Taisiya
The driver’s side door shuts with a heavy click, sealing me inside with a man who kissed me senseless ten minutes ago and now thinks he owns my immediate future.
Vadim starts the engine and looks at me. “Address?”
I smirk. “I’m not telling you.”
“Fair enough. I’ll just drop you in the Melnikov’s patch then.”
My blood spikes with fear. “You’d really do that?”
“Only if you make me.”
“That sounds like blackmail.”
“It is. So address?”
I give it to him. As much as I would like to think otherwise, I don’t really have much choice.
I put myself in this position by killing Gregor Melnikov and then deciding to run.
This man, this Bratva man, who kisses like he means it, is offering to protect me for no good reason I can see.
It makes me both terrified and grateful to not be on my own.
“My first line of defence is to attack,” I say as he pulls off.
He jerks to a stop and rests his wrist on the top of the steering wheel as he looks at me. “It’s a valid strategy.”
“I don’t mean to sound bitchy all the time. That isn’t me. I’m scared. I don’t know you. I don’t trust you—even though you’ve given me no reason not to. I get I’m a pain in your arse, but if you could get me the passport, I’ll be out of your hair, and we can both move on with our lives.”
“You want to move on with your life on the run in a country where you know no one and don’t know the rules.”
“My great-aunt—”
“Maybe. You still don’t know the rules.”
“Then what? You just expect me to stay here and hope you will keep me alive?”
“For now,” he says. “You stay where I can protect you while I find out who took Anton’s place and whether they know your name.”
“And after that?”
“We decide.”
“We?”
His blue eyes settle on me. “You’ve proved what happens when you make decisions alone under pressure.”
My face heats. “I survived.”
“You did.” He turns his attention to the road and pulls away again. “That’s why I’m not dismissing your idea entirely.”
I stare at him. “You’ll get me the passport?”
“If leaving becomes the safer option.”
“It is the safer option.”
“No, it’s the option you want. That doesn’t make it safer.”
The confidence in his voice annoys me because I don’t have enough information to challenge it.
I look out of the passenger window instead.
London passes in a blur of wet streets, buses, traffic, and people carrying on with normal lives.
No one knows that Gregor is dead because of me.
No one knows Anton followed him into death hours later.
I pull the cardigan tighter around myself. “Who replaces him?”
“Who, Anton? I don’t know yet. The Melnikov organisation isn’t powerful, but it has enough men to cause trouble. Someone has manoeuvred into place already.”
“Then they’ll come after me.”
“If they know you did it.”
“I was on their books. They know everything about me.”
“When did you last see him before last night?”
“Three days ago. He came into the bar and sat there for two hours. He watched me work. When I finished, he followed me outside and reminded me about the debt.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“He didn’t need to. He told me the interest had increased again and if I couldn’t pay in cash, he’d take it another way.”
“And that’s when you decided to carry a knife?”
“Yes.” It comes out as soft as a breath, but he hears me.
“Still want to turn down my offer?”
“It’s not just them. You seem to have completely forgotten about the police. What if they come knocking?”
“Then they will find nothing.”
“You can’t know that. I did it.”
“You really need to go and do some homework,” he says.
“About what? Being guilty of a crime and running?”
“About the Voronovs.”
“I don’t need homework. I need a fake passport and a plane ticket.”
“You need to understand who is protecting you before you decide you don’t want it.” He takes a left. “The Voronovs don’t answer to the Met. We don’t leave loose ends for detectives to find. If there’s a body count that needs explaining, it gets explained in ways that never touch you.”
“That’s meant to reassure me?”
“It’s meant to inform you.” He pulls up outside my building, and I didn’t even realise we were across the river already. He looks at it through the windscreen. “This is where you live?”
“Don’t judge my postcode.”
“I’m not judging anything. I’m working out how many entry points a building like this has for anyone who wants to get to you.” He cuts the engine and glances around the street, at the bins outside, the broken security light, the narrow gap between my building and the next.
“Two,” I say. “Front door and the fire door around the back. There’s also a window on the first floor that never locks properly, but you’d need a ladder.”
He gets out before I do, rounding the bonnet to open my door like some kind of gentleman, which feels wildly out of place given he threatened to hand me to the Melnikovs twenty minutes ago.
I climb out, tugging the cardigan sleeves down over my hands. The rain has eased off for now. Bogdan gets out of the parked SUV behind us and scans the street, striding across like the scout but in monumental form.
“Let’s go,” he says, grasping my elbow again as Bogdan must give him some sort of signal.
I dig my key out of the tote bag and head for the front door, aware of him next to me and Bogdan standing by the door.
Normal sounds and normal smells hit my senses as I head for the stairs. Bogdan beats me to it and goes first, with me sandwiched in between the two men.
Mrs Patel’s television still mutters through her door as we pass. Nothing has changed. Everything has changed.
My hands shake as I fit the key in the lock, and Vadim’s fingers close over mine, steadying them without a word. I let him. As much as I should be fighting him and running, it’s nice not to have to bear this horror alone.
For a moment, I close my eyes and see Gregor’s face, but I snap them open again. Not now.
I think Vadim notices, but he doesn’t remark on it. The door swings open into my flat, small and ordinary and exactly how I left it. The clothes still hang over the radiator, now dry and stiff. The dishwasher is closed.
Bogdan moves in first, checking the two rooms like there might be a small army hiding in my wardrobe. There isn’t. There’s barely room for the six outfits I own.
“Clear,” he grunts, the word barely out of his mouth before he steps back to let Vadim through.
I stay in the doorway a second longer, staring at my own flat like it belongs to someone else. Someone who had a normal day, who worried about rent and the shift rota and whether she’d left the immersion heater on, not someone who washed blood off a kitchen knife at one in the morning.
“You’re letting the cold in,” Vadim says without turning around.
I step inside and shut the door behind me, and the click of the latch sounds too loud in the quiet flat.
He moves straight to the kitchen, and I hate how at ease he looks doing it, like he’s cased a hundred flats before mine and mine holds no surprises.
He opens the dishwasher and peers inside.
The knife sits there in the basket, dry now and gleaming from the wash cycle, next to a fork, a glass and a lasagne dish that have absolutely no business being anywhere near a murder weapon.
He lifts the knife out, turning it under the kitchen light like he’s checking for something I can’t see and then slots it back into the block. “Whoever finds this will find a clean knife in a block of other clean knives.”
“So that’s good.”
“It’s good.”
“What about your clothes?”
“Washing machine. They’re on the radiator now.”
“Bag them,” he says to Bogdan, who pulls a plastic bag out of his jacket pocket like he carries them around for just this purpose.
He probably does.
I watch Bogdan strip the clothes off the radiator and stuff them into the bag, one item at a time, like he’s folding laundry instead of destroying evidence.
Moving past him into my bedroom, I grimace.
It’s small and cluttered in a way Vadim’s isn’t, and grab the ratty rucksack from under the bed.
It’s the only proper luggage I own, canvas gone soft with age, a broken zip on the front pocket that I fixed with a paperclip years ago and never bothered to replace properly.
I dump it on the bed and start shoving things in without much thought.
Two jumpers, underwear, the least-worn of my six outfits, a pair of trainers.
My hands move faster than my brain, which is probably for the best, because if I stop to think about what I’m actually doing, packing a bag in my own home like a fugitive, I might sit down on the floor and never get up again.
“You don’t need much,” Vadim says from the doorway. He fills the frame and it makes my bedroom feel even smaller than it already is. “Ivan will have a wardrobe full of clothes for you by the time we get back.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Say that to Ivan’s face. Go on. I dare you.”
A smile tugs at my lips. “Pass. I’m more scared of him than you.”
“How?” he asks aghast. “If anything is absurd, that is.”
“He owns you,” I say. “You’re scared of him too, deep down. Admit it.”
“I’ve broken a man’s arm in three places without changing expression. I shot Anton in the face earlier. I am not scared of Ivan.”
“Ivan judges you with his eyebrows. That’s worse.”
“Okay. That’s fair,” he mutters, and something about the reluctant admission makes me want to laugh, actually laugh, for the first time since Big Ben struck midnight over a body in the rain.
I don’t, but he sees me hold it in. I zip the rucksack instead, or try to. The broken zip catches on the paperclip. I swear under my breath and yank it free.
“Let me,” he says, stepping into the room.
“I’ve got it.”
“You’ve had it for the last thirty seconds.”
I shove the bag at his chest rather than admit he’s right. He takes it, fixes the zip in two seconds flat with a small tug and a twist of his fingers, and hands it back like he hasn’t just made my broken paperclip solution look like an amateur hour disaster.
“Show off,” I mutter, taking it from him.
“Some of us have skills beyond stabbing people.”
“You literally just told me you broke a man’s arm in three places. I’m aware of your skills.”
“Multiple skills. That’s the point.”
“Jack of all trades, master of none.”
“Get fucked,” he grouses, but there’s no anger, only amusement. I wonder when the last time was that someone amused him by insulting him.
I sling the rucksack over one shoulder and look around the room one last time.
“Anything else?” he asks.
“No.” I pause at the door. “Do you think I’ll ever be able to come back?” I add quietly.
“Depends on if you want to.”
I’m not sure what that means, so I leave it alone instead of poking the hornet’s nest. I’ve run out of energy, and all I want to do is curl up and sleep for a week.