Chapter 4
Kirill
I drive through empty streets, choosing the ones without traffic cameras. Turning north, I navigate away from the city center. Away from the chaos we just left behind and territories controlled by families who might recognize my face or car.
I ignore the way my fingers itch from the blood drying on my knuckles.
Focus on the road.
For now, movement means safety. Keep moving, keep thinking, keep ahead of whoever sold us out. Find somewhere to question Jordan properly without gunfire or police sirens interrupting.
And figure out why looking at her gives me the strangest sense that I’ve missed a crucial piece, hidden in plain sight.
She’s frozen in the passenger seat, as still as prey while trying to avoid a hunter’s notice.
Even scared stiff, she never stops observing. Those bright green eyes examine everything, soaking in the road, the car, me.
Her heavy gaze weighs on me.
The stare itches more than the blood.
Ignore her.
I check the rearview and side mirrors. No headlights follow. Just darkness and the occasional sweep of streetlamps across her pale face. Five men dead or unconscious in the streets behind us. The message delivered.
Now I need answers.
We wind deeper into the industrial district, past abandoned factories with broken windows that gape like rotting teeth. Perfect hunting ground. No witnesses. No disturbances.
A shadowy concrete underpass where a bridge spans an access road leading to nowhere catches my eye.
I cut the wheel sharply, the tires crunching over gravel as I guide us into the blackness beneath the bridge. Water drips nearby, a steady metronome counting seconds in the gloom. I kill the engine but leave the key in the ignition.
Always be ready to move. That’s the first rule of survival.
A weighty silence settles between us.
Jordan pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around herself. I expect trembling. Crying, maybe.
Most people break after what she just saw. That’s the point of demonstration. Once you show what happens to those who resist, cooperation becomes the only sensible option.
But she’s crying.
Her breathing has slowed from the panicked gasps of earlier. Her eyes are closed, her lips moving in what might be a prayer. Or a mantra. One of those New Age things she sells to the desperate and gullible online.
I let the quiet do the work.
Second rule of survival. Patience. People fill silence with confession.
Her eyes snap open and focus on me with unnerving directness. Fear still pulls at the edges of her mouth. Her lower lip trembles.
Good.
“That was…” She gulps and tries again. “That was a high-consequence energetic exchange.”
What?
Of all the things I might have anticipated—pleading, snarled threats, some frantic attempt at bargaining—I never guessed that would come out of her.
I give her a severe look. “That’s what happens when people get in my way. Or don’t give me what I need.”
She ignores my threat. And everything else. “A very visceral…” Jordan shapes each word, testing their merit as she pieces them together, “manifestation of…of blocked masculine energy.”
I keep my expression blank out of habit, but I nearly snort. The fuck does that even mean?
She’s spinning her fantasy in real time, weaving a gossamer lie to stretch over the raw, jagged event. Draping a silk scarf over a corpse and pretending it’s a mannequin.
She’s consistent, I’ll give her that.
“It was an opportunity for me to be present.” Her hands, which had been clutching everything she could reach moments ago, flutter now, tracing little arcs in the air between us. “In a high-stakes moment. To witness…unhealed trauma.”
People come apart in all sorts of different ways.
Hardened criminals howl like babies. Killers crumble and beg, their bodies quaking with ancestral, ancient fear. I’ve seen tough guys at the very edge of dying go pale and lose control of their bowels.
But I’ve never encountered this.
Trauma shrink-wrapped in a neat package of words. Reality redressed in language so far removed from what just happened, it barely belongs to this world, this hour, or this space.
She shifts to face me, a smooth veneer settling over the panic in her eyes like a hard frost forming over dark water. She’s piecing her persona back together, shard by shard, crafting the mask as I watch.
“I suggest you work on your aura. It’s attracting some seriously challenging karmic encounters.” Her voice is breathy. Ethereal. I can’t tell if it’s due to residual fear or some mystical garbage she’s trying to peddle.
I raise a brow. “That was karma, huh? Felt like something else.” A light workout, maybe. And a couple of speed bumps.
“That’s because you’re out of touch.” She acts like she’s dispensing wisdom instead of sitting in a car with a man who just killed four people without breaking a sweat.
“Oh, and you’re ‘in touch’?” With what is the real question. I’m guessing shrooms.
She turns away, staring out the window into absolute darkness, her own reflection a doppelganger trapped in glass and searching for a way out.
I expected screaming. Tears. Swinging fists. Or even a complete shutdown. Her eyes glazed as her mind retreated somewhere I couldn’t follow.
Those reactions I know how to use. I’ve always known how to leverage fear and shock to get what I need.
But I never anticipated a live-action reinvention of a gunfight.
And a fucking psychic evaluation.
She’s not recovering. She’s wallpapering over her terror, layer after glossy layer, pasting words like “energetic exchange” and “karmic encounters” over the carnage, screams, and bloody flesh. As if the right words could render the bullets harmless and rebranding could overwrite recent events.
I don’t understand. She’s not broken or shattered. Just…strange. Defective, maybe. Whatever worry is writhing inside her, she’s running it through a filter I can’t even begin to touch.
For the first time in longer than I can remember, I am genuinely, completely baffled by another human being.
She’s kind of impressive.
Like watching someone use tarot cards to cover a hole in the hull of a sinking ship.
Absurd and doomed, but you have to admire the effort.
More importantly, her reaction leaves me without a clear path forward. Fear is a sharp, predictable tool. This…
I have no idea how to use this.
“Where are we going?” Her tone shifts back to a normal volume, as if we’re on a road trip instead of fleeing a crime scene.
I stare at her for a long while. “Somewhere safe.”
“Safe for who?”
“Me.” No sense in sugarcoating things. She’s doing enough of that. “Which means for you too. For now.”
She nods like this makes perfect sense. What a weirdo.
“The universe guides us to where we need to be.” She relaxes against her seat and closes her eyes.
I suppress the urge to tell her the universe has no say. We’re here because Roman Kozlov wants answers about the key tagged with her father’s name that alludes to an evidence cache. Her life hangs by a thin, practically invisible thread.
Instead, I start the car. The engine rumbles to life, vibrating through the floor.