a contained space filling suddenly with too many people and too much intention. I sat in the back of a vehicle that was already moving faster than it had been and listened to sounds I couldn't see and couldn't control and felt something move through me that I had spent twenty years training myself not to feel.Helplessness... Raw, total, undignified helplessness."Lina." I spoke into the phone. "Talk to me." I said. I heard sounds, movement. Then her voice, breathless, "Your men are here." she said, almost in tears."I know, stay behind them.""There's... yes, okay, we're..." The sound of her moving, of Amaya close beside her, of the situation reorganizing itself arou
POV: FelixI got the call at seven forty-three in the evening. Not from my men. Not from Marco. Not from any of the network of people I had deployed across a widening radius over the past eighteen hours, all of whom had been reporting back with variations of the same useless answer... Nothing, no sign, no trace, the trail gone cold at an airstrip that had already been swept clean by the time my forensics team arrived. The call came from a number I didn't recognize. A thin, uncertain signal, the kind that came from basic devices in areas with minimal coverage. I almost didn't answer it, my thumb hovered over the screen for one second and then something... instinct, or the particular desperation of a man who has run out of rational options made me accept it. First came the silence on the other end. Then breathing, and then her voice."Felix."One word. Just my name. But I knew her voice the way I knew my own heartbeat by now, would have known it through static and distance and th
POV: Selina “Nothing behind us,” she said.“Keep watching.”“I am.”Three miles. Five. The road gave us nothing but itself and we took it gratefully, both hands on the wheel, eyes forward. I thought about Dara standing in the building we had left behind, managing her own face, performing whatever she needed to perform to give us the time we needed. I hoped she would be alright. I had no way of knowing whether she would be and hoping was all I had to offer her from seventeen miles of straight road.“Lina,” Amaya said.“I see it.” Lights behind us. Still distant, still possibly nothing, a vehicle going east for its own unrelated reasons in the early evening, but my hands tightened on the wheel and I pressed down incrementally on the accelerator.“How far?” I looked at the odometer. “Maybe nine miles.”“They’re gaining.”“I know.”I drove faster. The Land Cruiser pushed back against the speed briefly and then settled into it, the engine finding a register that felt sustainable. The cra
POV: SelinaThe hours between afternoon and six o’clock were the longest of my life. Amaya and I returned to our separate rooms after leaving Dara, because appearing together for too long would eventually register with someone, and the one advantage we had was that nobody in this building was watching us with any urgency yet.To Martin, we were settled. Grateful. Safe in the way that people are safe when they have nowhere else to go and believe, sincerely, that the person who brought them here is the safest option available. We needed him to keep believing that for approximately four more hours.I lay on my cot and stared at the ceiling and ran through everything systematically, the way I had taught myself to think through problems when I was younger and the problems were smaller... break it into parts, address each part separately, don’t look at the whole shape of it or the whole shape will overwhelm you. The whole shape of this particular situation was genuinely overwhelming. So
POV: Selina "I've been carrying it since the first week," she said, with the particular tone of someone who is both sheepish and entirely unapologetic. "My cousin's number is on it. I thought..." She paused. "I thought if things ever got bad enough that we needed an exit that nobody else knew about, I wanted an option.""Amaya.""I know. I should have told you.""You absolutely should have told me." I closed her fingers back around it. "But I'm extraordinarily glad you have it. Do not lose it. Do not use it yet."She nodded and put the earring back.We sat side by side on the cot in the small room with the high window and the muffled voices down the hall and I tried to map what I actually knew about the layout of this place... how many people, where they moved, which direction the access road ran, how far we were from anything."There's something else," Amaya said.I looked at her."Last night. On the plane." She hesitated in the way that meant she was deciding how to frame
POV: Selina"Where did they end up?" I asked her. The kettle began to boil. Dara looked at it for a moment, then back at me, and the calculation in her expression was almost identical to the one I had seen cross Martin's face on the plane.That same brief, visible arithmetic. How much truth, how much was useful. The difference was that Dara's arithmetic resolved differently. She reached over and turned the kettle off."You should ask Martin that question," she said quietly. "And you should watch his face very carefully when you do." She added, like an afterthought. She set both cups back in the cabinet and walked out of the kitchen without her tea, and I stood in the silence she left behind with the cold knowledge settling into me that I had made a terrible mistakeNot by leaving Felix, but by assuming that leaving Felix meant I was safe. I had run from one man's prison, and I felt I had run directly into another's.And this one had no gilded cage to show me. This one had offered me s
POV: Felix He knew what my word was worth in this city, everyone did. That was the advantage of reputation, it worked even when you were exhausted and soaked and sitting in a moving car on a dark highway feeling like the worst version of yourself. Now more than ever, I’m proud of the man I have b
POV: FelixThe symbol belonged to a safe house network that had operated briefly in this city about eight years ago, run by a man who had since retired to somewhere quiet. A man who, if I recalled correctly, had been friendly with Martin during a period when Martin was younger and angrier and buil
POV: FelixThe docks smelled like rust and rain and rotting rope, and I stood at the edge of the water long after my men had swept the warehouses and come back empty-handed.Empty.Always empty.I lit a cigarette I didn’t remember pulling from my pocket and watched the orange tip burn in the da
POV: Felix The city had never felt this suffocating before, not when I buried my wife, not when I watched enemies bleed out at my feet, and not even during the war with Martin, but tonight every streetlight, every passing car, and every second that ticked by without Selina felt like a knife twist







