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“We’ll find this pathetic excuse for a husband and end him slowly,” Alexei promises.

“And painfully,” I agree.

I’m halfway to the door when the thought hits me.

My car.

I turn on my heel and go through to the bedroom.

It’s small and dark, with a cheap, flimsy wardrobe and a window looking onto a brick wall. I cross straight to the painting—a print of sunflowers—and lift it from its hook. There’s ripped packing tape on the back and nothing else.

The keys are gone.

Troy Banks is somewhere in this city in my Mercedes-AMG.

“He took my fucking car,” I call out as I hang the frame back in place. I’d rather break it over my knee, but I have the feeling Cora chose it. There are signs here and there that she was trying to make a happy home out of this place, or at least a bearable one. A calendar on the wall with a mountain vista. A book on the nightstand with a library sticker on the spine. My chest aches at the thought of her trying so hard with so little.

Alexei appears in the doorway.

“I said he took my car.”

“I heard you the first time.”

“He’s a fucking dead man,” I say, and cross to the wardrobe.

Cora has a small, sparse collection of clothes. A few blouses, a pair of jeans, a dress with a button that’s been replaced with one that doesn’t quite match. Everything cheap but carefully maintained.

“You want to bring her some things?” Alexei asks.

I close the wardrobe.

“She doesn’t need any reminders of this place,” I say. “I’ll buy her better things.”

As we move back through the kitchen, I glance back at the bloodstain on the linoleum.

Troy is a loose end, and I don’t like loose ends.

“We’ll find him,” Alexei says.

“We’d better.” I pull the door shut behind me. “Men like Troy have a nasty habit of making trouble.”

I spend all day looking for Troy and my car, with no success. Cora is asleep when I get back.

I stand by the bedside in the dark and look at her for longer than I mean to. She’s wearing another T-shirt of mine, twisted around her waist, her hair spread across my pillow. Her cast rests on top of the blanket. She’s sleeping in the center of the bed, where I placed her because she deserves to take up space.

I’ve never had anyone fall asleep in my bed before. My private life has been off-limits and empty for years, and I’ve preferred it that way.

Until tonight, I didn’t know what I was missing. Now that she’s here, the house feels different, and I want her everywhere. At my table. In my kitchen. Taking up space in my life that I didn’t know was empty until she walked into it.

I undress quietly and climb in beneath the blanket. She stirs at the dip of the mattress, makes a small sound, and moves toward me without waking, her body finding mine. As I put my arm around her, she settles, her back warm against my chest, her hair against my jaw, the weight of her cast cool and solid on my forearm. I lie there breathing her in and feeling the pleasurable weight of her against me.

She fits.

Mine, in every way except the one that’s driving me crazy tonight. Somewhere in this city is a marriage certificate with another man’s name on it, and the thought of it sits like lead in my guts.

I should have killed Troy while he was tied to that chair. It would have taken two seconds. Now he’s out there, wounded and humiliated with nothing left to lose, and I’m going to have to tell Cora when she wakes up. The man who spent a year making her afraid is free in this city because I made the wrong call.

I press my lips to the back of her neck, very lightly so I don’t wake her. Her skin is warm. She doesn’t stir.