Page 8

Windows, dozens of them, dark and bright, any one of them could⁠—

Nothing. No one.

Just a tired surgeon, alone on a sidewalk, jumping at shadows because her cousin filled her head with kidnappers and traps.

That’s all.

That’s rational. I run a shaky hand through my hair and shake my head.

But the feeling doesn’t pass.

The black Mercedes idles at the curb exactly where Nikolai said it would be, and Yuri—a slab of a man I dimly remember from some long-ago Christmas—is already opening the rear door.

I slide in, and the leather and the soft classical station should be comforting, but they’re not.

“Dr. Sokolov.” Yuri’s eyes find mine in the rearview mirror as he pulls into traffic. “Long time. You were this tall.” He lifts one enormous hand off the wheel, palm flat, somewhere around door-handle height.

“The Christmas with the ice storm,” I tell him. “You taught me to play durak.”

He huffs a laugh. “You cheated.”

I shrug. “I learned fast.” But I notice the way his gaze keeps cutting to the mirrors—side, rear, side again, a steady rotation that has nothing to do with traffic, and the way he takes the long way onto the parkway, doubling back once like he’s checking for a tail.

Nikolai didn’t send me a driver tonight.

He sent me a guard who happens to drive.

I press myself into the corner of the seat and watch the city smear past the window, my mind spinning the same questions in tighter and tighter circles.

Why me? Who looks at a kidnapped child and a Bratva empire and asks for a trauma surgeon?

What could I possibly have that they want?

I’ve never treated anyone connected—not knowingly, anyway.

I keep my two lives in separate, sealed containers.

I’m careful.

I have always been so careful.

The Mercedes turns onto my street, slows in front of my brownstone with its bulletproof windows and its vault of a door, and as Yuri comes around to open my door I catch myself scanning the rooftops.

The parked cars. The shadowed stoops.

The feeling rides up my spine again.

Somewhere out there in the dark, someone is still watching me.

I just can’t see him yet.

2

NICO

She’s home.

The feed from the camera across the street renders her in high definition as the Mercedes pulls away—Katerina Sokolov on her own front steps, keys in hand, framed by the wrought iron railings of a brownstone her cousin armored.