Agent 7. The Shadows: Part I

▪️◾️Chapter Five◾️▪️

The car is deathly silent as we drive toward the outskirts of the city. I'm familiar with a few of the districts as we pass through but I have no idea where he's taking me. I haven't left my apartment in years besides when Vladimir would call for me. The only thing I know for certain is that we're not headed to a place garnering my freedom. If he intended to free me, he would have done so by now.

The realization that I became loose of one monster just to be taken captive by another has waves of anxiety rippling through my body.

I know nothing of this man, how sinister he is, or the depths of depravity he's willing to go. He keeps his thoughts to himself, leaving my mind to race through every possible scenario.

Vladimir was different, he had shown his cards right away; manipulation, starvation, and punishments. He would tell me the things he planned to do to me before he did them as if he enjoyed hearing his demented ideas spoken into existence. I knew from the very beginning how evil he was. How sick his mind became when we were alone.

Although his treatment of me was atrocious, I knew there was always a line he wouldn't cross, a method to his madness he always gave way to, but never more.

Vladimir's assassin on the other hand is different. He's dark, calculated, yet completely unpredictable. He has a void in his eyes that is depthless, it's impossible to see into the darkness of a soul so deeply deprived as his.

The only thing I know for certain is that he's willing to kill.

Out of the corner of my eye, I regard him. His hair has fallen into his eyes and his bow tie is angled haphazardly across his neck. Despite his disheveled appearance, he maintains a murderous finesse—an aura of sophistication emanating from his broad shoulders and heavy brows. He appears every bit as dangerous as he proves himself to be.

He's holding onto the steering wheel with so much force his veins are bulging from his knuckles. He's a person who knows how to kill a man with his hands alone, it's obvious—a fact that's terrifying when trapped in such close confinement with said person.

Nervously I turn away from him to gaze out the window, fingers laced and tucked into my lap. My breathing has settled exponentially and the tears have all but dried up, but my fear is still fresh and simmering just below the surface.

My teeth wear at my bottom lip, watching with apprehension as we near another hotel. This one isn't as grand as the Lotte but it's lavish in its own right.

I lean forward in my seat just slightly, to peer out the windshield.

The building is modest in size, with elaborate light fixtures hanging from its porte-cochère, illuminating the night. My eyes trail up five floors full of windows strung along the expanse of the space.

My eyes snap to my captor, my fear quickly turning into panic the way boiling water evaporates into thin air.

Is he going to take me up to a hotel room and take advantage of me? Possibly kill me when he's done with me? The way he heedlessly killed Vladimir.

An attendant near the door steps up to the curb when he sees our car approach but the killer driving veers right, pulling into a shadowed area of the parking lot instead, right before we make it to the covered portico.

My eyes bulge in their sockets as I whiteness him tuck his hand into his suit jacket and retrieve a small silver knife, the blade a sharp, jagged piece of metal roughly four inches long.

Holy shit!

I scramble to turn in my seat as much as my restricted body will allow and push my back up against the door putting as much space between the two of us as possible.