Chapter 3 #3
"Good girl." The praise shouldn't have made my stomach flutter, but it did. Something about the way he said it, like I'd done something genuinely worth acknowledging. Like being quiet was an achievement instead of just survival.
He closed the false wall, and darkness swallowed me whole.
Not complete darkness—there was a crack where the panels didn't quite meet, maybe a quarter-inch of light that let me see into the storage unit.
I pressed my eye to it, needing to see what would happen next, needing to know if I'd just traded one death for another.
Through the crack, I watched him move to the center of the unit.
He didn't hide. Didn't position himself strategically behind boxes or furniture.
Instead, he stood in plain sight, pulling out his phone like he was checking messages.
Casual. Bored. Like armed Russians searching storage units at 2 AM was beneath his notice.
The puppy stirred in my arms, and I pressed him closer to my chest, willing him to stay quiet. He nuzzled into my neck, his breathing raspy but thankfully silent. I could feel his tiny heartbeat against my palm, rabbit-quick with fear or fever or both.
The storage unit door rolled up with a metallic shriek that made me flinch. Three men entered.
"Dmitry Volkov," the lead man said, and there was respect mixed with surprise and wariness in his voice. Like finding a tiger in your kitchen—you acknowledged its majesty even while calculating how fast you could reach the door. "This is Morozov territory."
"Is it?" Volkov sounded genuinely curious, like this was news to him. He pocketed his phone with deliberate slowness, every movement broadcasting how little he considered them a threat. "I must have missed the property deed. This unit's been in my name for three years."
The second man moved to flank him, trying to create a triangle of threat.
Volkov didn't react, didn't even shift his weight.
Through the crack, I could see his face in profile—completely calm, almost bored.
The same expression he'd worn while examining the puppy, like none of this mattered enough to raise his pulse.
"We're looking for someone," the lead Morozov said. "A girl with strange eyes who stole from us."
"Strange eyes," Volkov repeated, like he was tasting the words. "You'll have to be more specific."
"You know what we mean." The flanking man's hand drifted toward his waistband, where the outline of a gun was visible. "Distinctive. Memorable. The kind of eyes you don't forget."
"Sounds like you're describing my ex-girlfriend. But she's in Miami now, married to a dentist. Tragic loss, really. She did this thing with her tongue—"
"This is serious, Volkov." The leader cut him off, anger bleeding into his voice. "She stole something important from Viktor Chenkov. He wants it back."
"And you thought she'd be in my storage unit?" Volkov's tone suggested this was the most ridiculous thing he'd heard all week. "Do I look like I'm running a shelter for wayward thieves?"
"We're checking everywhere," the second man said, moving closer to the false wall. My heart hammered so hard I was sure they could hear it through the panels. "You don't mind, do you?"
Volkov smiled, and even from my limited angle, I could see it was the smile of something that had too many teeth and not enough humanity.
"I do mind, actually," he said conversationally. "This is my private property. You have no warrant, no probable cause, and no invitation. In the legitimate business world, we call this trespassing."
"Legitimate," the leader scoffed. "The Volkovs playing at being real businessmen. Your brother might believe that shit, but we know what you really are."
"Oh?" Volkov's voice dropped an octave, and suddenly the temperature in the storage unit seemed to plummet. "And what am I, exactly?"
The third man, younger than the others, finally spoke up. "You're a killer. Just like us. So stop pretending you give a fuck about property rights and let us search."
The silence that followed was the kind that preceded terrible things. Through the crack, I watched Volkov's head tilt slightly, like a predator hearing prey step on a twig.
"You're right," he said softly. "I am a killer. But unlike you, I'm very particular about where I do my killing. And this storage unit? This is my personal space. My sanctuary. The place I come to be alone with my thoughts and my things. And you three just violated that sanctuary."
The lead man's hand went to his gun. "There are three of us and one of you."
"Yes," Volkov agreed. "That hardly seems fair. You want to call in backup to even the odds? Or would you prefer to leave now, while leaving is still an option?"
Through the crack, I could see the Morozovs exchanging glances.
"We're not leaving without searching," the leader said finally. "If the girl's not here, we go. No problems. But we have to look."
"No," Volkov said simply.
"No?"
"No. You don't have to do anything except leave my property. Now."
The tension ratcheted up another notch, everyone's hands hovering near weapons, everyone calculating odds and angles and acceptable losses. The puppy squirmed in my arms, and I held my breath, terrified he was about to bark or whimper and give us away.
The violence was so fast I almost missed it.
Volkov's elbow crushed the flanking man's throat before he could draw his weapon.
The sound was wet and wrong, cartilage compressing into itself like bubble wrap made of meat.
The man dropped, hands clawing at his ruined throat, eyes bulging as he tried to suck air through a windpipe that no longer worked.
The leader reached for his gun. Volkov's hand was already moving, something silver flashing from his boot.
A ceramic knife, I realized, as it opened the man's jugular in a spray that painted the concrete floor red.
The blood arced out in pulses, each heartbeat pumping more onto the floor in a pattern that looked almost artistic if you didn't think about what it meant.
The third man froze in terror. That half-second of hesitation was all Volkov needed. He caught him in a chokehold, his feet actually leaving the ground as Volkov lifted him with one arm. Not killing, not yet. Controlling.
"Why is the girl important?" Volkov's voice was conversational, like he was asking about the weather while slowly cutting off the kid's oxygen. The contrast made my skin crawl.
The man’s legs kicked uselessly, hands clawing at the arm around his throat. His face went from red to purple to a shade that didn't have a name.
"She's . . . she's just . . ." He was gasping, words coming out in desperate spurts between attempts to breathe. "A dirty thief . . . that's all . . ."
"That's all?" Volkov loosened his grip just enough to let the kid suck in one breath. "Chenkov sends three soldiers to hunt down a simple thief? Try again."
"They just said . . . strange eyes . . . took something . . . check everywhere . . ."
"What did she take?"
"Money . . . maybe . . . or . . ." His eyes were rolling back, his body starting to convulse.
I watched as he squeezed harder, and the man in his arms passed out. He hadn’t killed him—maybe because he had co-operated? Maybe because he was so young he barely looked out of his teens.
Three bodies in less than thirty seconds.
Volkov stood in the middle of the carnage like it was his living room. No heavy breathing, no shaking hands, no adrenaline crash. He looked at the bodies with the same detached interest he'd shown the puppy, cataloging damage and calculating next steps.
Then he turned toward the false wall. Toward me.
The panel swung open, and his hand reached in, not rough but not gentle either. Just efficient as he pulled me out of the compartment. My legs had gone numb from crouching, and I stumbled, would have fallen if he hadn't caught my arm.
The puppy whimpered in my arms, probably smelling the blood, the death, the wrongness of it all. I held him tighter, using his warm little body as an anchor to keep from screaming or running or doing something equally stupid.
"What did you steal from them?" Volkov asked, and his voice had that same conversational tone he'd used while choking the kid out.
My hand shook as I reached into my pocket, pulling out the crumpled bills. Three hundred dollars in twenties and fifties, wrinkled and soft from me clutching them too tight. I held them out like an offering, like three hundred dollars was worth three lives and all this blood.
"This," I said. "Just this. I was hungry, and I saw it on the dresser, and I took it. That's all."
He looked at the money, then at me, then back at the money. His expression didn't change, but something shifted in those dead eyes. Not warmth, exactly, but a kind of recognition.
"Three hundred dollars," he said slowly. "Chenkov sent soldiers across Brooklyn for three hundred dollars."
"Rich people are weird about money." I tried for casual, but my voice cracked. "Maybe it was the principle of the thing."
"No." He stepped closer, and I could smell him again—cologne and gun oil and now fresh blood. "That's not the full story, is it?"
I clutched the puppy tighter, backing up until I hit the wall. "That's all I found."
"I don’t believe you.” He said. But there was no malice in his voice. “You don’t trust me. I understand.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
He shook his head. "I'm not going to kill you. I’m going to win your trust."
I blinked, confused. "What?"
"You're coming with me. Both of you."
"No." The refusal was instant, instinctive. "No, I'm not going anywhere with you. I don't even know who you are."
"Dmitry Volkov." He said it like it should mean something. "Enforcer and second in command in the Volkov Bratva. You are coming with me. And you don't have a choice."
"There's always a choice." I sidled toward the open door, toward the blood-soaked floor and the cooling bodies and freedom. "Thanks for hiding me, but I'm good on my own."
I made it two steps before his hand caught my arm. Not painful, just immovable.
"You're not good on your own," he said patiently. "You're exhausted, malnourished, and carrying a sick puppy. Chenkov's people will find you within hours. You'll die badly, and the puppy will die with you."
"Maybe I'd rather die free than live in someone else's cage."
Something flickered across his face—surprise, maybe, or respect. It was gone too fast to identify.
"Interesting philosophy," he said. "But academic at this point."
I tried to run. Really tried, putting everything I had into twisting away, into breaking his grip, into reaching that door and the darkness beyond. He let me struggle for about three seconds, then simply picked me up and threw me over his shoulder like a sack of flour.
"Put me down!" I beat at his back with my free hand, the other still clutching the puppy. "This is kidnapping! This is—"
"This is keeping you alive," he said, walking toward the door like I weighed nothing. "You can thank me later."
"I'll never trust you, you psychotic—"
"Maybe not," he agreed, stepping over the lead man's body without even looking down. "But you'll be alive to hate me, which is better than the alternative."
The last thing I saw before he carried me out into the night was the storage unit—my failed sanctuary, now a crime scene painted in blood and bad decisions. The puppy whimpered against my chest, and I held him tighter, wondering if I'd just traded one predator for another.
"I wasn't asking, little one," Volkov said, and there was something in his voice that sounded almost like amusement. "I rarely do.