Chapter 6

Alina's POV

The VIP ward at that hour was so quiet you could hear the drip of the IV lines.

Lowell had come to check on Mrs. Vadalishi and gone again.

I'd been given the suite next door. I lay in bed, turning from one side to the other, unable to sleep. The cast on my right leg dug into the mattress at the wrong angle; the cracked ribs pulled with every breath. But neither of those was what was keeping me awake.

Mrs. Vadalishi's words from the afternoon had worked their way under my skin and stayed there.

Women who look at him the way you do—like they're already drawing a line between themselves and him—I've seen plenty of those.

Every last one of them ends up doing whatever it takes to get into his bed.

I closed my eyes and breathed in slowly.

Fine. Heal, pay back what I owe, leave this city. Start again somewhere else.

I was somewhere between waking and sleep when I heard it—footsteps in the corridor. So faint that most people would have missed them entirely.

Years in the underground circuit had built a certain kind of alertness into me. It came back on its own, immediately. I was wide awake before I'd consciously decided to be.

The footsteps were wrong. The rhythm wasn't a nurse's. And there was more than one person.

I held my breath, pushed myself up from the bed without making a sound, and eased the suite door open just enough to see through the gap. The wall sconces cast a dim, amber light down the corridor.

Three men in black. Masks covering their faces. Something in their hands. Moving toward Mrs. Vadalishi's room.

The one in front made a brief gesture. The other two split—one peeled off to watch the corridor junction, the other followed the leader through Mrs. Vadalishi's door, which swung open without a sound.

My chest clenched.

She was alone in there.

Lowell's security detail—the men he'd left stationed outside during the day—were gone. The corridor was empty in both directions. Not even a nurse in sight.

I didn't stop to think it through. I got upright with the crutch, and the pain that shot through my right leg made me suck air through my teeth.

I pressed through it. One careful step at a time, I moved toward her door, keeping as close to silent as I could.

The door was left slightly ajar. Voices came through—low, deliberate, compressed.

"Found it yet?"

"Not yet. The old woman's hidden it well."

"Move faster. We need it before first light, or Lowell's people come back."

My heartbeat was loud in my own ears.

I leaned and looked through the gap.

Mrs. Vadalishi was being held down against the mattress, one man's hand clamped over her mouth. Even pinned like that, her face showed no fear—only fury, contained and absolute. The second man was working through her nightstand and wardrobe, pulling things out and dropping them without care.

"Ask her where it is."

The man lifted his hand from her mouth. Mrs. Vadalishi spat at him the instant she could. "Who sent you? You dare lay a hand on me?"

"We don't want to hurt you." His voice was smooth in the way that certain kinds of threats always are. A short, unpleasant smile. "Just hand over what the old godfather left behind, and we walk out of here without touching a hair on your head."

"Not a chance in hell," Mrs. Vadalishi said.

He exhaled—the sound of patience running out.

The knife came from somewhere at his waist, the blade catching the dim light as he brought it level.

"Don't think for a second that we won't."

He pressed the tip to her throat.

She drew breath to call out. He backhanded her across the face before the sound could leave her.

She went still.

And every last trace of hesitation left me.

I was not going to stand at the door and watch an old woman die. It didn't matter what she'd said to me that afternoon. It didn't matter at all.

I pulled in a long breath, gripped the crutch in both hands, waited for the moment when both men had their backs to the door—

And shoved it open.

The crutch came down hard on the back of the searching man's skull.

He grunted, staggered, and didn't fall. He turned around instead, eyes locking onto me with something pure and ugly.

"What the—"

He didn't finish. I drove the end of the crutch into his abdomen with everything I had.

But my right leg buckled under the force of it. The fracture lit up like something breaking open, and I went down—hard—catching myself on the floor.

The man stepped away from Mrs. Vadalishi and came toward me, turning the knife in his hand.

"Nosy little bitch."

The kick landed directly on my cracked ribs. The pain blacked out the edges of my vision, and for a moment I couldn't find air.

Somehow my hand found the call button at the head of the bed and pressed it.

He panicked—bent down and drove the knife into my shoulder.

The cold of the blade going through skin and muscle pulled a scream out of me. I did not let go of the button.

The second blade came across my arm.

The third drew a line across my thigh.

Blood moved fast—soaking through the hospital gown, spreading into the carpet beneath me.

"Let go!" He was low and furious.

I looked up at him. I could feel blood at the corner of my mouth. The words came out through my teeth: "No."

From somewhere behind him, the other man's voice: "Found it, sir. She'd hidden it in the cigar box. Clever old thing."

In his hand: a single thin document.

I don't know what I was thinking. I stopped thinking. I lunged for it.

"Damn—"

The punch came fast and hard. But I'd seen punches ten times faster than that on the circuit. My head turned with it, his knuckles grazing my cheekbone and dragging fire across the skin. At the same moment, my right hand had already moved on its own—fingers closing around his wrist, thumb pressing into the soft hollow between the radius and ulna.

The man's expression changed.

I twisted.

The crack was quiet and final. The knife hit the floor.

He hadn't finished screaming before the second man swung the metal water cup from the nightstand into my lower back.

It was a solid hit. Heavy and accurate. I buckled forward, stomach heaving, bile rising in my throat.

The fracture in my right leg gave out entirely. My knees hit the floor.

But I did not let go of the wrist.

I held on, nails biting into skin. His other fist came down onto my shoulder blade—I took it and didn't move. Another blow, to the back of my skull.

White light. Ringing that swallowed everything else.

Consciousness went thin at the edges, like something about to tear.

My hands stayed closed.

"Let go—let go of him, you—"

He was shouting, but the words reached me from far away.

I raised my head. Something had split at the corner of my mouth—blood running down my chin. I looked at him and pushed the words out: "No."

The man with the water cup circled to my left side and kicked into my ribs.

The cracked bones felt like they'd been seized by pliers. My whole body folded around the pain, a low, compressed sound coming out of my throat.

I braced one hand against the floor. I shifted my weight onto my left leg, turned my intact side toward the next attack, and held position.

"What is wrong with this woman—" He swung his fist at my face.

I tracked the arc of it, turned my head, and drove my forehead into the bridge of his nose.

He hadn't expected a counterstrike. He certainly hadn't expected that one. The blood came immediately—he lurched backward two steps, swearing through a mouthful of it.

Then the alarm went off in the corridor. Running footsteps, coming fast.

The man's face changed. He seized the document and tore it in a single motion—half stayed in his hand, half in mine.

"Move!"

They went out through the window, cursing as they went, and the night took them.

I lay face-down on the floor. Blood everywhere. The room was starting to go soft around the edges.

I tried to drag myself toward Mrs. Vadalishi. The footsteps in the corridor reached the door—it swung open.

"Mrs. Vadalishi!"

Nurses. Security.

The torn half of the document was soaked through with blood from my hands. The text was mostly unreadable. But a few words came through clearly enough:

Lowell…

Next head of the family…

My hands began to shake.

I barely registered the moment Lowell came through the door.

What I remember: the door thrown open, light flooding in from outside, his silhouette filling the frame—broad and still, the way a wall is still.

A crowd at his back—security, doctors, nurses. He directed them toward Mrs. Vadalishi in a few words, and she was wheeled out, and then his gaze came to rest on me.

Not the way he'd looked at me when we first met. Nothing warm in it. Nothing at ease.

He was looking at the torn half of the document in my hand.

His eyes were very still.

I didn't know what was written on it. I only knew, looking at his face, that it mattered enormously.

I tried to stand up.

What came out instead was blood.

And pain, from everywhere at once.