The veil of hearts

The Trapdoor Heart

Elmira, New York - 11:43 AM

The phone buzzed against the metal table with a sound that cut through the silence of the abandoned warehouse like a blade. Aleksi Nordstrom looked up from the documents he'd been reviewing, his pale eyes shifting to the device that had been silent for three weeks.

Joshua Bennet's phone. The young doctor's lifeline to the outside world, now serving as bait in a trap that had taken months to set properly.

The message notification glowed on the cracked screen, and Aleksi smiled—a thin, predatory expression that never reached his eyes. He'd been waiting for this moment, planning for it, orchestrating every detail to ensure that when Aina Virtanen finally made her move, it would be exactly where and how he wanted it.

"Sir?" Marcus, his lieutenant, looked up from where he'd been monitoring the perimeter cameras. "We have activity."

"I can see that," Aleksi murmured, picking up the phone with gloved hands. The message was simple, direct, and exactly what he'd expected from someone who'd spent years learning to communicate in crisis situations.

I know they took you. Also I know your phone must be with them. Send me the location I am here.

"She's here," he said quietly, and the satisfaction in his voice was unmistakable. "Our little bird has finally come home to roost."

Marcus moved closer, peering at the phone screen. "What do you want me to tell her?"

Aleksi turned the phone over in his hands, considering. Three weeks of careful planning had led to this moment. Three weeks of letting Joshua Bennet believe he was safe while they gathered intelligence, mapped his routines, identified his vulnerabilities. The young man had made it almost too easy—walking alone to his car after late shifts, taking the same route home every night, never varying his patterns despite the obvious stress he'd been under since his girlfriend's sudden disappearance.

"Tell her the truth," Aleksi said finally. "She wants a location? Give her one. The old Hartwell Medical Supply warehouse on Industrial Drive. She'll know where it is—it's less than two miles from the hospital where her boy toy works."

"Sir, are you sure you want to—"

"Make it clear that she comes alone," Aleksi continued, his voice taking on the cold precision he used when planning operations. "Tell her that Dr. Bennet's continued good health depends entirely on her cooperation. And Marcus?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Make sure she understands that this isn't a negotiation. This is a reckoning."

Marcus nodded and began typing, his thick fingers moving carefully across the phone's screen:

Hartwell Medical Supply warehouse, Industrial Drive. Come alone. Any sign of backup and your doctor friend loses pieces he'll miss. You have two hours.

Aleksi watched the message disappear into the digital ether, carrying his ultimatum across the city to wherever Aina was hiding. She would come, of course. 

The phone buzzed again—a response, faster than I'd expected:

Two hours. I'll be there.

No pleading. No attempts to negotiate. No desperate promises or threats. Just acceptance, delivered with the kind of stark professionalism that had made her so dangerous—and so irresistible to watch—in the first place.

"Remarkable," I murmured, staring at her words on the screen. "Even now, even when she's walking into certain death, she refuses to beg. That's my girl."