He Didn’t Kidnap Me. Not Exactly novel Chapter 322

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ned to find her looking at Aria, who slowly lifted her head at the sound, eyes red and swollen, sniffing

“Come to me, dear.”

Confusion flooded through me so fast i couldn’t hold it in. “But Mom-

‘She’s confused, Daisy, my mother said, cutting me off gently.

I stared, still tense, still completely lost, as Aria rose on shaking legs and started toward her.

“She might be tagged the enemy,” my mother continued, “but let me speak to her. She saved us in that restraining room. That was real. I could tell.”

Aria reached her, hesitant, tears still falling, studying my mother’s face like she expected the warmth there to vanish at any second.

It didn’t.

My mother pulled her in, one arm settling over her shoulder.

“What’s your name, dear?”

Aria. Her ice cracked. “My name is Aria, ma.”

“Call me mother.”

She said it so gently, so simply, that it took my brain several full seconds to catch up to what I’d just heard.

I had absolutely no idea what to make of any of it.

We moved as a group now

search of a way out.

me and my mother supporting DeLuca between us, Aria walking close at our side, all of us pushing through the hallways in

I still didn’t know what to make of Aria bombing with us but then I was distracted from that as we moved.

My mother had already shot two people since we left that room. Casually. Efficiently. Like flicking off a light switch. Aria carried a gun too, and so did DeLuca, despite barely being able to keep his footing, but it was my mother doing the actual work, dropping threats without so much as a change in her

breathing.

I was supposed to be losing my mind over that.

I filed it away instead, next to everything else tonight had handed me that I didn’t have room to process yet. There’d be time for a full meltdown about my mother a secret assassin skill set later. Right now, survival came first.

Volkow was dead That fact hadn’t slowed down the rest of his organization even slightly–gunfire still cracked somewhere in the distance, proof the fight raged on even without him at the center of it, pust quieter now, more scattered.

Which was, honestly, the maller problem

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15:03 Fri, Sep 4 )

Chapter 322

The bigger one sat heavy in my chest the entire time we moved: none of Volkov’s men scattered around the base knew yet that he was dead. The seco they found out, whatever discipline still held them together was going to shatter into something far worse- grief curdling into rage, a whole organization

ddenly hunting for someone to make pay for it. We needed to be gone, completely gone, before that particular storm broke loose.

We kept moving, cautious, hugging the edges of hallways that told their own quiet story of the battle that had swept through them–scorth marks along the walls, spent shell casings scattered across the floor, a body slumped near a doorway that none of us stopped to examine too closely.

My mother shot a man crawling weakly along the ground as we passed, one more, then kept walking like it hadn’t happened at all.

We reached an opening that let out into the evening air, and for one brief, foolish seebnd I let myself hope we’d made it. Then the sound of gunfire drited toward us again, distant but real, and the hope shriveled right back down to caution.

We couldn’t risk running straight into the bulk of Volkov’s remaining men; the corrupted officers, the loyal soldiers, all of it still scattered somewhere out

there.

So we moved slower. Scanned everything. Waited.

The gunfire thinned out gradually, spacing wider apart, less frantic. A lull, maybe. A window.

“We have a window, DeLuca said, voice tight with effort. “That corner. The northern gates. We go now.”

We turned, following his lead, my mother and I still bracing him upright, Aria close behind, and I let myself focus entirely on the goal in front of us. Getting

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