Page 3 of Vicious Doll

If Volkov's telling the truth, I've been played from the beginning, a pawn sacrificed in a game where I never saw the whole board. If he's lying, he's doing it to drive a wedge between me and the only allies I have left.

Either way, I'm fucked sideways without dinner or a kiss.

"Why show me this?" I demand, voice steadier than I feel. "What's your angle?"

Everyone has an angle. Killion taught me that much, if nothing else. Nobody does anything for free, especially not in this shadow world where information is currency and loyalty is a fairy tale told to rookie agents before they learn better.

He stands, pacing to the window, his back to me. Through the thin shirt, I can see the outline of a shoulder holster, the slight bulge of a compact pistol. He knows I see it. He wants me to see it. Another message:I'm not afraid of you.

“Killion is not good man, but Harlow has compromised your organization to core," he says, voice neutral as a weather report describing catastrophic floods. "He sells not just secrets but people. Your people. Dolls.”

He turns, backlit by the pale winter light, face in shadow. The stance should diminish him, make him a silhouette, a target. Instead, it transforms him into something mythic—a dark sentinel against the colorless sky.

"Including one who mattered to me."

Something in his voice—a ragged edge beneath the control, a hairline fracture in perfect steel—catches me off guard. This isn't just business for him. It's personal. And personal is always more dangerous, more unpredictable, than professional.

“Who?”

His gaze slews away from me, shutting me down with cold silence. He’s not going to share that intel.Okay, fair enough.

"So what?" I shift on the bed, gauging distance to the door, calculating how far I'd get with drugged muscles and athrobbing leg wound. Not far enough. “If I’m nothing but a pawn in this game, how do I play in your little revenge plan?”

“You are pawn, yes, but you can be so much more if you pick right partner.”

“And, let me guess…you’re the right partner?” I laugh. “Be so for real right now. Why the fuck would I help the man who killed Victor Reese and kidnapped me? You shot a man in the head and drugged me unconscious. Not to mention, the intel I had was that you were working with Harlow. That doesn't exactly build a good working environment, Volkov."

He moves with liquid speed that belies his size, crossing the room before I can blink. No wasted motion, no telegraphing, just pure deadly efficiency.

His hand catches my jaw, not violently but firmly, tilting my face up to his. Those dark eyes bore into mine, searching for something—weakness, understanding, compliance, I can't tell which.

“Do not mourn Victor Reese —he was already selling your name when I put bullet in his head," he says, voice dropping to a dangerous purr that vibrates through his fingers into my jawbone. "I could have left you for Harlow's cleanup crew. Right now, I am only one not trying to make you disappear."

His grip loosens, fingers trailing along my jawline in a gesture too intimate for comfort, too deliberate to be mere power play. My skin prickles with awareness—danger, adrenaline, and something darker I don't want to name. Something that responds to the predator before me not with fear but with recognition.

"Also," he adds, thumb brushing my lower lip, the callus catching slightly on delicate skin, "because you are survivor. Like me. You use what you have—your body, your mind, anything—to stay alive. To win."

The assessment is too accurate, too penetrating. It bypasses my carefully constructed armor, the scar tissue built over years of bad choices and worse consequences. He sees the raw, ugly truth of me—the desperate creature beneath the bravado who will chew through her own leg to escape a trap.

I jerk my face away, but don't retreat further. Showing too much fear is as dangerous as showing none. "Don't psychoanalyze me, Volkov. You don't know me."

"I know you better than you think,kotyonok." The Russian endearment slides from his tongue like oil on water, foreign and slick. His eyes hold mine, unblinking, reptilian in their focus. "I've watched you since Malvagio. Since before Killion took you.”

The revelation hits like a slap, stinging and disorienting. My brain scrambles to recalibrate, to reassess every memory of the club, every dark corner and private room, searching for glimpses of him. Had he been there? Watching from the shadows while I fucked my way through LA's elite, chasing cheap thrills and cheaper validation?

"You were watching me before the Dollhouse?"

The question comes out more vulnerable than I intend, edged with the particular violation that comes from discovering you've been observed when you thought yourself free.

He nods, returning to his chair with that same economical grace. Distance reestablished. Power dynamic reset. "You were not random recruitment. You were targeted for specific reason."

"Which is?"

"I do not think you are ready to hear that," he answers, lighting a fresh cigarette. The ritual seems to center him—flame, inhale, exhale. A meditation in nicotine and fire. "Let’s just say you are more than meets the eye and Killion has not been truthful to you."

I hate being confused. And Volkov’s cryptic intel? Confusing as fuck.

“What the hell are you even saying?”

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