Page 7

T he safehouse smells like gunpowder, cheap vodka, and male sweat. Three days since the shootout with Killion's team, and we're holed up in some Soviet-era concrete shitbox that makes my first Dollhouse cell look like the fucking Four Seasons.

The walls sweat dampness, pipes clank like they're having seizures, and the radiator hisses with the rhythmic persistence of a dying man's last breaths.

Sharing space with Mikhail, the Serbian brick shithouse with hands like Christmas hams and a vocabulary limited to grunts and the occasional "da” and Volkov is a mixed bag.

My reality is nothing short of a crazy, whirligig of confusing intel. Most of which doesn’t even make sense when I try to untangle the threads.

Why did Killion say that Volkov was working with Harlow when Volkov seems dead-set on putting a bullet in Harlow’s head?

And what the hell happened in Budapest between Killion, Volkov and this mystery woman, Vahyna?

Look, I get that the spy game is built on a foundation of lies but c’mon, give me a break, this shit is excessive. I can’t tell who’s lying, if I’m making the right choice sticking with Volkov, or if I’m ultimately putting my trust in the hands of my killer.

The thing is, I can’t put my finger on it, it’s been bugging me since the botched Harlow sting, but why is there something about Volkov that feels familiar?

It’s an itch in my brain I can’t scratch.

The answer sure as hell isn’t just lying around for the taking. Until I get answers that make more sense, I’m sticking with my current travel partners.

Where Volkov is all sleek predator, precise movements and calculating eyes, Mikhail is raw power—broad-shouldered, neck thick as my thigh, silent as a fucking execution chamber. He moves through rooms with the quiet deliberateness of someone who's broken more necks than he's bothered to count.

I catch myself staring at him while he cleans weapons at the kitchen table, those massive fingers surprisingly delicate with the gun parts. His fingernails are impeccable—not manicured, just meticulously clean. A killer who washes his hands before and after the job.

"You keep looking at him like that, he might think you want something," Volkov says, materializing behind me with that fucking ghost-walk of his. Three days and I still haven't heard him approach once.

"Maybe I do," I reply, not bothering to deny it. Subtlety died somewhere around the time I shot a man in the chest to escape Killion's extraction squad.

"Mikhail doesn't talk much," Volkov says, lighting up another cigarette. The man's lungs must look like fucking coal mines. "But he understands everything."

Something flickers in Mikhail's eyes—those flat, gray pools that register everything and reveal nothing. He doesn't look up from the disassembled Glock, but his movements slow fractionally. He's listening.

"How long have you worked together?" I ask, pouring three fingers of vodka into a chipped mug with a faded hammer and sickle logo.

"Eight years," Volkov replies, taking a seat at the rickety table covered with surveillance photos of Harlow and building schematics. "Since Odessa."

The way he says Odessa—like it's a scar rather than a city—tells me there's a story there, one written in blood and probably several missing persons reports.

"And before that?" I press, perching on the windowsill.

The glass is frosted with ice crystals, the world outside an indistinct blur of gray and white.

We could be anywhere in Eastern Europe—Poland, Ukraine, Belarus.

Volkov hasn't bothered to tell me, and I haven't bothered to ask.

Geography matters less than the distance between me and Killion's reach.

"Before that, he was Spetsnaz," Volkov says, exhaling smoke. "Before that, nothing worth mentioning."

Mikhail's hands pause over the weapon for a microsecond. Another tell, so slight I'd have missed it without Killion's brutal training in reading bodily subtleties.

"Bullshit," I say, sipping vodka that tastes like industrial solvent. "Everyone's got an origin story."

Mikhail finally looks up, eyes meeting mine with an intensity that makes my skin prickle. He says something in Russian—low, rough, the syllables like gravel churning in a cement mixer.

Volkov actually laughs, a sharp bark of sound that's over before it really begins. "He says you ask too many questions for someone who betrayed her handler yesterday."

"Didn't betray shit," I snap. "Can't betray someone who was using me for bait from day one."

"Is same meaning," Mikhail speaks, his accent thick as molasses, each word carefully formed like he's testing its weight. "Loyalty gone. Trust broken. Only matters who breaks first."

There's something disarming about his simplicity. No mindfucks, no psychological warfare. Just brutal pragmatism wrapped in muscle and scar tissue. He wasn’t ugly, but he wasn’t good-looking either, somewhere in between.

"And who broke first with you two?" I ask, gesturing between them. "You seem awful cozy for a couple of stone-cold killers."

Volkov's eyes narrow, that calculating gaze assessing how much to reveal. "War makes strange bedfellows," he finally says. "And enemies of the same monster become...convenient allies."

"Killion," I say, the name hanging between us like an unexploded bomb.

"Killion," Volkov confirms, crushing his cigarette in a makeshift ashtray that started life as a Soviet-era military medal. "And Harlow. And all they represent."

"Which is what, exactly?" I drain my vodka, welcoming the burn. "Because three weeks ago, I was just a housewife looking for cheap thrills, and now I'm in the fucking Kremlin's basement plotting revenge with Russian Murder Incorporated."

Mikhail actually smiles at that—just a brief tug at the corner of his mouth, but it transforms his face from stone monument to something almost human. He says something else in Russian, longer this time.

"He says you are funny for American," Volkov translates. "Most are too...how you say...self-righteous? Even when killing."

"Nothing righteous about me," I laugh, the sound sharp and bitter. "Just trying to figure out which devil gets my soul this week."

I pour another drink, liquid courage for questions I shouldn't ask. "Vahnya—your wife, what happened?” I ask Volkov, watching his face freeze into that perfect mask of nothingness.

The temperature in the room drops ten degrees. Mikhail's hands stop moving entirely, his eyes flicking to Volkov with something I can't quite read—warning, maybe, or concern.

Volkov says after a silence thick enough to choke on. The words fall like stones into still water. "Killion's recruitment. His asset. His responsibility."

The revelation hits like a gut punch. Volkov’s wife had been a doll? The pieces start clicking together—his hatred, the personal vendetta, the shared history dripping with blood and betrayal.

"What happened to her?" I ask, knowing I'm pushing too far but unable to stop. It's my most self-destructive trait—charging headlong into emotional minefields just to see what explodes.

"Same thing that happens to all assets who outlive usefulness," Volkov says, voice flat and empty as a corpse's eyes. "They disappear."

Mikhail stands abruptly, moving to a cabinet where he retrieves a bottle of something darker, stronger than the paint-thinner vodka I've been drinking. He pours three glasses without asking, sliding one to Volkov with a gentleness incongruous with his massive frame.

"To the dead," Mikhail says, raising his glass.

"And to revenge," Volkov adds, knocking back the brown liquid in one practiced motion.

Except, they didn’t know if Vahyna was dead, right? Probably not smart to mention that part.

I drink with them, the liquor burning a path to my stomach where it settles like napalm. The taste lingers—smoke and earth and something metallic that reminds me of blood.

"Enough ghost stories," Volkov says, shaking off memories like a dog shedding water. "We have work. Harlow will be in Vienna tomorrow before heading to Black Sea location. One chance to intercept."

He spreads photographs across the table—surveillance shots of Harlow entering buildings, meeting contacts, living the high life of a traitor with government connections.

In each one, he looks exactly like what he is—a man who believes himself untouchable, above consequences, immune to the chaos he creates.

"What’s the plan?" I ask, forcing my mind back to the mission. "Snatch and grab? Public execution? Make it look like an accident?"

"Information first, then death," Volkov says, clinical as a surgeon discussing tumor removal. "Needs to be private. Controlled. We need his network, his contacts."

"His passwords," I add. "Access to whatever the ‘Vahyna Initiative’ is.”

"Da," Mikhail nods, loading a fresh magazine into the reassembled Glock with a satisfying click. "Then pain. Then death."

The casual brutality should shock me. Three months ago, it would have. Now it just feels like professional courtesy—the respect of admitting what we all are.

"I'll need gear," I say, all business now. "Clothes that aren't soaked in someone else's blood. Weapons that can't be traced back to a firefight with American operatives."

"Is provided," Mikhail says, jerking his head toward a duffel bag in the corner. "Women's clothes, your size. Weapons clean. Papers for border."

I rummage through the bag, finding black tactical pants, tops, even underwear in my size. Either they've been watching me longer than I thought, or they're very good at estimating measurements.

In the three days since holing up in this shitbox, Volkov hadn’t once made a move toward me. My bruises from the last time we fucked were starting to fade. I craved more.

And I was tired of waiting around for a little action.

“Let’s fuck.”

They exchange a glance I can't quite interpret. Mikhail says something in Russian, low and questioning. Volkov replies with a shrug that somehow communicates volumes.