Chasing Shadows 12: Sweet Dreams/Enjoy The Silence

Shadows end not in the dark but in light.

Vienna, Austria, September 1999

“New York City?” Hannah’s voice cracked as she paced the length of the living room, her hands wringing together, her knuckles going white from the pressure. The townhouse felt suffocating, heavy with the weight of a life being packed away in real time. The walls, the furniture, the paintings—everything in the room suddenly felt like it had already become a relic of a past they wouldn’t be able to return to.

Viktor stood by the dining table, his movements careful and calculated as he packed his briefcase. His fingers moved with precision, neatly stacking passports, cash, and a small pistol into place, securing them like they were just another set of official documents for his work at the Defense Ministry. But I saw the way his jaw clenched, the tightness in his shoulders, the way his fingers hesitated just for a second longer than necessary. This wasn’t just a routine packing job. He was shutting down his entire life, sealing it away behind a brass lock and a snap of leather.

The Rolfe girls sat on the floor, quiet and still in the corner of the room. They weren’t crying. They weren’t speaking. They just sat there, watching their parents scramble, their small hands twisting the frayed edges of their sweaters. It was the kind of stillness that wasn’t natural for children their age—the kind that only came when a kid had spent too long listening to their parents whisper through closed doors late at night, when they had learned to read between the lines of the things they weren’t supposed to hear.

I stood near the window, arms crossed, my voice steady as I laid out the plan. “Take as much cash as you can carry. Your passports. Any jewelry or valuables you can sell if you need to. But do not, under any circumstances, use your credit cards. No banks, no phone calls, nothing that leaves a trace.”

Hannah’s pacing slowed, her breath coming out in sharp, ragged exhales. “But what if—”

“There is no ‘what if.’” I cut her off before the doubt could creep in, before she could talk herself into hesitation. “You go. You don’t stop. You don’t look back.”

Her lips parted like she wanted to argue, but Viktor placed a firm hand on her back, grounding her. She exhaled sharply, nodding, even though I could see the resistance still flickering in her eyes.

Viktor finally turned to face me, his expression carefully neutral, but I knew better. The tension in his shoulders, the tightness around his mouth—he was holding back, keeping everything locked inside because that’s what men like him did. “And once we’re there?”

“You take the last train tonight to Brno.” I kept my voice even, clinical, because I couldn’t afford to let them hear the weight of what I wasn’t saying. “Rent a room at the Hotel Jacob across from the train station. In the morning, you take the first train to Prague. When you get there, you go straight to the airport. No detours. No stops.”

Hannah’s hand hovered over the back of a dining chair, her fingers gripping the edge like she needed something to hold onto. “And then?”

“You book the first flight on TWA to JFK,” I said, my tone brokering no argument. “Cash only. No questions. No hesitation. When you land, there will be a driver waiting for you at baggage claim. He’ll have a sign with your name. He’ll take you to a safe location and set you up with a new life.”

She swallowed hard, her gaze flicking between me and Viktor. She wanted more. More certainty. More guarantees. But I didn’t have anything left to give.

“And we’ll be safe?” The words barely came out, fragile, as if she was afraid of the answer.

I met her eyes. “You have my word.”

It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either. I could get them out of Vienna. I could put them on a plane. I could place them into the hands of people who were supposed to help them disappear. But beyond that? Beyond the airport terminal, beyond the flickering neon signs of New York City?

I didn’t know.

There were too many variables. Too many ways this could go wrong. The people who wanted them dead weren’t going to stop just because I had decided to change the rules. If someone had been willing to hire me to kill them, then there would be others. People with less hesitation. People who wouldn’t blink before pulling the trigger.

Hannah exhaled slowly, her shoulders sagging as she absorbed my words, as if she had just accepted the weight of everything she was about to leave behind.

Viktor closed his briefcase with a decisive snap and turned to his daughters, kneeling in front of them. He placed his hands on their small shoulders, speaking to them in hushed German, his voice thick with something raw and unfamiliar. One of the girls—Emma, I thought—nodded, her lips pressing into a tight line. The other, Lena, just clung to his arm, staring at the floor.

Viktor’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. Then, without another word, he stood and pulled Hannah close, resting his forehead against hers for a brief moment before whispering something I didn’t catch.

It was time.

There was no more room for questions, no space for hesitation. They had to go.

I watched as they moved through the house, the quiet efficiency of people who knew there was no turning back. Viktor securing the last of their belongings. Hannah gathering coats and scarves. The girls slipping into their shoes without complaint.

This was it.

I had spent my life ending people like them. People marked for death. Names on a list. Contracts to be fulfilled.

And yet, here I was, throwing a wrench into the machine.

I wasn’t just saving them. I was burning a bridge I could never rebuild.

As they stepped toward the door, Hannah hesitated, turning back to me one last time. “And what about you?”

I forced a small smirk, lighting a cigarette as I leaned against the wall. “I’ll be just fine.”

It wasn’t an answer. But it was all I had.

They stepped out into the night, disappearing into the city, into the unknown.

And I could only hope they made it. Because if they didn’t—if I had just given them false hope—I knew I would never forgive myself.

Planebruch, Germany, The Future

The safehouse was modern, but not in the way that signified luxury. It wasn’t designed for comfort, for warmth, for people. It was built like a bunker with drywall. The walls were sterile off-white, the furniture a blend of brushed metal and cold leather, the kind of thing that belonged in a high-end prison. It was the sort of place where sound felt swallowed, where nothing echoed. The windows opened out into the surrounding forest clouded in a seemingly never-ending fog that just sort of hung there.

And then there was me.

A storm rattled against the reinforced windows, but the sound was muffled, distant, like the world outside barely existed. The light above the table cast a dull glow, reflecting off the long glass surface, catching the edge of a half-empty coffee cup and the pistol Damon had set down between us an hour ago.

Neither of us had touched it since.

Damon sat across from me, elbows on his knees, fingers woven together, staring at me with the kind of patience that made my skin itch.

He hadn’t spoken for a long time, but I could feel the weight of everything he wanted to say pressing down between us. I could feel it more than the storm, more than the cold creeping in through the walls.

And then he finally broke the silence.

His voice was steady and measured as his eyes locked onto mine. “I still remember what you did in Vienna.”

I didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just let the words sit there, hanging in the still air.

“That was a long time ago,” I said eventually, my voice sharper than I meant it to be.

“But I still remember,” Damon pressed, his gaze unwavering. He wasn’t accusing me. He wasn’t trying to get under my skin. But he was waiting for something—something I wasn’t sure I wanted to give.

I leaned back against the stiff leather chair, my arms crossing over my chest. “Can I tell you something about Vienna?”

Damon tilted his head slightly, watching me the way a man watches a grenade that might still go off. “Shoot.” There was a ghost of a smirk at the corner of his lips. Bitter. Dry.

I exhaled, shaking my head. “It was all bullshit.”

His face didn’t change, but something in his posture shifted. Just a fraction.

“Can you believe,” I went on, my voice lowering, “that after everything I’d done—every person I had killed, every life I had ended—I still didn’t even have the balls to kill myself?”

Damon didn’t flinch. He just waited.

I let out a dry laugh, running a hand over my face. “I never wanted to save them. That family. I wanted to die. I knew the only way out was to blow the contract and wait for someone to come finish me off. They were just… convenient.”

The words felt like acid in my throat, burning their way out.

Outside, the wind howled against the windows, but in here, it was silent.

“And even after I tried to save them,” I continued, voice tightening, “someone found them in the States. Killed the whole family in a house fire.”

Damon inhaled sharply through his nose, but still, he said nothing.

“I wanted to save those kids from becoming orphans,” I muttered, staring down at my hands. “And instead, I doomed them all to hell.” I swallowed, my throat tight. “I might as well have burned them alive myself.”

The confession hung between us like a blade suspended in midair.

Damon exhaled slowly, his fingers tightening where they rested on his knee. His jaw worked for a second, but when he finally spoke, his voice was quieter than before.

“You really believe that?”

I scoffed, shaking my head. “Oh yeah? And what the hell do you know?”

Damon studied me for a long moment before answering. “I don’t think you wanted to die, Sonja.”

I let out another dry laugh, shaking my head. “No? Then what the hell do you think I wanted?”

His eyes flickered with something I couldn’t quite place. “I think you wanted a reason to keep living.”

The words landed like a gut punch, knocking the breath from my lungs for a second longer than I’d admit.

I clenched my jaw, looking away. The walls of the safehouse felt even closer now, pressing in, suffocating. I hated this place. Hated the silence. Hated the way Damon was looking at me like he could see through me, like he understood something I hadn’t even figured out myself.

I reached for the cigarette pack on the table, shaking one loose with my fingers, but my hands weren’t as steady as they should have been.

“We should get some sleep,” I muttered, standing too quickly, the chair scraping against the floor.

Damon didn’t stop me. Didn’t push. He just nodded, slow and deliberate. “Yeah,” he said. “We should.”

But as I turned away, I could still feel his eyes on me.

I wasn’t sure if it was because he still remembered Vienna.

Or because, for the first time, he realized I did too.

Vienna, Austria, September 1999

The Grand Hotel Vienna was a monument to quiet excess—polished marble, heavy chandeliers, the kind of place where the rich whispered their secrets over overpriced cocktails, where the scent of old money clung to the air like expensive cologne. I sat in the wood-paneled bar, nursing a burning cigarette between my fingers, watching the traffic stream down Kärntner Ring.

I had just fouled my contract with the Rolfes so here I was enjoying a drink waiting for what was to come next. But little did I know what was to come next was actually coming to me in person.

“Sweet Dreams” thudded on speakers in the background and hearing this song’s gently pulsing rhythm reminded me of all those nights dancing with the girls at Danceteria. I thought of Liza, of Holly, Nancy and even, Katy. Sweet Dreams for me were being back in those days, before coming into the world I knew now, when the world was new and I was blazing my own trail across it— back when everything seemed so simple.

The ice in my drink shifted with a quiet clink as I traced the rim of the glass with my thumb, lost in thought. This should have been a victory drink—another contract completed, another job done. Instead, it was a drink to forget. To forget how badly I had fucked up with the Rolfes.

Hundreds of thousands down the drain, not because I slipped, but because I had made the choice. I let him go. I let a man and his family walk away with their lives, because for one brief, stupid moment, I imagined a world where someone had done the same for mine.

I exhaled smoke, watching the ghost of it curl toward the ceiling. It shouldn’t have mattered. I was a free agent. No leash, no master, no agency breathing down my neck dictating how I should work. But word traveled fast in our world, and I knew my little display of conscience wouldn’t go unnoticed.

The bartender leaned over the counter, his voice honeyed with polite curiosity. “Etwas zu trinken?/What’s your pleasure?”

I flicked ash into the tray. “Ein schwarzer Russe, bitte./One Black Russian, please.”

A Black Russian. Fitting.

The glass landed in front of me, slick with condensation. I lifted it to my lips, letting the icy bite of vodka meld with the dark richness of the coffee liqueur, letting it settle deep into my chest like something dangerous. Regret had a taste, after all.

I didn’t hear him approach, but I felt him. The kind of presence that only people in my line of work carried—the weight of someone who knew how to be silent until it mattered.

A voice, thick with a cloying Russian accent, cut through the low murmur of the bar. “How fitting. I’ve always wondered if the woman was named for the drink or the other way around?”

I didn’t turn right away. People who asked me stupid questions usually ended up with a knife in their ribs. But when I did glance sideways, I clocked him immediately—tall, well-dressed, the easy arrogance of a man who either knew he was good at his job or was too stupid to realize when he wasn’t. His partner, dark-skinned, sharp-eyed, built like someone who could snap a man’s spine without breaking stride, stood just behind him, close enough to intervene if things went sideways.

I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t typically make small talk outside of working hours.”

“Well, what a coincidence,” he said, sliding onto the barstool beside me. “My partner and I are working, too.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

I would have told him to get lost but something in his look, something in his eyes told me something aside from my gut reaction, his face, his eyes told me a story — one that was all too familiar —- Christopher, was that you? I asked to myself.

“Do we know each other?” I asked.

“I feel like we do,” he said proudly, “We’re clearly both survivors and you know what…?” He asked, “A very wise friend once told me about us survivors…Never let them see how hungry you are. For anything. Food, money, kindness. They see hunger, they see leverage.”

He extended a hand, all easy charm. The kind of charm men used when they wanted something.

“Damon Cole,” he said shaking my hand.

He motioned toward his partner. “My associate, Alex Vallée.”

I didn’t shake his hand. I did, however, curl my fingers around the blade in my pocket, ready to gut him like a fish if this was about to turn into an execution.

“Who sent you?” My voice was steel. Damon smiled. “Let’s call it someone—or a group of someones—who are, shall we say, fans?”

I didn’t flinch, but I bristled. “I prefer to work solo.”

“Well, about that.” He leaned in slightly, voice dropping just enough to let me know I wouldn’t like what he had to say next. “It’s come to our attention that you might’ve gone a little rogue recently… and left quite a mess behind.”

A slow smirk curled at my lips. “And what? You’ve come to finish me off?”

Damon’s grin widened. “I’d be lying if I said your client wasn’t piping mad at you right now. But personally? I admire a girl who goes her own way and so does The Agency.”

I studied him, searching for the angle. There was always an angle.

“So here’s the deal,” he continued, fingers drumming lazily on the bar. “Our agency has had its eye on you for a while. And they’d be willing to buy out your contract with your former client—if you come and join us.”

Just as I allowed myself to give in to these two handsome gentlemen, my eyes drifted across the bar to see a ghost from my past, or rather a widow - she looked up at me smiling the sort of warm familiar smile — the kind that could only be shared between friends—a knowing smile that told me all I needed to know about her and how she was doing. She looked back at me — she looked happy, confident, self-assured and most importantly in her element, I tipped my drink towards her as if to say this one’s for you, Nadia.

Then I smiled, nodded, and turned away from the past—toward whatever came next.

My fingers flexed against the hilt of my knife. I had worked too long, too hard, to stay untethered. No strings. No oversight. And now, here they were, offering me exactly that.

“What do you say?” Vallée finally spoke, his voice smooth, measured. “Best of the best, working with the best?”

I could kill them both. I could walk out of here and disappear. But something in Damon’s expression told me that wouldn’t be so easy.

I eased my grip on the knife, exhaling slowly, and raised my glass. If I was going to sell my soul again, I might as well toast to it.

The thing I’ve learned the most about chasing shadows? Shadows cling to me when I move through the darkness but in those brief moments of sunshine — dancing with the girls, watching with the world as the wall fell, choosing the Rolfes over choosing myself, I found that the shadows disappear in the sunlight. So, now, here I was— The Black Russian meeting the light, and now that I was here I drank to my new colleagues and the challenges ahead - challenges we would face together, united.

The End.