Chapter 3
Eva
The dream always started the same way.
I was eight again, curled on the bottom bunk in the Hendersons' foster home, the thin mattress offering no protection from the springs that dug into my hip.
Above me, Keisha snored softly. Across the room, the twins—Madison and Morgan—slept in their matching pink pajamas that Mrs. Henderson bought them because real daughters deserved nice things.
But there was another sound now. Heavier. Wet.
Mr. Henderson filled the doorway like he always did in this dream, his bulk blocking the hallway light.
Just standing there. Watching. The football jersey he wore to bed stretched across his gut, and I could smell him even from across the room—beer and sweat and something sour that made my stomach clench.
"Just checking on my girls," he'd whisper, but his eyes would stay on me. The foster kid. The one nobody would believe.
In the dream, I couldn't move. Couldn't scream. Could only lie there with my eyes squeezed shut, praying he'd go away, knowing he wouldn't. His breathing got louder, closer. The floorboard by my bed creaked under his weight. A hand reached out—
I jerked awake gasping, my body already moving before my brain caught up. Fight or flight, and I'd learned long ago that flight just meant they caught you tired.
But I wasn't staring at water-stained ceiling tiles. Wasn't under a bridge or in a shelter or any of the other places I'd learned to sleep with one eye open. I was in the storage unit.
And I was staring into the barrel of a gun.
The man holding it made Mr. Henderson look small.
Six-four at least, shoulders wide enough to block the fluorescent light bleeding in from the corridor.
Everything about him was black—jacket, henley, tactical pants, even his mood.
Like someone had taken all the darkness in Brooklyn and shaped it into human form.
His face belonged on a medieval battlefield.
Sharp Slavic cheekbones, jaw that could cut glass, dark hair cropped military-short.
But his eyes—Jesus, his eyes were dead. Not cold, not angry, just empty like whatever makes people human got scooped out and replaced with machinery.
I'd seen a lot of dangerous men in my twenty-two years, but this one made my survival instincts scream in frequencies only dogs could hear.
The gauze wrapping his knuckles was spotted with blood. Fresh blood. Not his—I knew that instinctively. This was a man who made other people bleed.
The storage unit's concrete walls pressed in, ten by twenty feet of nowhere to run. The puppy whimpered from his newspaper nest in the corner, probably sensing death the way animals do.
One of Chenkov's men. Had to be. They'd found me faster than I'd thought possible, tracked me to this random storage unit in industrial Brooklyn like bloodhounds.
The three hundred dollars I'd grabbed seemed like such a stupid reason to die now.
But it wasn't really about the money, was it? It had to be the USB.
The man's head tilted slightly, studying me with the detached interest of a scientist examining a specimen. The gun never wavered. His finger rested alongside the trigger guard—professional, controlled, someone who knew exactly how quickly he could move it to firing position.
"What are you doing in my—"
His voice was deep, accented with Russian thick enough to spread on bread. But I didn't let him finish. Adrenaline detonated in my bloodstream like a bomb, that same chemical cocktail that had kept me alive through twelve foster homes and four years on the streets.
I launched myself at him with a scream that came from somewhere primal, somewhere that learned to fight before it learned to speak. Fuck the gun. Fuck the size difference. Fuck everything except the blind need to survive.
My nails found his forearm first, raking four parallel lines through expensive henley fabric and into flesh beneath. Blood welled immediately—his blood this time, hot against my fingers. I went for his eyes next, teeth bared, ready to bite and tear and destroy anything I could reach.
He moved with economic efficiency, no wasted motion, no anger.
One massive hand caught both my wrists mid-swing, his grip iron but not cruel.
He spun me like I weighed nothing, like I was made of air and desperate rage.
Before I could process the movement, my back slammed against his chest, my arms crossed over my own body, wrists still trapped in his single-handed grip.
A straitjacket made of my own limbs.
I thrashed like something wild, feet kicking at his shins, head snapping back trying to break his nose.
But he'd positioned himself perfectly—every angle of leverage neutralized, every possible strike telegraphed and countered before I could complete it.
His other arm came around my waist, locking me in place without restricting my breathing.
"Stop," he said against my ear, voice calm as a frozen lake. "You'll hurt yourself."
That made me fight harder. I tried to drop my weight, to twist, to find any gap in his hold. Nothing worked. He adjusted his grip minutely, and suddenly I couldn't move at all. Not paralyzed—I could feel everything, every point where his body pressed against mine—but completely immobilized.
His chest was solid as a brick wall behind me, and he smelled like expensive cologne mixed with gun oil and something darker—blood, maybe, or just violence itself made into perfume. Each breath he took expanded his ribcage against my back, steady and controlled while mine came in ragged gasps.
"Finished?" he asked, and there was something in his tone that might have been amusement if machines could be amused.
I hawked and spat, putting all my remaining defiance into it. The glob landed on his shoe—Italian leather, probably cost more than I'd ever owned at one time.
He looked down at the spit on his shoe, then back at me. Still no anger, just that empty assessment that was somehow worse than rage would have been. Rage was human. This was something else.
"Interesting," he said, like I was a math problem he hadn't expected to encounter.
"You’re just another fucking mob psycho," I snarled, still testing his grip even though every attempt just taught me new ways I couldn't escape.
"What is it with you people and the intimidation theatrics?
The gun, the lurking in shadows, the whole stone-cold killer aesthetic—compensating for something? "
My mouth had always been my worst enemy and best weapon. When I couldn't fight with fists, I fought with words, and right now words were all I had. Even if they got me killed, at least I'd die running my mouth instead of begging.
"You think you're so fucking scary?" I continued, the words pouring out like water from a broken dam. "Big man with a gun, catching teenage girls in storage units. Real tough guy. Bet your mother's real proud of what her little boy became."
His chest rumbled against my back—not quite a laugh, more like the sound a mountain might make if it found something amusing. That pissed me off more than silence would have.
I tried to headbutt backward again, aiming for his nose, but he simply tilted his head and my skull hit nothing but air. The motion made me stumble, but his grip kept me upright, controlled, like a puppet master with particularly uncooperative strings.
"Let me go, you piece of Mafia shit!" I thrashed harder, putting every ounce of strength into breaking free.
My wrists burned where he held them, not from his grip but from my own struggling against it.
"Chenkov's going to get his money back anyway when you kill me, so what's the point of this whole production? "
That got a reaction. His body went still behind me—not tense, just perfectly motionless like someone had hit pause on him.
"Mafia?" His voice came out different this time, lower, with an edge that hadn't been there before. "You think I work for those suka?"
The Russian profanity rolled off his tongue like honey mixed with broken glass. I knew that word—had heard it spit at me by enough Russian vendors when I'd tried to lift food from their stores. It meant bitch, but worse somehow when said in Russian. Everything sounded worse in Russian.
"Italian Mafia, Russian Bratva, Albanian psychopaths—you're all the same," I spat, even though my survival instincts were screaming at me to shut up. "Blood and money and bodies in the river. So just get it over with already."
"I don't work for Chenkov," he said, and there was something in his tone that suggested being associated with Chenkov offended him more than being called a piece of shit. "Or the Italians. Or the Albanians, for that matter."
"Right, you just happen to be hanging out in a storage unit at 2 AM with a gun and bloody knuckles for fun."
"This is my storage unit," he said, like that explained everything. "You're the one who broke in. Am I not allowed to apprehend the intruder?"
Oh. Well, fuck.
Before I could process that particular complication, movement in the corner caught my eye.
The puppy had woken up, probably disturbed by all my thrashing and screaming.
He wobbled out from his newspaper nest on legs that barely worked right, his swollen eye weeping pus, his ribs showing through patchy fur.
My whole body went rigid. Not from fear for myself—that ship had sailed—but for him.
I'd seen what men like this did to inconveniences.
Had watched a dealer kick a stray cat to death just because it was in his way.
Had seen worse things done to animals whose only crime was existing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The puppy sniffed the air, wobbled closer on those unsteady legs. His tail—what was left of it after someone had done a hack job trying to crop it—wiggled slightly. He was heading straight for us. Straight for those expensive Italian leather shoes with my spit still glistening on one.