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The hallway tilts slightly.

I slide down onto the bench because my legs suddenly aren’t reliable.

Seraphina Santoro. I’ve never met her but I’m friends with her mother, Emma, on Instagram and I see Emma post about her daughter all the time.

She has Emma’s dimples and Leo’s dark eyes and this hiccupping little giggle that I’ve heard in videos.

Emma recently shared a photo of Seraphina and Leo where Leo was sitting on the floor, a plastic crown on his head and surrounded by stuffed animals while he pretended to drink tea as Seraphina looked on. It was adorable.

Now she’s gone in under thirty seconds. From Maksim’s house.

I avoid my family’s world like the plague, but you don’t grow up Sokolov without knowing certain truths.

And the truth is this: my cousins are paranoid in a way that borders on pathology.

Nikolai once made me move apartments because a neighbor’s boyfriend had a record.

My brownstone has windows that could stop a rifle round and a door that belongs on a bank vault—his housewarming gift, installed whether I wanted it or not.

Maksim’s Westchester address may look like a home, but I know it’s a fortress with throw pillows.

Whoever got through that isn’t some opportunist.

This is an enemy.

A serious one.

“Emma,” I whisper, my heart going out to the woman. I’ve always found her to be delightful. “Leo. God, they must be—” I can’t even finish it and shake my head, a lump in my throat. I’ve delivered the worst news in the world to parents in waiting rooms, so I know what their faces look like. “Kolya, this is horrible, and I’m so sorry, but…why are you calling me? I’m a surgeon. Unless someone’s bleeding, I don’t see what I can possibly⁠—”

He hesitates and that immediately puts me on edge.

Nikolai Sokolov does not hesitate.

Nikolai decides, announces, and expects the world to rearrange itself accordingly.

The silence on the line lasts maybe three seconds and it frightens me more than everything he’s said so far combined.

“A message arrived after midnight,” he says finally. “The people who took Seraphina are willing to negotiate her return. But they will only negotiate with one person.” A breath. “Dr. Katerina Sokolov. And you must come alone.”

The hallway noise drops away. The buzzing lights, the distant monitors, all of it swallowed by a high thin ringing in my ears.

Me.

“That’s—” My voice comes out wrong, so I try again. “That doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know anyone in your world. I’ve spent my entire adult life making sure of it. Why would kidnappers want—what could they possibly want with me?”

“I don’t know yet.” I can hear what it costs him to say those words, because Nikolai not knowing something is a personal insult to his entire existence. “But I’m not waiting to find out. I’m sending a car. You’re coming to the estate tonight, where I can protect you, and we’ll handle⁠—”

“No.” The word bursts out of me.

“Katerina,” Nikolai says my full name slowly, in the voice that makes hardened criminals reconsider their life choices. “This is not a discussion.”

“You’re right, it’s not.” I’m on my feet again, pacing the hallway, and a passing nurse gives me a wide berth. “A two year old is out there somewhere, scared out of her mind, away from her mother, and the people holding her will only talk to me. If you lock me away in your fortress, what happens to her, Kolya? They asked for me. That means I need to be reachable.”

“It means it’s a trap.” His control is slipping now. I can hear the Russian bleeding into his vowels the way it does when he’s truly furious. “Think, Katya. Think. Someone breaches Maksim’s security like it’s nothing, and their one demand is the single member of this family who lives outside our protection? They don’t want to negotiate, Katerina. They want you. Leverage against this family, or worse. You’d be handing yourself to them gift-wrapped.”

“Then they can have me gift-wrapped,” I snap. I notice my hands shaking but I can’t bring myself to care. “Because here’s what you don’t get to decide: if there is anything—anything—I can do to bring that little girl home to her parents, I’m doing it. I do whatever it takes. That’s my job, Kolya. I just did it today. This is my whole life, everything I’ve trained for. You don’t get to take it away from me because you’re scared.”

Only a few hours ago I stood over a dying girl and refused to stop. The photo of Seraphina and her father pops in my mind, and my resolve sets.