Love me, Nikolai

My hands were shaking.

They shouldn't be. I had done this a hundred times before.

But tonight, everything felt so wrong. The brush trembled between my fingers as I leaned closer to the canvas, squinting in the dim light of the underground gallery.

Just one more stroke.

The Modigliani stared back at me with those elongated eyes and that melancholy expression.

It was worth eight million dollars if it were real and it was worth my freedom if anyone discovered it was not.

I dipped my brush into the paint and carefully – so carefully – add the final shadow beneath the subject's jawline.

There. Perfect.

I stepped back, and for a moment, I forgot to breathe.

It was beautiful. Flawless. Even experts would struggle to tell the difference.

Pride swelled in my chest, immediately followed by shame. This was what I'd become.

Marlena Rousseau, once a promising art student, now a common criminal hiding in the Paris catacombs, painting lies for money.

But Luka needed me. And lies paid better than truth ever did.

I pulled out my phone and took pictures of the painting from multiple angles with unsteady hands as proof for the buyer before final payments were made.

Five hundred thousand dollars – added to what I've already saved, it would finally be enough.

My phone buzzed before I could put it away. A text from Luka.

Got scan results back. Not good, Mar. Doctor says we're running out of time.

My stomach dropped. I read the message three times, as if the words might change but they don't.

I typed back quickly: Don't worry. Money's coming. Switzerland treatment starts next month. I promise.

Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

How are you getting this money? Mar, what are you doing?

I didn't answer because I couldn't.

Instead, I shoved my phone into my pocket and forced myself to focus. I packed up the tools and cleaned the workspace.

Leave no trace.

That's the rule Dominic taught me two years ago when I first came to him, desperate and broke, begging him to teach me anything that could save my brother.

"Forgers who get caught are forgers who get sloppy," he'd said with a serious face, "You want to save your brother? Then you leave no evidence. Ever."

And so I'd been careful. I'd been operating under the name Marie Blanchard, moving between cities, never staying anywhere too long.

Tonight was supposed to be my last job. Then, I’d disappear. Take Luka to Switzerland and start over.

Footsteps echoed through the tunnel.

I froze, brush still in hand. They were early. The buyers weren't supposed to arrive for another thirty minutes. That was the agreement.

My heart hammered against my ribs as the footsteps grew louder.

Three men emerged from the darkness.

Everything about them was wrong.

They were too polished, wearing expensive suits that didn't belong in the catacombs.

And they moved with precision.

These weren't art collectors.

The lead man stepped forward, looking at me the way a wolf looks at a trapped rabbit.

"Marlena Rousseau." His voice carried a Russian accent,"We've been looking for you."

My heart raced. He used my real name. I've been Marie Blanchard for two years. How did he –

"I think you have me confused with someone else," I said, keeping my voice steady even as my mind races. "My name is Marie –"

"Don't." He cut me off as he took another step closer, "We know exactly who you are. Where you're from. What you've done. And more importantly –" His eyes flick to the Modigliani. "What you can do."

This was a trap, not a sale.

My emergency bag lay five feet away, behind the table. Inside it: cash, a fake passport, a burner phone.

My escape plan.

I didn't give myself time to think before I moved.

I grabbed the nearest lamp and smashed it against the ground. The gallery went dark.

Shouts erupted behind me as I snatched my bag and ran, my intimate knowledge of these tunnels the only advantage I have.

"After her!" the Russian barked.

I didn’t look back as I navigated through the buildings.

Footsteps thundered behind me.

A gunshot cracked through the air, and stone exploded near my head. I ducked instinctively but didn't stop.

My lungs burned as I ran faster. I could hear them behind me, closer now, too close.

I reached the rusted grate I discovered months ago, my secret exit for emergencies exactly like this.

I wrenched it open, squeezed through, and pulled it shut behind me. A bullet hit the metal as I scrambled up the ladder, emerging into the cool Paris night.

I ran until my legs gave out, collapsing in an alley three blocks away.

My entire body shook as reality crashed down. I left everything. My tools. My reference materials. My fingerprints all over that workspace.

And they knew my real name.

Dominic's apartment was across the city. I took three different metros, doubled back twice, and arrived at his door just after midnight.

He took one look at my face and went pale.

"What happened?"

"They found me." My voice cracked. "They knew my name, Dominic,”

"Get inside. Now." He pulled me through the door, locked it, and checked the street below.

"Tell me everything."

I gave him a run down of the events of the night.

When I was done, Dominic's hands were shaking worse than mine were with the paintbrush.

"Those weren't buyers," he whispered. "Those were Volkov's men."

"Who the hell is Volkov?"

Dominic looked at me with something like pity.

"Someone you pray you never meet. He's –" He stopped and shook his head. "It doesn't matter. If he found you, you need to disappear. Tonight."

He moved to a loose floorboard, pulled out a stack of cash and a passport. The photo is me, but the name read Marie Laurent.

"Go to America," he said as he pressed them into my hands. "Bury yourself. Find a nobody job in a nobody place. And for God's sake, Marlena – forget you ever painted."

Three weeks Later

I was convinced I was safe.

New York was enormous and I had countless places to hide.

I was just another struggling nobody working double shifts at a pretentious SoHo gallery, living in a roach-infested Brooklyn apartment that costs more than it's worth.

But I was alive. Luka was stable and my trail is cold.

I fumbled with my keys outside my apartment door, exhausted from a fourteen-hour day.

All I wanted to do was collapse into bed and forget today ever happened.

The door swung open. The apartment was dark. Strange, my heart raced. I always left the lamp on.

I flipped the light switch but nothing happens.

"Hello, Marlena."

The cold voice came from the darkness. A man sat perfectly still on my only sofa, illuminated only by the city lights filtering through my grimy window.

My hand moved instinctively toward the kitchen, toward the knife drawer.

"I wouldn't." His tone was almost bored. "I have three men outside your door, two in the hallway, and one on the fire escape. You're not leaving this apartment unless I allow it."

He stood and I saw how tall he was. Well over six feet, moving with predatory grace.

The suit he's wearing probably costs more than I made in a year. Dark hair. Sharp jawline. And eyes—God, those eyes—grey and cold and seeing everything.

"My name is Nikolai Volkov." He took a step closer. "And you, Miss Rousseau, have something I need."

Volkov.

The name Dominic warned me about.

The name that sent me running across an ocean.

He was here in my apartment and I was trapped.

Nikolai stepped fully into the light, and I saw the manila folder in his hands.

He dropped it on my coffee table. It fell open, photographs spilling across the surface.

My breath catches.

The pictures are of me as a child, pigtails and missing teeth and of my mother in her prison uniform, hollow-eyed and broken.

There's one of Luka in his hospital bed from last week – how was that possible?

And on top: a photo of me in the Paris gallery, caught mid-forgery, paintbrush in hand.

"I know everything about you," Nikolai said softly, dangerously. "I know your real name. Your brother's diagnosis. Your mother's death. Every crime you've committed for the past two years. Every lie you've told."

He moved closer to me a

nd I backed up until I hit the wall.

"And now," he continued, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper, "you're going to do exactly what I say. Or Luka dies in prison – just like Elena did.”