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 clothesare 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 moreanonymous.
“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.
