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I keep my hands tight over Demyan’s wound, feeling his shallow, fluttering heartbeat beneath my palms, while listening for a sound from Ruslan. The man is worryingly silent and still.

Cora is already attached to her security detail. It will break her heart if they die.

It will break me if I don’t get her back.

I was supposed to keep her safe. I took her from that party because I was worried about her, but I made her feel small. I told myself that yanking her out of there was for her own good, because I was the protector who knew how to guard what was his. And while I was busy obsessing over threats, I drove her straight into an ambush.

I bragged to Alexei not even an hour ago that finding people is my specialty, yet I’ve let a bunch of fucking amateurs snatch the only person in this world that matters to me, and I have no idea where she is.

I keep my hands pressed against Demyan’s stuttering heartbeat, and the memory arrives before I can stop it. The one I have spent decades trying to outrun.

I told myself it didn’t matter that I walked away, that I was just a boy, and so full of rage and heartache over what Artem was doing to our family that I wasn’t thinking straight.

But it mattered.

I saved Artem from his fifth overdose; the first time I found him unconscious on his bedroom floor when I was twelve. After he recovered he looked me dead in the eye, swore on our mother’s life that he’d get clean, and promised he’d never touch a needle again.

And I believed him. I wanted so desperately to believe my big brother.

So when I walked into his room six weeks later and found him slouched against the foot of his bed, eyes rolled back, skin pale as wax, the tourniquet still tied around his bicep, the shock hit me like ice water.

Then I felt a wave of white-hot, suffocating fury.

He’d lied to me. He had traded our family, our mother’s sanity, and his promise to me for another fix. He was going to destroy us all, and he didn’t even care.

My chest burned with a betrayal so deep like I’d never felt before. I stood in that doorway, my hands trembling, staring at his limp body, and a dark, icy coldness settled over my heart. If you want to die so badly, go ahead. I turned around and walked away, and went outside to kick a football. Just remembering that I did that makes me break out in a cold sweat.

Mom came home twenty minutes later and found him. She screamed for the paramedics. I pretended I’d been outside the entire time.

Now Cora is gone, my hands are covered in blood, and the truth is laid bare. I am not the man who saves people. I am the man who turns his back.

I snatch my phone off the dash, dialing Dragan’s number while keeping my other palm tight against Demyan’s chest.

Dragan takes his sweet fucking time answering. “Zevran. Good. I have work for you. There’s a—”

“Pyotr Simeon. I want every lead you have on him and his associates. Clubs. Warehouses. Everything.”

“I haven’t the first idea where Simeon and his gang operate from.”

“Then start fucking looking,” I say tightly.

There’s a short, calculated pause. “That kind of information is expensive.”

This mercenary fucking bastard can hear the desperation in my voice. “A million dollars a lead. Is that enough for you?”

“Make it three.”

Dragan’s casual monotone makes me want to smash my phone repeatedly against the dashboard.

After six years of working together, I had begun to think of the avtoritet as a brother. Clearly, I was mistaken.

“Three million,” I snarl. “But if you send me bullshit, I’ll spend that money putting a price on your head. Simeon has Cora.”

“My information is always verified.” Dragan’s voice is cold and arrogant.

He hangs up.

I stare at the phone’s black screen in my grip, only just holding back a tirade of abuse. As cold-blooded as he is, now that three million is on the table, Dragan will mobilize every asset he has in the city.