You didn’t think. You just ran.

The door was unlocked for a second, a mistake, a miracle and you bolted down the hall, barefoot, heart slamming in your throat. Someone shouted your name. Footsteps chased you. A gun went off. Pain bloomed hot across your side. But you didn’t stop. You burst into the night, into wind and snow and darkness. The world was white and silent and unfamiliar, street signs in a language you couldn’t read, voices you didn’t understand, cars hissing past while flakes clung to your lashes.

You pressed your hand to your side and felt the warmth spreading. You kept walking anyway.

Away from the villa. Away from all of them.

Away from him. ⸻

He found the blood first. A thin red trail in the snow, already softening under falling flakes. His men were shouting, scrambling, calling out coordinates, but he didn’t hear any of it. He just stared at the open gate. “She ran,” one of them said. He closed his eyes. Of course you did.

He had kidnapped you. Locked you away. His plan was to trade you. There was another mafioso whom wanted you really bad. So he had broken your life open like glass and still, the fear in your voice replayed in his head. Your feelings softened him: “I just want to go home…” you cried. He swallowed hard.

“How bad?” he asked quietly. “Grazed shot,” they said. “But she’s bleeding. And she doesn’t know the city.” His jaw tightened. You didn’t speak the language. You didn’t know the neighborhoods. The storm was getting worse. And you were nineteen. ⸻

You stumbled through narrow streets, every breath burning. Stores had already closed. Lights glowed behind fogged windows. You tried to ask someone for help, but the words wouldn’t come, nothing matched the language around you.

Your phone was dead. Your fingers were numb. Snow gathered in your hair as you sank onto the ground in an alleyway. you’ve hid between two big trash bins, whispering that you didn’t want to die here. Not like this. Not because of men with guns and wars you never asked to be part of. Somewhere behind you, a car slowed.

Not close. Not yet. Just… searching. ⸻

He walked ahead of his men now. No shouting. No threats. Just fear. Real fear. The kind he hadn’t felt since childhood, the kind that makes your chest tighten, because someone fragile and stubborn and undeserving of pain is out there in the dark. “Don’t scare her,” he warned. His voice was rough. “If she sees us, she’ll run again.”

He pictured you, shaking, breath fogging in the cold, clutching your side. His enemy might have loved you… …but he was the one who had hurt you.

And that knowledge cut deeper than any bullet. Snow kept falling. Your footprints grew lighter. He followed them anyway.