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Thirty-two years old and already the trauma surgeon they call when nobody else can stop the bleeding.

And her family.

Sokolov.

I should have made the connection in that hospital room. She’s cousin to Nikolai and Maksim Sokolov. Bratva royalty, two steps removed—close enough to be loved and close enough to be guarded.

The princess who chose scalpels over the family business—and the family let her, because even wolves understand the value of keeping one of their own clean.

She lives behind layers of security most men can’t even see. Drivers who are not just drivers.

Doormen who carry.

A cousin’s shadow stretched protectively over every hospital, every coffee shop, every block of her carefully ordinary life.

Untouchable.

The word should have ended it. Instead, it lit the fuse.

I know her now. I know she takes her coffee black until the third night shift in a row, when she surrenders to sugar.

I know she runs the Hudson greenway on Sunday mornings, earbuds in, dangerously oblivious.

I know she cried outside the hospital for eleven minutes last March after losing a nineteen-year-old on her table, then she fixed her makeup and went back inside to finish her shift.

I know the playlist, the takeout orders, her favorite clothing store, and the bodega cat she greets by name.

I know everything except what her hair feels like out of that ponytail. What her mouth tastes like. What sound she’d make with my name on her lips—my real name.

I’ve had beautiful women. Powerful women. Women who came to me freely and women who calculated their way into my bed, and not one of them ever kept me up at night.

Not one of them pulled me out of the dark with nothing but a voice.

Not one of them saved my life then simply forgot me.

Moved on.

Went back to saving other men like I was nothing remarkable at all.

She doesn’t even remember I exist.

I remember enough for both of us.

So I wait. I watch. I plan. Patience is the only virtue I’ve ever possessed, and I’ve sharpened it for two years on her name. The Sokolovs can’t guard her forever.

Somewhere, sometime, there will be a crack in all that armor—an opening, an opportunity.

When it comes, I will take her.

No matter what it costs.

No matter who bleeds.

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KATERINA

Twelve hours.