Page 10 of Vicious Doll

We burst out into frigid night air, and I finally get my bearings—Eastern Europe for sure, some mid-sized industrial city where Soviet architecture crumbles alongside half-hearted attempts at modernization. The air tastes like coal smoke and impending snow.

Midnight streets empty except for the occasional drunk staggering between streetlights. The perfect backdrop for a chase scene—no witnesses, no bystanders, just hunters and prey playing out ancient patterns under modern lights.

"Why should I trust you?" I demand as we sprint through narrow alleyways, keeping to shadows.

"You shouldn't," Volkov replies without breaking stride. "Trust gets you killed. But right now, I am only one not actively trying to put bullet in your skull."

He's right, which pisses me off even more.

We reach a nondescript sedan—German, midrange, forgettable in the best possible way. The kind of car that blends into traffic like beige wallpaper. Volkov hot-wires it with practiced efficiency while I provide cover, scanning rooftops for sniper positions.

As we peel away from the curb, tires spinning on icy streets, I finally let myself breathe. Not safe. Not even close. But alive, which counts for something.

"I'm not choosing you," I say as the city blurs past our windows. "I'm choosing the monster I don't know over the one who's already proven he'll sacrifice me."

Volkov's lips twitch—not quite a smile, but as close as a man like him probably gets. "Self-preservation is good instinct."

"It's not about self-preservation," I counter, checking the magazine in my stolen weapon. Still half-full. "It's about finding the truth. Then making everyone who lied to me bleed for it."

His eyes flick to me briefly, assessment written in the glance. "Perhaps there is little bit of Russian in you after all, Landry James."

I lean back against the headrest, watching the unfamiliar city disappear behind us as we head for God knows where. The adrenaline crash is coming—I can feel it hovering at the edges of my consciousness, waiting to turn my limbs to lead and my brain to mush.

Blood dries in flaking patterns on my skin. The SIG rests heavy in my lap. My reflection in the passenger window shows a stranger—hollow-eyed, blood-smeared, something feral lurking behind the exhaustion.

But for now, I'm riding the high of the most fucked-up truth in my increasingly fucked-up existence: I've never felt more alive than I do right now, with blood on my hands and chaos in my wake.

Rational people run from danger. I've always preferred to fuck it instead.

Let's see where this particular bad decision leads.

The car smells like blood and cigarettes. My blood, Volkov's cigarettes. We're twenty miles outside whatever Eastern Bloc shithole we just shot our way out of, and I'm watching the unfamiliar countryside blur past like a fever dream—all skeletal trees and Soviet-era power lines silhouetted against a sky the color of a fresh bruise.

"You look like death fucked a corpse and had ugly baby," Volkov observes, flicking ash out the cracked window. The winter air slices in, sharp enough to make my eyes water. Or maybe that's just the adrenaline crash finally hitting.

"And you look like the undertaker who dressed the body," I shoot back, pressing a wadded t-shirt against my reopened thigh wound. The fabric's already soaked through, warm and sticky against my palm. "Where the hell are we going?"

"Secondary location. Less comfortable, more secure." He takes a hard right onto a road that barely qualifies as one—more like a suggestion of gravel scattered over mud. The car's suspension screams in protest.

My stomach lurches as we hit another pothole. Pain throbs in time with my heartbeat, a full-body percussion of hurt. "You know, most men just offer dinner and a movie after sex. Not a firefight and a getaway car."

Volkov's mouth twitches—the closest thing to a smile his face seems capable of producing. "You seemed bored with conventional men. That is why you fuck strangers in club bathrooms, yes? Why you let husband believe ridiculous lies?"

"Stay out of my marriage, Volkov."

"Marriage." He spits the word like it's rotten meat. "Is arrangement of convenience. Like most things in people's life."

The observation cuts closer than I want to admit. I glare out the window, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a response. The sky's getting lighter, that peculiar pre-dawn gray that makes everything look slightly unreal, slightly apocalyptic. Somewhere in the hazy distance, a factory belches black smoke into the already filthy air.

Home sweet Eastern Europe.

My fingers find the pendant that should be around my neck—the poison failsafe Killion gave me—before remembering it's gone. Probably removed while I was unconscious in Volkov's safehouse. One less escape hatch if this all goes to shit.

If I truly made the wrong choice by ditching Killion.

"We're being followed," I observe, catching the flicker of headlights in the side mirror. The same ones for the past ten minutes, keeping precise distance.

Volkov doesn't even check. "Yes."

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