Page 2

My heart dropped down into the pit of my stomach.

She lay on the floor between the couch and the kitchen, one arm folded beneath her body and the other stretched toward the overturned table. Blood had soaked through the front of her pale blue sweater, spreading beneath her in a dark pool that had already reached the edge of the rug she had forced me to carry up three flights of stairs because she had found it at a market and refused to accept that it was too large for the room.

Tears burned in my eyes as I dropped beside her and pressed both hands over the wound.

Her eyes moved toward me.

“Mila—my love,” I rasped.

I knew where to press. I knew how to clear an airway, how to slow blood loss, how to tell the difference between a wound that could wait and one that required a surgeon within minutes. I had treated men in alleys, warehouses, and back rooms where calling an ambulance would have caused more problems than the bullet itself. Sometimes first aid bought life. Sometimes it only bought seconds.

Knowing all that would do nothing to save her. Her body told me the truth before my mind accepted it.

I knew that she was dying.

Her fingers closed weakly around my wrist.

“Seryozha,” she breathed. “My Sergei.”

“I’m here.”

It was a useless thing to say. I was there. I’d finally arrived. I’d killed one of them, wounded another, and put my hands exactly where they needed to be.

None of it mattered, because I was too late.

Her lips parted as if she wanted to say something else, but whatever it was would never be heard. Her eyes stayed on mine as the strength left her fingers, and then the slight pressure around my wrist disappeared completely.

I kept pressing on the wound as the world tilted around me.

Mila had been the only future I had ever allowed myself to believe in. She knew exactly what kind of man I was. She knew why I checked the windows, why I listened for the deadbolt, why I never sat with my back to the room. She knew me as the man I was and still called me her Seryozha.

Her blood slipped hot between my fingers while the future I had built around her collapsed without sound, and my heart broke with every breath she didn’t take.

The sirens were louder now, coming from more than one direction. Footsteps pounded through the stairwell below, heavy and fast, and even through the ringing in my ears, I could tell at least three men were coming up. Maybe they were Volkov reinforcements. Maybe it was the police. Most likely both. The room separated itself into pieces of information while I stayed on my knees beside the woman I loved.

Three men were approaching from the main stairwell. There was an escape route through the kitchen window and four rounds left in my weapon. There was too much blood on the floor. There wasn’t any possible way to carry her out without losing the use of at least one hand.

I could stay. I could kill the first man who came through the door, maybe the second if he was slow. The Volkovs or the police could handle whatever remained of me after that.

It seemed fair.

The apartment door opened, and I raised my gun.

“Easy, Morozov.”

But the voice wasn’t Russian; it was Italian, commanding, and way too calm.

Raffaele Bellandi stood in the doorway with two armed men behind him. He looked as though he had walked out of a private dinner party and straight into hell without allowing either place to wrinkle his suit. His hair was dark then, save for the first streaks of silver at his temples, and the pistol in his hand had a suppressor fixed to the barrel. One of his men turned and fired into the stairwell. A body struck the wall below us, followed by shouting and the scrape of shoes against old wood.

Raffaele looked at Mila. Then he looked at me.

“We have to leave now,” he said softly.

“No,” I replied, my voice flat.

“The police will seal this block in less than a minute.”

“I’m not leaving her.”