5. Veronica
VERONICA
It’s not even noon and the sky is already bruised and low.
On both sides, the landscape is a million shades of iron and rot—rusted chain-link fencing, stacks of empty pallets, the kind of forgotten warehouses that look like they’ve been converted to something illegal but nobody left a forwarding address.
I think we’re making good time, but I have no idea if that’s true. Nobody speaks in the car. Mikhail is up front in the driver’s seat, face half-lit by the dashboard, saying nothing. He doesn’t look back at me, not even once.
Sergey’s on the passenger side, arms folded over his chest like he’s dared himself not to fidget. I keep my hands folded in my lap, because anything else would look like nervousness.
I count cars in the oncoming lane. I count license plates. Mikhail’s pistol is in a holster set under the steering wheel; Sergey’s gun is high up on his ribcage but his hand drifts to it every time we hit a pothole. The SUV’s are all the same color, all the same bland brand, even the hubcaps match.
My father travels like this. His security team is more discreet about their weapons, but these men wear them casually. Always on the edge of violence.
It shouldn’t excite me, but it does.
They’re dangerous, these men. More dangerous than anyone I’ve been close to before.
I’m risking things I shouldn’t.
I shouldn’t tease them. I shouldn’t be testing them… but I can’t help myself.
I can’t just go to Viktor Orlov like a lamb to the slaughter.
An innocent, obedient lamb.
That’s not me.
It never was. My father might expect it of me, but I can’t pretend.
I also know enough about my own value in this equation to guess that if I misjudge anything, that my life will be on the line. They don’t care about me. Not personally. Not as a person.
I’m a moving piece, an asset, and the entire point of this convoy is to deliver the asset in the same state it was loaded.
I watch the road ahead, eyes flickering to every street sign and overpass, every possible turnout. I imagine how you could ambush this convoy, if you were angry enough or desperate enough.
Striking the convoy—attacking me—it wouldn’t have anything to do with me… but it would have everything to do with my father and the man I was being delivered to. Even the man who had hired these goons to deliver me had more risk on the table.
I wasn’t even part of the calculation. I was just an asset.
An asset easily replaced.
I swallow hard.
The storm starts as a fine mist, enough to blur the windows but not enough to wash anything away. At the next overpass, the road narrows into a long, empty choke point flanked by cargo yards on both sides.
Rows and rows of shipping containers, painted in colors so faded they’re almost ghostly. Some have logos I recognize, some don’t. One of the containers leans at an unnatural angle, and the graffiti sprayed across its side is in a language I don’t recognize.
The whole scene is so picturesque in its threat that it feels staged. My skin prickles.
I lean forward, just a centimeter, as Mikhail taps the brakes for the curve.
I want to tell them that no one would know—no one would know anything. They could fuck me, they could do what they wanted. I wouldn’t tell a soul.
I just wanted to feel something before my life was stolen away forever.
I just wanted?—
A black panel van is parked on the shoulder, nose angled toward the road, windows blacked out.
It catches my eye immediately. It’s too obvious.
I glance at Mikhail, but his gaze is locked on the van already. He doesn’t say a word.
The lead car passes the van, and nothing happens.
Our car is next. Then I hear it: a grinding engine noise, the kind that comes from too many years and not enough oil changes, and the van comes to life.
It slams into reverse and rams the nose of the first SUV with a sickening crunch.
It hits so hard the entire front of the car lifts off the ground, then drops back down crooked.
The van keeps pushing, shoving the lead SUV sideways until it blocks both lanes.
Mikhail curses, then floors it. Sergey braces himself, teeth bared, looking more alive than he has all morning.
Glass explodes in a burst of light and sound as the first shots shatter the back window of the lead car. Bullets spark and scream as they chew through metal, plastic, and people.
Our car veers left, scraping along the metal guardrail, but there’s nowhere to go—the van has made a wall of steel in our way, and the rear car stops dead, boxed in by a second vehicle that appears like a magic trick from a side access road.
There is a second, then half a second, then no time at all between the start of the ambush and the first bullet to hit our car. The windshield spiders into a million fragments. Mikhail is already moving, pistol up and out, firing with calm, hateful precision.
I see a man drop behind a concrete barrier suddenly painted in blood, arms flailing as he goes down.
Sergey’s door is open before I realize what’s happening.
“Get down,” he shouts to me, and I obey at once, falling into the footwell.
I can only just see him between the seats.
He’s out, keeping low, moving with a strange, angular grace that makes me think of fighting dogs on chains.
Two men in dark jackets come around the side of the van, firing quick and loud.
Sergey ducks behind the open door, returns fire, then launches himself at them with a ferocity that seems out of place until I remember that some men don’t need a reason to kill, just an opportunity.
The next bullet comes through the back window and I curl my arms over my head as glass showers over me. My breath is so loud it fills the universe. I keep my eyes open. There is glass everywhere—sharp and glittering. My left elbow stings, but the pain is clean.
I’m not dead. Not yet.
I peek through the seats at the shooters.
Four visible, one unaccounted for. Mikhail is still firing in short, disciplined bursts, never missing.
He reloads with a motion so fluid it might be rehearsed, like an orchestral gesture.
I see movement, but it’s only the reflection of gunfire in the slick of rain on the hood.
Someone wrenches my door open from the outside. I claw for anything—a seatbelt, a weapon, anything—but my hands find nothing. The man grabs me by the wrist, squeezing hard enough to bruise the bone. His face is pale and pockmarked, and his eyes dart in opposite directions.
He yanks me out of the car and my shoes scrape the floor mats, and for a moment the world goes slow and quiet except for the thud of my own heart. I let out a scream as he drags me back through the broken glass and get one foot braced against the door frame.
I twist hard, tearing at his grip. My nails catch skin, and blood wells up. He yelps, and that’s when Sergey appears behind him.
There’s no warning. No noise. Sergey drives an elbow into the side of the man’s head and he crashes into the doorframe with enough force that the jaw snaps, and the man goes slack.
I drop back onto the seat, lungs burning, my wrist is still clamped in the attacker’s grip even after the rest of him has gone boneless. Sergey rips the man’s hand off me, shoves me back into the car, and slams the door so hard the rest of the glass falls out. He doesn’t look at me.
He’s already moving, dark eyes wild and unblinking.
It’s over as fast as it started. The gunfire stops. The only sound is the slow tick of cooling engines and the hiss of the rain as it turns dust into paste. My hands are shaking so badly I have to clutch my knees to keep them from steady.
The world comes back in pieces. First the silence—thick and absolute as it pounds into my ears by the shock wave of the last gunshot. Then the pressure in my jaw, the pulse in my wrist, the itch of wet glass where it’s stuck to my cheek.
I blink.
My eyes sting. For a moment I think I’ve gone blind, but then I see the colors: red on the dash, black on the upholstery, the faint green flicker of the radio display cycling through static.
I try to sit up. Every nerve in my body screams about it, but I manage. The car is still. I swallow down the urge to retch as I see the bodies on the highway. The red smear on the rear window. I focus on my hands instead.
They work.
I flex them, one at a time, knuckles still white from the way I gripped the seat when the world tilted sideways. There’s blood on my left palm—my own, I think, but it doesn’t matter.
Outside, two men in dark jackets are dragging bodies off the asphalt. I don’t know if they’re ours or theirs. It seems like it shouldn’t matter, but my mind logs it anyway. One, two, three… four. Not the number I expected. I start to think about who else might be alive, then force myself to stop.
The lead SUV is a crumpled accordion of steel and smoke pours from the engine block in little black plumes. I can see the body of the footman with the scar, slumped sideways, one hand still clutching a pistol like it’s going to be of any use to him now. For a moment, I envy the lack of worry.
The cold returns, a shiver that starts at my ankles and creeps up my legs. The inside of the car smells like scorched rubber, copper, and something that reminds me of the time I accidentally burned my hair with a straightener. A strange memory at a time like this.
Mikhail stands three feet from the car, back to me, methodically reloading his pistol. There’s a rip in the sleeve of his jacket, and the fabric at the shoulder is soaked black.
He doesn’t seem to notice, or maybe he doesn’t care. He tucks the fresh magazine into the gun, chambers a round, and only then glances over his shoulder to make sure I’m not dead. His eyes meet mine for half a heartbeat, then flick away.
The back window explodes with a sharp, final crack. I duck, but it’s only the pressure on the car that causes the glass to finish what the bullets started.
I laugh, a sound more like a bark than a human noise.