Agent 7. The Shadows: Part I

▪️◾️Chapter One◾️▪️

⚠️Contains mature content⚠️

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Alina Lenkov
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He's going to kill me.

I tuck the phone Vladimir gave me—that now feels like a heavy weight in my hand—back into my purse. My stomach fills with dread after reading the demanding text message telling me I better get to his hotel room immediately, or else.

"Shit!" The curse catches in my throat on its way up to escape my lips. The night hasn't even begun and I've already made him angry. Fear swells in my chest making it hard to breathe in this cramped backseat. I never take his threats lightly. If nothing else, he's a man of his word.

Vladimir's driver snags my eye in the rearview mirror, his bushy eyebrows and thin lips flattening as he glares at me. His irritation is evident in his hardened visage as he questions my outburst. He, like Vladimir and all the other men in Vladimir's circle, finds women to be nuisances. Best to be seen but not heard.

I flash him a wary smile in return, my lips lifting weakly as my eyes remain somber. I'm frightened but I don't let him see it. The last thing I need is him reporting back to Vladimir that I was an annoyance on our drive to the hotel, making my night even worse.

It seems to suffice him as his eyes flick back to the road ahead of us.

I turn my attention out the window, letting my heart rate and breathing settle. There is nothing I can do now but wait. I'll accept whatever punishment Vladimir has for me once I get there. Just as I always do. For now, I might as well enjoy the calm before the дерьмовая буря (shitstorm).

Dazzling lights from the city of Moscow shine on the glass of the window. We pass smiling couples holding hands, and happy children eating treats. The possibility of being free like them seems so tangible, so close, yet is invariably out of reach.

I've seen enough.

With a sigh, I turn away from the window and stare straight ahead, watching the street lights pass over us, not allowing my gaze to settle on the vibrant nightlife that lines the strip.

The drive feels painfully slow. Every red light allows time for Vladimir to get angrier about my absence. I fret about his text the entire twenty-minute drive to the Lotte Hotel, smoothing my custom-tailored dress and my professionally styled hair over and over. The closer we get, the more my nerves worsen.

Vladimir's a dangerous man. He won't hesitate to use my supposed tardiness as an excuse to indulge in his sadistic hungering. Everything sets him off and he lives to make me pay for my supposed mistakes.

Saying the wrong thing, wearing an outfit that doesn't fit his taste. Making him wait.

All of them are perfectly acceptable reasons in his mind to punish me.

Torture, starvation, humiliation.

Name it, he has done it.

I check the time again, it's half past five.

The event doesn't even begin until six thirty in the hotel's private ballroom. Yesterday he told me to meet him in his room at six pm sharp. I won't forget it. So why the urgency? What's he planning?

Finally, we pull up to the brightly lit marbled portico.

As I step out of the town car and into the lobby of the luxury hotel I prepare myself for the bristling way Vladimir seems to greet me anytime I enter a room—hands on his hips and a scowl marring his hideous face. I prepare myself for the way his teeth scrape against one another as he seethes and the punishment I know for a fact he is conjuring up in his head, worsening with every second I make him wait.