Chapter One

IRINA VOLKOV

The wire transfer notification chimed on my phone at exactly 3:09PM.

Fifty thousand dollars. Clean. Untraceable. So beautiful.

My gaze was fixed on the screen in the dimly lit corner of the cafe, my fingers wrapped around my coffee that had lost its warmth an hour prior. The scene was filled with Moscow’s young professionals, absorbed in their laptops and pricey lattes, completely unaware that a con artist was present, pilfering bank accounts with merely a smartphone and a fabricated tale.

Yeah—and that’s me.

Fifty thousand was good. Better than good. It just brought my running total to four hundred and sixty-three thousand dollars over the past twenty-two months.

Thirty-seven thousand left. Phew!

Thirty-seven thousand, and I’ll be free. The debt Viktor, my father, had saddled me with before I escaped his house and his fists would finally be paid. The loan sharks who have been watching me will have their blood money. And I, Irina Volkov, or whatever name I’m choosing next, will disappear into a life where no one owns me. No one controls me. No one can hurt me.

I allowed myself one small smile before closing the banking app and deleting it from my phone. Rule number seven: Never keep evidence.

My phone buzzed with a new message. I opened the encrypted chat app, different from the one I’d just used and different from the one I’d use tomorrow, and felt my pulse quicken.

My last message to my mark was,

Anastasia: Got it. Thank you, Damien. You’re a lifesaver.

My fingers hovered over the keyboard. Damien Romanov. My last mark. The name Anastasia Sokolova isn’t mine. Rule number two: No real names.

It's just my character name in a play, performing for an audience of one.

But Damien was quite different from the others.

In the three months since I made him my mark, something had shifted. His messages came at odd hours...3 AM, when I imagined him unable to sleep, reaching for his phone in the darkness. He asked questions that had nothing to do with money. What books did I read? What did I think about when I looked at the stars? If I could go anywhere in the world, where would I choose?

Prague, of course.

And yes, I’d answered because that was the game. To build intimacy. Create connections. Make my mark believe the fucking fantasy.

But sometimes, late at night in my tiny apartment with its peeling wallpaper and the sound of my stupid neighbor’s arguments bleeding through the walls, I found myself thinking about his questions. Answering them honestly. Well...at least to myself.

It’s dangerous. Stupid. Yeah, I know.

Damien Romanov: Always happy to help. I hope your sister’s surgery goes well.

My lips curved into a smile. There was no sister. No surgery.

Just a carefully constructed emergency that had required immediate funds. I had perfected the plan, which is to create urgency, appeal to emotion, and make the mark feel like a hero for helping.

And then, boom—they fall into your trap.

The three dots appeared, disappeared, and appeared again. I watched them, an uncomfortable twist in my chest.

Guilt, maybe. Or something worse, regret. It can’t be.

Damien Romanov: I’d like to meet you.

My heart stopped.

Rule number three, the most important rule, the rule I fight myself hard not to break: Never meet in person.

My fingers trembled as I typed and deleted, typed and deleted. I should say no. All I need is to disappear right now, burn Anastasia’s identity and move. I have almost enough money. I could target someone else for the final thirty-seven thousand.

Another message dropped.

Damien Romanov: I know this is sudden. But I’ve been thinking about you. A lot. Too much, maybe. I’d like to take you to dinner. Just dinner. No pressure.

Huh huh. A very strict NO!

Then, before I could respond:

Damien Romanov: I’m working on a business deal. Real estate investment. Three hundred thousand euros. I could use a partner. Someone I trust. We could discuss it over dinner?

Okay, three hundred thousand euros. Three hundred thous….

That is... more than what I needed. Jeez! More than I’d dared to hope for. With that kind of money, I could pay off the debt and have enough to start over. Really start over.

New city, new country, new life.

This is too good. Too perfect. To easy.

Which also means It’s probably too dangerous.

But thirty-seven thousand is a small money compared to three hundred thousand.

Okay, One meeting. One dinner. One final con, and I’d be free forever.

I can do this.

I looked around the café. A young mother wrestled a toddler into a high chair. A businessman shouted into his phone about some quarterly reports. An old man fed biscuits to his dog under the table.

Normal people, living normal lives. The kind of life I never had. The kind of life Viktor had stolen from me when he dragged my mother to the altar and then, after the cancer took her, transferred his gambling debts onto a sixteen-year-old girl’s shoulders.

I just wanted normal. Wanted it so badly it made my chest ache.

And this three hundred thousand euros would buy me that life.

My fingers moved before my brain could catch up:

Anastasia: Sure! I’d love to. When?

The response came immediately:

Damien Romanov: Friday. 8 PM. I’ll send you the address now. Wear something beautiful, Lyubimaya.

Did he just call me his beloved?

Then:

Damien Romanov: I can’t wait to finally see you, Anastasia.

I stared at the message for a long moment. Then closed the app, gathered my things, and walked out of the café into the gray Moscow afternoon.

I have three days to prepare. Three days to create the perfect version of Anastasia Sokolova. Three days to plan my exit strategy down to the last detail.

Three days until I break my most important rule.

*************************************************************************

NIKOLAI DRAGUNOV

In my top-floor office with a view of Moscow's financial district, I placed my phone on the desk and reclined in my leather chair. The city stretched out beneath the floor-to-ceiling windows like a vast domain, which, in many respects, it truly was.

“She agreed,” I said.

Dmitri Kozlov looked up from the financial reports he had been reviewing. The Brigadier of the Dragunov Bratva was a mountain of a man, all muscle and scar tissue, yet his gaze was piercing as he assessed me.

“The girl? The one who’s been scamming you for three months?”

“Yeah. She has a name. Anasta—Irina Volkov. She has no idea I knew her real name. What’s the fun if I spill that out anyway.” My lips curled into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “And she thinks I’m some Damien Romanov, a fucking lonely businessman with more money than sense.”

Dmitri frowned. “I still don’t understand why you let her take the money. Fifty thousand today alone. Four hundred and sixty-three thousand total. That’s not pocket change,Kolya.”

Kolya. A childhood nickname he calls me and gets away with it.

“No,” I agreed, my gaze distant. “It’s not.”

I’d discovered her six months ago, quite by accident. One of my lower-level associates had mentioned being scammed by a woman online. The man had been embarrassed, ashamed, wanted to hide his mistake. But I, Nikolas had been curious.

I had my people trace her digital footprint. It had taken weeks, she was good, exceptionally good, but eventually I found her. Irina Volkov, twenty-four years old, living in a rundown apartment in the Tekstilshchiki district. No criminal record. No family except a stepfather she’d fled two years ago. And a debt of five hundred thousand dollars to some particularly nasty loan sharks.

A normal man would have gone to the police. I wasn’t a normal man. I was Nikolai Dragunnov.

Instead, I created a profile. Damien Romanov, successful but lonely, looking for connection. I’d made myself the perfect mark, wealthy enough to be worth her time, vulnerable enough to seem safe.

And then I waited for her to find me.

She had, within a week.

“You know, you’re playing a dangerous game,” Dmitri said. This is not the first time he’d said that. “What if she runs? What if she disappears after Friday?”

“She won’t.” My voice laced with certainty. “I’m offering her three hundred thousand euros. That’s more than enough to pay off her debt and start over. She’ll come. And then...” I paused, considering. “Then we’ll see what happens.”

“And if she tries to scam you at dinner?”

I smiled — a cold thing, sharp as winter frost. “Then I’ll let her. One more time. I want to see how far she’ll go. How well she can lie to my face. I want to see her face.”

“You’re enjoying this,” Dmitri observed.

I considered the accusation. Actually, in my world, everything was predictable. My enemies moved in expected patterns. My allies played their parts. The business operated smoothly, with violence serving as just another instrument, while women were viewed as either assets or expendable.

But Irina Volkov? She was chaos wrapped in intelligence. Every message from her was a lie. Meticulously crafted, yet somehow the conversations I had with her had been the most honest ones I’d had in years. She was stealing from me, yes, but she was also the first person in a decade to surprise me.

To make me feel.

“Yes,” I admitted. “I am.”

“And after dinner? What’s next after you’ve had your fun?”

I turned to look at my second in command. “After dinner, Dmitri, I’m going to make sure Irina Volkov understands that you can’t con the king of the underworld.”

“You’re going to kill her?” There was no judgment in Dmitri’s voice, just curiosity.

“No. I’m going to keep her.”

Dmitri stared at me for a long moment. Then he shook his head and returned to his reports, muttering something in Russian that I chose to ignore.

I turned back to the window, my reflection ghosting over the city below. In my pocket, my phone buzzed with another message from Irina, no, from Anastasia.

Thanking me again. Expressing her excitement about Friday.

All lies, of course.

But that was fine. I’d been lying too.

Two liars circling each other. But I held all the cards. I always win in the end.

Always.