He Didn’t Kidnap Me. Not Exactly novel Chapter 293

He Didn’t Kidnap Me. Net Exactly

Chapter 293

Aria seemed to catch the exact same realization at the same moment, because the air between us went

quiet in a way that felt distinctly awkward now instead of just tense. I straightened my dress, cleared my

throat, tried very hard to look like a person who hadn’t just been caught caring.

“The burn will heal,” Aria said finally.

“Yeah,” I said. Riveting conversation.

I changed the topic immediately. “Thankfully he’s out.” I turned to the slumped man, pointed the obvious. But then it was worth pointing out because he’d been moving like an horror movie character.

“Yes.” Aria responded. “But we have a problem.”

“What?”

“We’re stuck in this room.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

Aria hesitated, and something about the weight behind that hesitation told me the answer before she

actually gave it to me.

“The doors need my hand on the Kinlock to open,” she said. “Either of them. And this-” she held up her ruined palms -has ruined the reading. It won’t recognize me anymore.”

I stepped closer, staring at her hand like that alone might reveal some loophole hiding underneath the

burns.

“So you literally can’t open it if you put your hand there?”

“No.”

“But some of your print’s still there, at the edges-”

“It doesn’t just read prints,” she said. “It reads blood. Composition. Structure. Specifically my father’s. Since

I share it, it reads mine too, under normal circumstances. Right now, with what that shock did to my hand,

it’ll fail.”

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Chapter 293

stared at her, the reality of it sinking in slow and heavy.

“But,” I said, grasping for something, anything, “there has to be–trailed off, roaming my gaze around

the room. “What about him? How did he plan on getting through here

“He has a card,” Aria said. “Everyone else does.” She nodded toward a corner of the room, where a small plastic card lay snapped cleanly in half. “But his broke. Probably during the fight.” She pointed out and I

saw the card.

Snapped.

Just then, Aria crossed to a chair in the far corner and sank into it staring down at her burned palms like

they belonged to someone else entirely.

The full shape of our situation finally landed on me now. We were locked in. Trapped, inside Roman Volkov’s base, with a dead bodyguard on the floor and no way out through either door. I didn’t need Aria to spell out what happened if someone found me like this. I could fill in that particular blank myself, thank

you very much.

I paced the room now, stepping carefully around the wreckage from the fight, scanning every surface for something useful. My eyes landed on the doorlock sensor itself, and despite the situation- despite everything, I leaned in close enough to actually appreciate how sophisticated the thing was. Genuinely

impressive engineering.

Then I reminded myself, firmly, that admiring criminal biotech was not currently on my list of productive

activities.

I grabbed a bent pin off the floor near the broken card and tried working it into the edge of the sensor’s housing, jostling it, praying for some kind of mechanical give.

Nothing.

I groaned, frustration climbing right alongside my still–racing heart, dread creeping in behind both of them. I glanced back at Aria, still slumped in that chair, still staring at her hands like she’d already accepted defeat.

I wasn’t ready to accept that. Not yet. Not after everything it had taken just to get inside this building.

I turned back to the sensor now. And, mostly because my brain had officially run out of better ideas, I

11:39 am PPP

Chapter 293

placed my own hand flat against it.

I knew it wouldn’t work. I did it anyway, because doing something, even something pointless, felt marginally better than standing there doing nothing at all.

The panel chirped, then… “Daisy, no!”

Aria was on her feet instantly, alarm flooding her face.

“If it reads the wrong signal and fails,” she said, already moving toward me, “it alerts a control room and they ll know someone’s trying to force their way in. They’ll find us.”

Dread shot straight up into my chest, and then I stared down at my hand still resting on the glass, waiting for the alarm, the lockdown, the inevitable disaster. My chest prepared to crack open.

Instead, the panel chimed.

Bright and clean, and the whole thing flushed green.

I pulled my hand back, still bracing for whatever catastrophe was surely seconds behind that sound. But

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