Victoria
Prague smells different than New York.
Older. Wetter. Like stone that’s seen too many centuries and learned how to keep secrets. The city presses in on itself instead of stretching upward, all narrow streets and crooked corners, buildings leaning close like they’re listening.
I like it. Love it even.
It’s been seven days since the vault. Seven days since I crossed the Atlantic on a forged passport that cost more than most people’s cars. Seven days since I stepped onto foreign soil to start the rest of my life.
Seven days of no alarms. No footsteps outside my hotel room. No gun to my spine.
Freedom is a strange thing. It’s like holding your breath after surviving a fall and realizing you didn’t hit the ground as hard as you thought you would.
I sit at the hotel bar nursing a vodka soda I don’t want, my back straight, my posture relaxed on purpose. A woman alone draws attention. A woman who looks comfortable draws less. I’ve learned that the hard way.
My hair is lighter now. A cheap bleach and dye job done in a hostel bathroom in Queens, hands shaking, mirror cracked.
I cut it myself too, jagged layers that don’t invite fingers.
My clothes are anonymous. Jeans. Boots. A leather jacket I bought second hand because it already smelled like someone else’s life.
The diamonds are tucked into two velvet pouches that I carefully stitched right inside the lining of my leather jacket.
I don’t touch them unless I have to. The weight is enough reassurance that they didn’t disappear. That this isn’t all a fever dream.
Every instinct in my body tells me not to grow careless, not to relax. I thought about moving again, leaving Prague for Paris or Berlin. But I want time to find my feet and figure out the next part of my plan.
Boris will not only want the diamonds back, but he will want my silence. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, worried he will be right behind me.
I glance at the mirror behind the bar, using the reflection instead of turning my head. Two men at a corner table. Tourists. A couple near the window. The bartender wiping glasses, bored.
Nothing feels wrong, which makes my skin itch.
I’m lifting the glass to my mouth when someone sits on the stool beside me.
Close. Too close. I don’t flinch. I don’t look. I take a slow sip and let the burn settle before I turn my head, a look of indifference on my face.
He’s wrong for this place. Not dressed casually, composed in a way that doesn’t belong in a bar full of travelers and locals killing time. Dark hair, cut clean. Suit jacket open, no tie. Broad shoulders that don’t crowd the space but somehow claim it anyway.
He looks at me like he’s been here the whole time.
My pulse stutters when I see the dark ink peeking from beneath his cuff.
He is Bratva.
“Victoria,” he says, soft enough that no one else hears it. Like it’s something intimate we share. “Leonid Brovin. It is nice to make your acquaintance.”
My fingers tighten around the glass. I don’t ask how he knows my name. I don’t ask how he found me. Those questions can come later, when I’m not trying to keep my face from giving me away.
I give him a lazy smile. “You’ve got the wrong girl.”
He hums, low and amused, and signals the bartender without looking away from me. “Vodka. Neat.”
American accent. Eastern edge to it. Not New York. Not Midwest. Something colder and considerably more anonymous.
“You dyed your hair,” he says casually. “Cut it too. Did you really think that would be enough to disappear?”
Ice slides down my spine.
I push off the bar like I’m leaving, my hand dipping toward my jacket pocket where my knife rests, light and familiar.
He catches my wrist before I can even curl my fingers around it. The movement is so smooth it barely registers until it’s already done. His thumb presses against the inside of my wrist, right where my pulse jumps.
He doesn’t raise his voice or lean in. He simply takes the knife from my pocket with his free hand and sets it on the bar between us like it’s a misplaced phone.
My breath goes shallow.
“That’s rude,” he says mildly. “And unnecessary.”
I laugh. It comes out shaky, but it’s real. “Do you always disarm women in public, or am I special?”
His mouth curves. “You’re very special.”
I stand still because every instinct tells me that moving right now would be a mistake. People like him don’t need to shout to be dangerous. They carry it in their stillness.
“Did my uncle send you?” I demand, jutting out my chin as though that would be enough to protect me from whatever he is about to say.
“No,” he says, flicking his eyebrows in thanks to the bartender as the vodka is poured in front of him.
“Then what do you want?” I ask.
He finally turns his body toward me, giving me his full attention like it’s a gift I didn’t ask for. Up close, his eyes are darker than I expected, glittering with something humorously menacing. If there’s such a thing.
“You stole from me. From several prominent Bratva Families, actually…” he says. “And then you stole from your uncle and fled here.”
My stomach drops. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mm.” He smiles like he enjoys the lie. “You do.”
He lifts his glass and takes a slow drink, watching me over the rim. “You ran beautifully, by the way. Clean. Efficient. I was impressed.”
That’s when it clicks.
The alarm. The timing. The way everything went wrong just enough to push me, not catch me.
“You did that,” I shake my head on an exhale of disappointment. Disappointment in myself for missing something, disappointment that this is my life now, veiled threats and no way out. I should have kept moving. “So why let me go?” I ask quietly.
He sets the glass down and leans in, close enough that I can smell his cologne. Something expensive and dangerous and all too risky.
“Because I wanted to see what you’d do and where you’d go. I wanted to see that you weren’t a foolish girl playing at adult games. I wanted to break you open and see what you were made of.” His eyes have darkened impossibly further as he runs them over my face.
My skin prickles and I have to swallow to make my throat work. “And now that you have?” It comes out like a cracked whisper and I silently chastise myself for being so affected by this man. For not having a better plan.
He looks at me like he’s deciding how much truth I can handle.
“Now,” he says softly, “you belong to me.”
Heat flares in my chest.
“I don’t belong to anyone. I had that my whole life already.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, then back to my eyes. “You always belonged to me,” he says. “I just didn’t know it before. And neither did you.”
I swallow. “You should kill me, then, because I won’t go back to what I was before.”
A pause.
Something flickers across his face. “I’m not asking you to,” he says. “And I don’t kill people who fascinate me.”
My laugh comes out sharp. “Fascinate? Right. So I’m some sort of novelty to you?”
“Maybe,” he admits. “You’re a thief who stole from the Bratva and survived. That makes you priceless. Skilled. It means you have potential beyond being a wife.”
He straightens, gives the bartender a nod, and places a bill on the counter.
“Finish your drink,” he says. “I’ll be outside.” Confidence wraps around his words like steel. “I have men on all the doors; there’s no way out that isn’t through me.”
“And if I don’t come out willingly?” I ask.
He glances back over his shoulder, eyes dark and certain. “I’ve waited this long.”
He walks out, his meaning clear. He will continue waiting however long it takes.
I sit there for a full ten seconds processing his words. My heart pounding, my fingers numb, my mind racing through exits and odds and terrible, impossible calculations.
I could run, but I have no idea where to go. I’ve no family other than Boris. No friends. Boris made sure of that. I do have the diamonds, but no contacts here to actually sell them. All my cash and false papers are in my hotel room safe.
Right now, my only option is to follow Leonid and pray he isn’t going to give me back to my uncle.
One step at a time, Victoria. One problem at a time.
I throw back my drink and head out to face whatever happens next.