1
NATALIA
There’sa body on the beach.
My feet stop before my brain catches up, and for one horrible second I’m back in my father’s warehouse, watching his men drag out what used to be a person.
Nope. Not going there now. Move, Natalia.
I’m running toward them before I can talk myself out of it, sand kicking up behind me. The beach stretches empty in both directions, nothing but gray water and pale sand and the kind of silence that only exists in the off-season. No one around for miles, which is the whole point of stashing your daughter on a remote barrier island.
No witnesses, no complications, no chance she’ll do something inconvenient like have a thought of her own. Keep the merchandise in good condition until the Colombians are ready for delivery. That’s all I am.
The man is on his back, waves lapping at his legs, and up close the blood is worse than I thought. A gash on his temple, angryand deep. One wrist swollen and discolored. Clothes soaked through, covered in sand and seaweed and God knows what else. Black t-shirt, black jacket, black pants. Nothing that screams “here’s my identity and how I ended up maybe-dead on your beach.”
My knees hit the sand. Two fingers to his neck.
Please be alive. Please don’t make me deal with a corpse today. I am so not equipped for that.
The pulse is there. Slow, but there.
His eyelids flutter, and suddenly I’m staring into a pair of dark brown eyes that can’t quite focus. He squints up at me, brow furrowed, and tries to shove himself upright. His movements are sloppy as hell. Drunk-looking. The sound that comes out of his mouth isn’t even close to a word.
“Hey.” I press my hands to his shoulders, keeping him down. “Don’t move. You’re hurt.”
He blinks at me. Like I’m a math problem he can’t solve. Not that he looks like he remembers what math is.
“What...” He looks past me at the sky, then down at the sand, then back to my face. Irritation flickers through the confusion. “Where the hell am I?”
“On the beach. Moratoc Island, North Carolina. The middle of nowhere, basically.” I keep my voice calm. Like I actually know what I’m doing here instead of just playing doctor with knowledge I scraped together from YouTube and the Bratva’s back-room surgeon. “You’ve got a nasty head wound. Do you remember what happened?”
His eyes narrow with effort. Like he’s reaching for something and his fingers keep slipping.
“No.” The word comes out rough and frustrated. “I don’t... everything’s fucking fuzzy.”
“That’s normal with a head injury. It’ll probably clear up.” I’m not sure if I’m reassuring him or myself at this point. “Can you tell me your name?”
I watch him reach for it.
Watch the frustration shift to concentration. His jaw works. His eyes go distant as he digs through whatever’s left inside his skull.
Then his whole face changes. The irritation drains out, replaced by something rawer. His hands ball into fists against the wet sand. His breathing goes shallow and fast.
“I don’t know.” The words come out like they’re being ripped from him. “I can’t... what the fuck? I can’t remember.”
Well. Shit.
“Head injuries can cause temporary memory loss. I’m sure it’ll come back.” My pulse is hammering, but I keep my voice even.
Calm. You’re calm, Natalia. Totally calm. You’ve read about this in textbooks. You’ve watched Dr. Volkov assess dozens of concussions. You’ve just never done it yourself.
“Temporary.” He says it like he’s trying to make himself believe it. But I can see the fear bleeding through the cracks. The bone-deep terror of reaching for your own name and grabbing nothing but air.
I know what I’m looking at. The disorientation, the memory loss, the pupils that aren’t tracking right. Classic concussion. Possibly severe. The kind that needs imaging to rule out a bleed.
He needs a hospital.
And that’s almost funny, because I can’t take him to a hospital.
