IF CHIJIOKE HAD KNOWN his first day as a taxi driver would end with a gun to his ribs and a woman whispering threats in a thick Russian accent, he might have stayed in Nigeria. Might have listened to his mother's tear-filled pleas or his sister's warnings about the American dream being nothing but a glorified trap.

But hindsight was useless. He was here now—stuck in her game, and he had no idea what the next move would be.

The day had begun like a dream—one he was finally living. New York smelled of gasoline, burnt pretzels, and desperation—a city where ambition rotted faster than it bloomed.

The yellow cab hummed beneath Chiji's grip as he eased into Manhattan traffic, his fingers tense around the steering wheel. Sweat gathered at his temples despite the bitter January wind. This was his first real job in America—a rental cab paid for with half his savings, the other half set aside for rent in his cramped Bronx apartment where the radiator clanked all night like a prisoner's morse code.

His father's last words at the airport haunted him with each turn of the wheel. "You think that place is easy? Think you can go there and become millionaire? You will suffer, my son. You will see." The old man had spat the words like bullets, each one designed to pierce Chiji's determination.

Chiji clenched his jaw until pain bloomed along his temples and focused on the road. The endless stream of pedestrians darted between cars like schools of fish, oblivious to the weight of his dreams pressing down on his shoulders.

He'd prove the old man wrong. Had to.

His first fare stumbled in reeking of Wall Street—a broker in a thousand-dollar suit who treated his AirPods like a megaphone, barking about "insider trading bullshit" that Chiji carefully erased from his memory.

The second was a harried mom with a toddler whose screams could shatter bulletproof glass.

The third, a tourist couple who thought tipping in pennies and nickels was perfectly acceptable, their condescending smiles worth more than their spare change. The radio crackled between fares—"...Russian gangs clashing in Brooklyn again, police urging vigilance..."—but Chiji tuned it out, too focused on the meter.

By the fourth passenger, he had settled into a rhythm—drive, nod, collect money, repeat. The city's grid became familiar, its patterns predictable. He was learning its language, one fare at a time.

The fifth passenger stumbled into the backseat, barefoot and bleeding. The metallic scent of blood mixed with expensive perfume filled his cab—jasmine and copper, luxury and danger.

Chiji's breath caught in his chest like a fist.

She wasn't just hurt—she looked like she'd escaped something straight out of a nightmare. A deep gash carved across her upper arm, turning the sleeve of her designer black dress into a grotesque artwork of bloody blooms. Strands of damp, white-blond hair stuck to her face. And her eyes—icy blue, sharp despite the pain—locked onto him in the rearview mirror like a loaded gun.

"Drive."

Her accent was thick. Russian, definitely Russian, with that steel-edged melody to her consonants.

Chiji's fingers tightened on the wheel until his knuckles ached. Not my business. I should tell her to get out. First day on the job, and already my ancestors are out to jinx me like this?

She leaned forward, and the cab filled with the scent of her—expensive perfume, fear-sweat, and that underlying copper tang. Her trembling fingers pressed against his shoulder, five points of desperate heat through his thin shirt. "You will drive," she murmured, her voice softer now, but with a steel edge beneath the silk. "I'll make it worth your while. Just—go."

His throat felt tight, conscience warring with self-preservation. A bleeding woman begging for help? His mother's voice echoed in his head, sharp with disappointment: "I raised you better than to abandon someone in need, Chijioke." She would kill him if he left this woman here, and the ghost of her disappointment would haunt him longer than any trouble this stranger might bring.

With a curse that would have earned him a slap back home, he threw the cab into drive and merged into traffic, feeling the weight of consequences settling onto his shoulders.

Bad decision #1.

She didn't speak for the first few minutes, just sat there in his backseat like a wounded swan, clutching her arm where blood seeped between her manicured fingers. Her breaths came uneven and sharp, little hitches of pain she couldn't quite suppress. In the rearview mirror, he watched her eyes dart from window to window, scanning for threats in the shadows between streetlights.

"Are you okay, miss? Do you need to call someone—anyone? The cops maybe?" The words tumbled from his mouth before he could stop them, concern overriding his instinct for self-preservation. In Nigeria, his mother had always said his heart was too big for his own good.

"I'm fine. Thank you." Ice crystals in her voice, warning him away from that line of questioning.

"Are you sure? You look really—"

"I need you for the day. I'll pay ten thousand dollars."

The words hit him like a punch below the belly. His hands jerked on the wheel, and the cab swerved, nearly kissing the bumper of a delivery truck. A symphony of horns filled the night air.

Chiji laughed. Actually laughed. A dry, humorless sound that scraped against his throat like sandpaper. "Ten what?"

"Thousand." She leaned forward again, her breath ghosting against his ear. "Cash."

Silence filled the cab, thick and suffocating. His logical brain—the one that had gotten him through engineering school, the one that had planned every detail of his American dream—screamed: NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. Nothing good comes with that kind of money. Nothing clean.

But... ten thousand dollars? That was four months of rent in his roach-infested Bronx apartment. That was his entire savings doubled. That was a chance to prove his father wrong about America eating him alive.

She turned her head, watching him with those arctic blue eyes, her expression as unreadable as a locked safe. Blood had begun to dry on her arm, turning from scarlet to rust. "You don't have to do anything dangerous. Just drive."

Just drive.

Chiji swallowed hard, his throat clicking in the silence. The city lights painted her face in alternating shadows and harsh fluorescence, making her look both vulnerable and dangerous—a wounded predator backed into a corner.

He knew she was lying. Ten thousand dollars for "just driving" was the kind of fiction that ended with someone in jail. Or worse.

He should have said no. Should have remembered his sister's warnings about American streets being paved with fool's gold. Should have listened to that voice in his head screaming about self-preservation.

But he didn't.

His silence was her green light, and she exhaled with a soft, "Spasibo," the Russian word heavy with gratitude—and maybe a warning.

Bad decision #2. But at least this one came with a price tag.

An hour later, he parked outside a skeletal warehouse in Brooklyn, where the streetlights flickered and the air tasted of rust and salt from the nearby pier. She slipped out, disappearing into the shadows between corrugated metal walls. A muffled thud—like a body hitting concrete—drifted from inside, and Chiji's gut twisted. Too quiet. Too long.

Then—gunfire cracked the night, sharp and relentless. She burst out, bare feet pounding broken concrete, screaming, "Drive!" He floored it, engine snarling, as she dove into the backseat. Bullets chewed the air behind them, and the back windshield shattered, raining glass like jagged confetti.

Chiji swerved hard, heart pounding so violently he could taste it. The cab fishtailed into an intersection, tires screaming against asphalt. The stench of burning rubber joined the chaos—blood, cordite, fear-sweat.

What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck? The thought spun through his mind like a broken record.

In the rearview mirror, two men stormed out of the warehouse like demons from hell. One clutched a pistol, sleek and professional. The other—Jesus Christ—shouldered an AK-47 that looked too familiar to be legal. Both fired with casual efficiency.

The Russian woman stayed calm as arctic waters despite the storm around them. She leaned forward, her breath cool against his neck. "The bear dances, but the forest burns," she murmured—a strange Russian saying that made no sense but sounded like a threat.

Traffic lights melted into blurry streaks of red and green as he wove through the city, the cab's tires kissing parked cars with millimeters to spare. The engine groaned under the abuse, but Chiji didn't let up. Couldn't.

Another shot split the night. Another crack of breaking glass.

"Are they still behind us?" The words scraped past his lips, raw and desperate.

She peered out the spiderwebbed remnants of the back window. A slow smile curved her blood-red lips. "Not anymore."

His fingers stayed locked on the wheel. "You're sure?"

She exhaled, almost musical, and leaned back against the leather seat. Her legs spread with casual confidence, dress riding up pale thighs, like she hadn't just starred in a street-level war. "They won't follow. Not after what I left them."

His stomach twisted into knots. "What did you do?"

She tilted her head, studying him with those arctic eyes that saw straight through to the fear beneath. "The wolf doesn't explain itself to the lamb," she said, her smile chilling.

The silence that followed was heavy as lead.

Finally, Chiji pulled into an empty side street where shadows gathered thick as smoke. He cut the engine, leaving them in darkness broken only by distant streetlights. He turned to her, jaw tight enough to crack teeth. "That's it. I'm done. I don't care how much you're paying—I'm not dying for this."

She sighed, weary and amused, and reached into her purse.

Chiji stiffened, muscles coiling. If she pulls a gun—

She pulled out a stack of crisp hundred-dollar bills instead.

Ten thousand, cash. The smell of new money filled the cab, mixing with gunpowder and adrenaline.

She dropped it on the center console between them. "You earned this."

Chiji stared at it. The stack pulsed in the dim light, a beacon of temptation and trouble.

His heart screamed: Say no. Run. Get out while you can.

His wallet screamed louder: Say yes. Think of home. Think of proving them wrong.

He met her gaze in the rearview mirror—those arctic eyes, unyielding, promising salvation and ruin. His mother's face flashed in his mind, then his father's, their doubts echoing.

Then she leaned forward, pressing her lips to his ear. Her breath was warm, carrying the scent of mint. "You're in this now, Chizh."

Chizh. The way she purred the Russian diminutive of his name made his blood run hot and cold at once.

Then—cold steel pressed against his ribs, the barrel of her gun kissing his side through his thin shirt.

A gun. Of course. The money was just the honey in the trap.

His throat went desert-dry, pulse thundering in his ears. The night's choices collapsed into this moment. Fear roared through him, but beneath it, something darker flickered—something alive, a spark he couldn't name.

"Drive. Please." That last word made it worse—the courtesy of it, the gentleness, as if they were partners now, not predator and prey.

Chiji exhaled slowly, a man stepping off a cliff. His eyes flicked from the bills promising salvation, to the gun promising consequences, to her—this deadly angel who'd hijacked his dream and turned it into a noir nightmare.

One choice.

Obey.

He turned the key in the ignition, the engine's purr mixing with his resigned sigh. The dashboard lights illuminated her smile—satisfied, knowing, almost kind.

And with that quarter-turn of metal against metal, he sold his soul to a Russian girl who could be anyone from a mob princess to a government ghost. The devil wore Dior and spoke with an accent that made his name sound like poetry, and it was far too late to refuse her now.

The night stretched ahead like an open road to hell, and Chiji had just volunteered to be the driver.

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