CHAPTER 1
MARGARITA
I’m still counting Briggs’s pulse in my head.
Zero. Zero. Still zero. It’s the only rhythm I have left because the man is dead on the floor three feet away, his blood mingling with the dust. Damon’s men loom over me like vultures, massive, armored shadows gripping rifles.
The physical threat of the gun combined with the environmental chaos of the recent shootout makes even the simplest medical preparation a trial of nerves.
I use my hip to shove a rolling stool back, the metal screeching loudly against the concrete floor littered with broken glass from the blown-out security window.
"Focus on the wound, doctor, not the gun," Damon grates out. His voice is a low, gravelly vibration that shouldn't belong to a man missing a chunk of his liver.
"You have three minutes before I pass out," he adds, his chest heaving slightly under the blinding surgical lamp. "Make them count."
One of the heavily tattooed meatheads flanking him shifts his rifle. "Don't get blood on the grip."
"Shut the fuck up," I mutter under my breath, my fingers beginning to twitch as I reach for the scalpel.
I clench my fist hard, the latex of my glove snapping sharply against my wrist. I force myself to visualize the anatomy of the liver—the hepatic artery, the portal vein—to drown out the sound of the guards' heavy, adrenaline-laced breathing.
The internal battle against a full-blown panic attack is real.
If my hands shake, the scalpel slips. If the scalpel slips, this unhinged syndicate boss dies, and a millisecond later, I die.
I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste my own blood, using the sharp copper flavor to ground myself.
"Keep your hands steady, or I'll help you stop them from moving forever," Damon says, his flat, dark eyes tracking the micro-tremor in my fingers.
"I'm fine," I snap back, holding the blade suspended. "Just stay still."
The slick, wet sound of Damon's shallow breathing fills the tiny room, accompanied by the cold sweat pooling at the small of my back. I realize abruptly that Damon isn't just a patient. He's a live landmine.
One of the guards, a massive man with a jaggedly scarred throat, steps forward.
His heavy combat boots crunch over a discarded narcotics vial I dropped in the rush.
He leans in entirely too close, the barrel of his rifle nearly touching my shoulder as he watches me work.
The smell of stale cigarettes, cheap leather, and sweat radiates off him, suffocating me in the already stifling heat of the surgical lamp overhead.
He reaches out with a thick, gloved hand and clumsily adjusts the surgical lamp, the blinding halogen beam flashing directly into my eyes for a split second, wrecking my night vision.
"Is he supposed to be that pale?" the guard asks, his voice thick and stupid.
"Back off," I say, shoving his arm away with my elbow. "I need light, not your shadow."
I make the first incision. The skin parts under the blade with sickening, familiar ease.
As the blood wells up, thick and vivid red against the sterile blue drape I threw over his ruined suit, my training takes over.
The room, the dead guard on the floor, the guns—it all narrows down to the ten-centimeter square of exposed tissue in front of me.
I swap the scalpel for a suction tip, the plastic tube instantly gurgling loudly as it clears the bloody field.
"Starting now," I state automatically.
The scarred guard grunts. "He didn't even flinch."
I probe deeper into the muscle, sliding my fingers directly into the hot, slick wound.
Damon’s entire body rigidifies in a terrifying display of control.
He doesn't scream. He lets out a low, guttural vibration from deep in his chest—a primitive, animalistic warning that vibrates right through the aluminum table.
His hand on the gun tightens reflexively, the muzzle bruising my leg right above the knee.
My elbow accidentally bumps the barrel of the Glock, and I freeze for a dead heartbeat, waiting for the deafening blast that will shatter my femur. Nothing happens.
"Don't move," I say, my voice tight. "If you spasm, I'll nick the portal vein, and there isn't enough gauze in this city to stop that."
"Do your job, doctor," Damon replies through gritted teeth. His abdominal muscles feel like corded steel under my hand. No one takes this kind of pain without a sound. He's entirely disconnected from normal human biology.
He ignores the gaping, bleeding hole in his side to stare directly at me.
His eyes are like obsidian—flat, dead, and intensely predatory.
He isn't watching the surgery. He isn't bracing for the pain.
He is studying my face, memorizing my features as I sweat under the oppressive heat of the lamp.
It's psychological warfare. He's asserting absolute dominance even while vulnerable, laying on his back bleeding out.
I try to look away, to focus solely on the suction tube, but his gaze is a physical weight that forces my eyes back to his.
"You have interesting eyes when you're afraid," he murmurs, sounding completely unbothered by the fact I literally have my fingers inside his abdominal cavity.
"Shut up and breathe," I snap, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing me spiral. I'm working on a monster, and monsters feed on panic.
The metal probe in my right hand strikes something solid.
A sharp clink echoes in the silent, tense room.
My heart leaps into my throat. I’ve found it.
The lead slug is lodged precariously against the hepatic duct.
I wipe the sweat from my forehead with my upper arm, not caring that I leave a smear of his blood across my own brow.
"There it is," I say, my voice dropping into the cold, authoritative register I used back when I worked in real hospitals, before I went underground.
"Get it out," Damon orders.
I pick up the long-reach forceps. The metallic ring of the tool against the tray cuts through the sudden, suffocating silence of the guards. They know this is it. The climax. I finally look Damon dead in the eye, fully shifting the power dynamic.
"Hold still. If you move now, you'll bleed out before I can reach for a clamp."
I adjust my grip on the forceps, the brushed steel cold right through the thin latex of my gloves.
Damon smirks, a terrifying, blood-flecked expression. "I said hold still," I repeat, deadass serious. "That wasn't a suggestion."
"You’re a long way from home, Doc," he whispers.
As I lean in for the extraction, Damon’s free hand—the massive one not currently holding a firearm to my leg—begins to rise.
His thick, blood-stained fingers twitch toward the wound in a primitive, defensive reflex.
His hand knocks over a plastic bottle of sterile saline on the tray, the liquid splashing loudly across the floor, pooling near the toe of my combat boot.
The sudden movement causes the guards to shift, the heavy clinking of their tactical gear echoing off the concrete walls.
"Put your hand down," I command.
"It's my body," he counters smoothly.
I stop completely, the tips of my forceps hovering mere inches from the mangled lead bullet. I don't look away from the open wound, but my voice is a whip-crack in the damp air. "I will not ask you again. Put. It. Down."
I hold the forceps perfectly still, my knuckles turning stark white under the latex.
"I don't take orders," he says, the gravel in his voice deepening.
"You do in this room," I fire back. I have to break him. Just for a second. If he interferes with the sterile field, we're both fucked.
Damon’s hand continues to rise, his eyes narrowing to dangerous slits.
The absolute audacity of this man. He is actively testing me, pushing the boundary just to see if my resolve is as sharp as my surgical steel.
His fingers hover inches from the bloody incision.
His men take a synchronized step forward, their rifles raising slightly.
The smell of his breath—whiskey and raw copper—hits me as I lean in.
"What are you going to do about it, Margarita?" he challenges.
"Don't call me that," I hiss.
In a move that shocks even the hardened killers standing around us, I bring my left palm down in a sharp, stinging slap against Damon's wandering hand.
The sound of the smack echoes like a gunshot in the cramped clinic.
The room instantly goes dead silent. The forceps in my right hand don't even tremble.
I am either a genius, or I'm about to be a corpse.
"Don't move again," I say, my voice eerily calm.
Damon’s jaw flexes. "You just hit me."
I loom over him, my paper mask splattered with dark drops of his arterial blood. I lean right into his space, my face inches from his. "My table. My rules. Touch my field again, and I’ll walk away and let you bleed into the floor tiles. Do you understand?"
The ticking of the cheap plastic clock on the wall sounds like a sledgehammer.
"Say it," I demand. "Do you understand?"
Damon stares at me for a long, agonizing heartbeat. His eyes aren't angry. They're dangerously curious. "Do your work, doctor."
Slowly, deliberately, he exhales a shaky breath through his nose and drops his hand back to the side of the table. He doesn't look away, but he concedes the field. I won. For now.
I go back in. I slide the forceps carefully around the deformed lead slug, feeling the wet, heavy resistance of the torn tissue. I plant my boots firmly on the blood-slicked floor, bracing myself. I have to twist and pull with a mechanical strength I didn't know I possessed.
"Almost there," I grit out, the table creaking under his massive weight as he tenses.
"Talk to me when it's done," he growls.