The moment the engine started, music filled the car. A man singing about a love so vast it left no room for another. A kind of devotion he would never find again. I almost let myself sink into the soulfulness of the lyrics, the way the melody seemed to bleed into the endless snow stretching beyond the windshield.
Then he shut it off.
I turned toward him, caught off guard. His jaw was tight, eyes fixed on the road ahead, hands steady on the wheel. Something about the song had clearly unsettled him.
I hadn't even known it had snowed during the night. Either way, I let my eyes drifted around our surroundings, wondering how easy it would've been to unlock this door and throw myself out into the white blur, rushing past us.
"Don't even think about it," he snapped, as if he had reached directly into my thoughts. "If frostbite or hypothermia didn't get you first, then starvation would. We're far from civilization. You don't even know which country you're in."
I clenched my teeth, folding my arms across my chest. For a reckless moment, I wondered if knocking him unconscious could work. If I could just take the wheel, abandon him somewhere, find the nearest village and disappear. That should do it.
"Need I remind you," he said calmly without even looking at me, "that you have nowhere to go?"
My spine stiffened.
"You haven't exactly completed your mission," he continued, voice even, almost thoughtful. "I'm still alive. Do you really think your grandfather would welcome you back with open arms?"
He was right. The truth settled heavily in my chest. Even if I did manage to vanish, they could still hunt me down. Either by my grandfather's men or Barinov's. There was no safe return waiting for me anywhere.
I exhaled through my nose, the fight draining into something quieter, colder. "Where are you taking me, then?"
"You'll see."
Silence returned, thick and deliberate, stretching between us like a held breath. Snow blurred past the windows, endless and unforgiving.
I glanced at him. "What is it with you and music?"
"I prefer to drive in silence."
The words were clipped. Final, but the tension they left behind was anything but quiet.
"You finally changed your hair," he said after awhile.
"I thought that was what you wanted," I said, recalling the day he had tossed the box of hair dye at me, telling me to change it back. Because I reminded him too much of his missing wife.
"I did," he said shortly, then cleared his throat.
"You don't look pleased," I blurted, then immediately regretted it.
Lately, I've been losing my footing around him. My words slipping out before I could cage them, revealing more than I should've. Still, I forced myself to leaned back into the heated seat, trying to steady the unfamiliar coil in my stomach. The quiet sense that something between us is beginning to shift.
The corner of his mouth lifted, almost into a smile. "Were you doing it to please me?"
The question landed softer than it should have. More intimate.
My lips pressed together. "No."
His gaze flicked toward me for a brief second before returning to the road. Something unreadable passing through his expression. Amusement, perhaps.
Or something more dangerous.
"Good," he said quietly. "I'd hate to think you were changing yourself for me."
The silence that followed was different this time. Warmer. Changed.
And for the first time, I wasn't sure which of us was more aware of it.
The car rolled to a stop at the edge of a cliff. The ground buried beneath an untouched blanket of snow. My spine went rigid.
My hands curled into fists at my sides as I turned to face him, my breath catching. Is this it? Is this where he finally kills me?
"I'm testing out a theory," he said calmly, already unbuckling his seatbelt. "I ran a background check on you not long after the night we've spent together. Want to know what I found?"
Before I could answer, he reached into his coat.
The gun came out smoothly. The barrel lifted until it was leveled at my head.
I froze.
Over the years, I've stared down at the mouth of a gun more times than I cared to count. It shouldn't have shaken me. It shouldn't have made my pulse thunder in my ears, or my throat tightening the way it did.
But this one did.
"Three years ago, you disappeared during a mission," he said, voice steady, almost detached. "When you came back, you had no memories of where you went. No past you could account for. What that fucking mission even was." His eyes never left mine. "Right around the same time my wife disappeared."
"If you're suggesting that I had anything to do with that—" I started.
"I'm not," he cut in sharply.
The pause that followed was worse than the accusation.
"Get out of the car," he said, flicking the gun toward the door.
It wasn't a threat. It was an order. And somehow, that frightened me more than the weapon he was holding in his hand.
I didn't hesitate.
The door swung open, and the cold hit me instantly, sharp and merciless. I stepped out, my boots sinking halfway into the snow, the ground unstable beneath me. The wind clawed at my coat, stealing the breath from my lungs.
A heartbeat later, he joined me.
The car door shut behind him with a solid click, final and deliberate. The gun never wavered as he lifted it again, the barrel aligning with my head as if it belonged there.
Slowly, I raised my hands.
The silence stretched between us, wide and dangerous. Broken only by the distant howl of the wind and the soft crunch of snow beneath his boots as he closed the distance.
"Well?" I said, lifting my chin despite the cold biting into my skin and the pain tightening my chest. "What are you waiting for? I have to admit—" my gaze flicked briefly to the cliff behind him, "—it's a poetic choice of location."
"Shut up," he said, but there was no real heat in it. If anything, his lips curved slightly, the expression unsettling in its calm. It startled me into silence.
"I'm not here to kill you."
I arched a brow. "Oh? Then what is this supposed to be?"
"A test," he replied, his eyes never leaving mine. With deliberate slowness, he clicked the safety on. The sound was sharp in the quiet. Then he tossed the gun toward me.
I caught it just before it hit the snow, the cold metal biting into my palm.
My breath stalled.
"I'm giving you a chance to finish what you came here to do," he said, spreading his arms wide, chest open, utterly exposed. Like a challenge. An invitation. "Go on. Kill me."
The wind whipped past us, tugging at my coat, stinging my skin but he didn't move. Didn't so much as blink. He just stood there with his arms open, those dark green eyes locked on mine, steady and unafraid, like he was daring me to strip myself bare. To choose.
Him. Or myself.
"You're insane," I whispered, my grip tightening as I lifted the gun, the weight of it suddenly unbearable. Heavy.
The click of the safety snapping off sounded obscene in the quiet.
"Only for you," he said, his voice low, almost tender. Almost like a confession.
My finger curled.
And I pulled the trigger.