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“I am the head of this family,” Nikolai snaps, but I roll my eyes. Blah blah blah, Kolya.

“And I don’t answer to you.” The words snap out sharper than I intend, and I sigh, rubbing my nose with my hand at Nikolai’s silence. “I love you. I know what this is. I know losing control of anything makes you batty. But I am not negotiating this. If they reach out, I answer.”

I can practically hear Nikolai’s molars grinding together, but it doesn’t bother me.

Nikolai has not been told no by anyone other than Maksim in a decade, and I’ll wait his little temper tantrum out.

Even though I rejected the Bratva life, I know you never, ever speak first when there’s silence.

“Security around your home,” he says at last and he sounds pissed. “Around the clock. That’s not negotiable, Katya,” he says severely, as if he can tell my mouth has dropped open in outrage. “They stay out of sight, but if anything feels wrong—if anyone so much as approaches you aggressively—my men move in, and you do not argue.”

I puff out a breath. “Fine. That’s fair.” It is, and we both know it’s also a surrender. I’m gracious enough not to gloat. “I’ll call you the second I hear anything. I promise.”

“How are you getting home?”

I roll my eyes. Oh, here we go. Nikolai is going to lose his shit. “The train, like a normal human⁠—”

“Absolutely not,” Nikolai bellows and I quickly pull the phone away from my ear before I suffer lasting hearing damage. “A car is already waiting for you at the main entrance. It’s a black Mercedes. Yuri is driving.”

My jaw drops at his audacity. “You sent a car before you even—” The line clicks dead and I make a disbelieving sound. I pull the phone away from my ear and glare at the screen.

I can honestly feel my cousin’s smugness even though we aren’t talking anymore. I stomp toward the exit. “Of course you did, you arrogant, meddling—” A woman waiting by the elevators raises her eyebrows. I curse my cousin the rest of the way to the lobby in Russian, under my breath, because some sentiments require the mother tongue.

A janitor guides his mop in slow figure eights across the marble as I walk toward the exit.

The gift shop is dark behind its grate with its sad balloons pressed against the glass and I catch my reflection in the long window by the exit and almost don’t recognize her: a pale woman with wild eyes, holding her phone like it might detonate.

I make myself slow down and unclench my jaw.

Twenty minutes ago, my biggest problem was leftover pad Thai and trashy TV.

“Good morning, Dr. Sokolov,” the security guard says from his desk, not looking up from his crossword. “Get some rest.”

“Thanks, Bruce. Good morning to you, too.” My voice comes out astonishingly normal, which I’m super proud of.

The early morning air hits me at the entrance and I take a deep breath, watching as people rush by on their way to work.

Cabs streak yellow past the ambulance bay.

A cluster of nurses laugh on their smoke break under the awning’s halo of light.

A man walks a dog while someone on a bicycle speeds by. The familiar electric ordinariness of a city that never quite sleeps.

Then it happens.

The hairs on the back of my neck lift, like something is dragging a current up my spine.

Someone is watching me.

I whirl around, heart slamming, gaze raking the street.

The nurses.

The dog walker.

A couple arguing over a phone screen.

Steam rising from a manhole, gilded by the weak morning light.