3. Sofiya #2
Prague is close, busy, and full of enough freight, money, and foreign traffic for me to disappear without dropping off the map.
I follow his instructions.
At Sheremetyevo, I keep the scarf Zhenya tied at my throat, dark glasses on, and my hair pulled back into a plain knot.
I carry no luggage beyond what’s necessary.
Unfortunately, the gun stays behind since it would never pass clearance.
On the plane, I take the window seat, refuse the drink, and sleep in scraps. Every time someone brushes past my row, my body tenses before my mind catches up.
By the time we land, my nerves feel scraped thin, but I’m still moving.
My papers get me through Václav Havel Airport in Prague without trouble.
The officer studies the passport, looks at my face, then stamps me through with bored efficiency.
The hotel booking attached to the name holds. So does the card I use at the desk. No raised brow or second glance. The receptionist at the desk slides the key card and gives me a practiced smile.
I cross the lobby, take the lift, and don’t breathe properly until the room door shuts behind me.
The hotel is expensive.
Thick carpet in a safe neutral color. Soft lighting.
A wide bed.
A bedside table with an intercom, a notepad, and a sharpened pencil set beside it like people still write by hand in places like this.
The curtains are heavy, the minibar is full, and the windows look down on a curated street where black cars idle outside restaurants and women with bare shoulders slip past velvet ropes.
Prague always had that reputation in our world. Pretty enough to flatter people, busy enough to hide them, rich enough that money from the wrong hands could still pass for taste.
For now, it’s the right place for me.
I shower until the worst of the day starts to loosen its grip on me. After stepping out, I dry myself with a towel and sit at the edge of the bed to check my phone.
Yuri’s contact texted while I was in the shower—a club, an hour, and a note.
He’ll help if the money is clean. I stare at the words and almost laugh. Nothing about my money is clean. It’s just mine.
From room service, I order a plate of chlebí?ky, tea, and a bottle of water.
A waiter brings it up shortly.
I thank him with a tip and wait until the door shuts before I eat.
Afterward, I go to the hotel’s boutique and pick out an outfit and shoes.
When the hour comes, I slip into a fitted black top with a high neck, dark trousers that skim instead of cling, and heeled boots.
My hair stays down at first, then I change my mind and pin part of it back. The face in the mirror looks rested.
My eyes don’t. I step away, then put on light makeup. The change is sharp and seductive.
By the time I get downstairs, the lobby bar is starting to fill. I walk through it without slowing, head out into the cold, and flag a cab.
The club sits behind a discreet frontage on a row of buildings too expensive to need signs. I pay the driver and step inside.
The place is lit in soft gold, with rows of expensive bottles lined up on dark wooden shelves leading back toward the bar.
The music is just loud enough for wealthy people to think they’re buying a little danger while actual dangerous men use the crowd for cover.
I stand just inside the entrance for a second. A few heads turn. Men look me over with open interest. I keep my chin up. I’m supposed to meet a broker called Karel.
He’s late.
I check the clock behind the bar, then make myself stop. A waitress glides past with martinis balanced on a tray and doesn’t look at me once.
The bartender comes over after a minute, smooth and discreet. “Something for you?”
“Vodka,” I say. “Cold.”
He nods once and pours without trying to draw me out.
I take the glass to a quieter stretch of bar where I can watch the room in the mirror behind the bottles. The first sip goes down cold enough to bite, then leaves heat trailing through me. Ten minutes pass. No Karel.
By twenty, I’m starting to think Yuri’s contact got squeezed, sold out, or decided I wasn’t worth the risk.
Then I see a man in the mirror. My heart kicks hard against my ribs.
Anton Reznikov is sitting at the bar.
For one stupid second, I think I made him up out of nerves and vodka. Then he shifts slightly, one forearm braced on the polished wood, dark suit fitted hard across his shoulders, and anger flashes through me right after the heat.
I set my glass down, and at that very moment, he turns his head and catches my reflection in the mirror.
The hit of it is instant.
His gaze moves over me once, taking in the black top, the pinned-back hair, the red on my lips. The moment breaks open and shuts every exit at once. Walking away now would read like panic, and I won’t give him that.
Anton picks up his drink, says something to the bartender, and rises. Every nerve in my body lights up.
He crosses the space between us with the same controlled ease he had at the Leonidov party, and now that he’s close, the room falls away a little.
“Well,” he says, his voice soft enough to brush instead of land. “Either Prague is smaller than I remembered, or it’s luck.”
I make myself hold his gaze. “You assume I’m pleased to see you?”
“No,” he answers with a dry chuckle. “I assume you’re too smart to be here by accident.”
I turn a little toward him, then resent myself for doing it. “And what does that say about you?”
He cocks a brow at me. “That I go where the work is.”
I bristle. “Charming.”
His mouth shifts, and he looks darker and even more handsome for it. I almost look away. “You looked colder in Moscow.”
His eyes settle on my face, dark brown and heavy-lidded, warm in the low light and fixed on me in a way that feels too close.
They move from my eyes to my mouth and he smiles again. “What happened to put a lady like yourself alone in a place like this?”
I bristle immediately. “I needed a change of scenery.”
His smile grows and his eyes crinkle at the corners. It’s maddening how everything I’m saying seems to amuse him. “That bad?”
Something reckless opens in me. Maybe it’s the vodka, exhaustion, or the sharp relief of standing in front of a different kind of danger that has nothing to do with survival.
I lean in close enough to breathe his air. “Maybe I wanted to do something reckless somewhere prettier than home,” I murmur, letting it roll off my tongue.
His eyes go dark, like deep brown lacquer poured over obsidian, and he doesn’t blink. “You think this qualifies?”
I drag my teeth across my bottom lip until his gaze tracks it and let a low laugh shiver out of me. “I haven’t decided yet,” I breathe and let my head tilt, the invitation clear in the slow arch of my neck. “Maybe you should tell me.”
He stares so hard, the rest of the world might as well cease to exist. I hold him there, gaze locked, refusing to drop my eyes.
“Sofiya.” My name unfurls in his voice like silk dragged over the edge of a blade.
It’s dark, hot, sonorous, and it curls around my spine and tightens everything low in my belly.
He reaches up, fingertip gliding across my damp lip, slow enough to feel every ridge of his callus, every ounce of possession contained in that single stroke. “You really should be careful.”
I let my lashes lower just enough to signal that I noticed the warning. “Why?”
His mouth tips into the smallest ghost of a smile. “Because I take more than men with smaller appetites would dare.”
I let the corner of my own smile sharpen. “Then I guess we’re about to find out whether you’re all mouth or muscle.”
The spark hits his eyes like flint, gone before most would catch it. But I see the surprise. I feel it in the sudden clamp of his hand around my jaw as he closes the distance and claims my mouth in a kiss.
My tongue meets his and I moan softly into his mouth.
The growl that rattles his chest when my tongue meets his lets me know exactly what kind of action he intends to back up those words with.