Chapter 19
Ryder
Voices pull me back before my eyes open.
My head feels heavy, and it burns along my left leg. There is a dull ache pulsing beneath layers of gauze. The air feels too cool, and I struggle toward consciousness, feeling naked and exposed.
“…is something bigger,” Kazimir says somewhere nearby.
His voice sounds slightly muffled, like he’s standing just outside the room.
His tone is not casual or carefree, like it had been earlier in the night.
“You’ve had two separate attacks,” he continues.
“And now this. Different crews, different orders, same targets. We can’t ignore it. ”
I try to move and instantly regret it. Pain flares along my leg, raw and throbbing.
“Easy,” another voice says gently, a hand wrapping around my wrist.
Liev.
The sound of him shifts closer, and I feel the rattle of a gurney shifting. My eyes open slowly.
The discolored popcorn ceiling comes into focus first. Then the rest of the room settles around it: neutral walls, painted concrete floor, medical equipment arranged neatly on a rolling tray. A tiny cross hangs over a door across the room.
A private clinic likely related to one of the thousands of churches in Miami. Private, compassionate, and a good place to meet a cartel or Bratva doctor.
“Ryder?”
I turn my head.
My husband leans over me, his expression tight with concern. His suit jacket is gone and his sleeves are rolled up, knuckles cracked with dry blood. For a second, I just stare at him.
“You look terrible,” I murmur.
His mouth tightens. “You were cut.”
“Barely.” But the confidence in my voice is flat; I didn’t see the cut, but I didn’t have to. I can feel it. Inner thigh. It could have been bad. My fingertips feel sticky, and I splay them out on the mattress, feel the plastic cover creak beneath the sheets.
“Doctor,” he calls over his shoulder, “she’s awake.”
Footsteps move somewhere behind him, but my attention stays fixed on Liev. There’s something different about his face right now, something raw that I don’t usually see.
He looks…worried, really worried. The past two times we were attacked, he looked angry, but not this time; this time he looks genuinely worried. He doesn’t seem bothered by his former-boss-turned-business-partner watching closely from the shadows.
“You passed out,” he says quietly.
“I gathered that.”
“You lost blood.”
“I’m not dead.”
His jaw flexes slightly. “That was the goal, though.”
Kazimir steps forward to the foot of the bed. “Good to see you’re still alive,” he says dryly. His eyes are flat, and that’s how I know we’re fucked and this is serious now.
Not that it wasn’t before, but if Kazimir Baranov thinks something big is going on, then we need to listen.
“Good to see you’re still annoying,” I reply.
He grins faintly. “I was just explaining to your husband that I’m calling in additional men. Something is clearly happening here.”
“Did we at least get answers?”
Liev exhales through his nose. “Some.”
I shift slightly, ignoring the protest from my side. “Tell me.”
He glances briefly at Kazimir before looking back at me.
“The men who attacked us were from the Vipers,” he says. “Local—what do you know about them?”
I frown, confused. “Vipers? That’s—they’re a drug gang, street corners, usually caught. Ongoing feud with the local PDs, but why…”
Why would they come after the Bratva? Why would they come after me? I only remember two or three of them from when I was younger. They are about my age, and my father gave some territory to them. Corners near his cruder clubs.
“That’s three separate groups now,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Who hired them?”
“They didn’t know.”
I try to sit up, ignoring the stressed look on Liev’s face. “Same story, then, right?” My question is directed at Kazimir, who seems more willing than my husband to involve me. “Could only be the back chatrooms. Paid hits.”
“Yes,” Kazimir leans casually against the wall. “For some reason, someone wants you two gone, or at the very least, scared. I don’t think they were expecting Aly and me to be there. Otherwise it would’ve been worse than four-on-four.”
I glance at Liev, unconsciously seeking out his touch by brushing my fingers against his hand.
He wraps his around mine possessively and is about to crawl onto the gurney with me until Kazimir cuts him a look.
The doctor comes back and gestures to my arm wordlessly.
She’s a thin, wiry-looking woman with glasses and a wide, down-turned mouth.
I lick my lips as she murmurs “pinch” and unceremoniously takes a vial of blood.
“Your husband was very disappointed that we couldn’t learn more.”
I glance between the two men—best friends with some kind of silent, private conversation happening. Kaz’s heavy-hooded eyes are knowing, Liev shifting in agitation in his seat.
“He was ready to kill that man in the street to find out who sent them after you.”
Heat creeps into my face before I can stop it.
“That sounds dramatic.”
Kazimir chuckles. “You should have seen him.” He doesn’t sound angry that things are getting out of control here; just amused and tired.
A strange sensation draws my attention away. Liev’s thumb is brushing over my knuckles rhythmically as he stares across the room, eyes narrowed and brow knit. As if he can conjure up our enemies with a glare.
The sight of his calloused thumb moving gently over my skin sends a flutter through my chest.
I clear my throat quietly.
“So what happens now?” I ask.
Liev releases my hand almost immediately, as if he had just realized what he was doing.
“I’m meeting with a few contacts,” he says. “People within the mafia who might know who is stirring things up in Miami. Alfredo seems… neutral, at the very least. He doesn’t want things shaken up around here, especially after finding out that his men were accepting side jobs.”
“You think this is organized?”
“I think it’s not a coincidence. There’s one source, one group, or one person who’s trying to push us out.”
Kazimir nods once. “That’s my assessment as well, and it’s a strange one. Liev, I can understand, but you, Ryder. Your father is royalty in Miami; who would dare?”
It’s a question I don’t have the answer to.
Sadness burrows into me like a tick, and I press my lips together to keep from admitting my biggest fear: that now that I’m married off and he’s gotten his side of the deal, my father doesn’t care if I’m dead or alive.
Surely he must’ve heard by now about what’s happening. And he hasn’t offered any help.
Meanwhile Kazimir Baranov is handing Liev his army. What it must be like to be part of something so loyal.
The doctor steps to my side again, checking the bandages efficiently for soaking-through.
“It’s a shallow wound,” I blurt. “I don’t need to stay here.”
She glances at Liev. “She should stay.”
I open my mouth to object while trying to swing a leg over the side of the bed, but my husband speaks before I can do either.
“She’s right—you’ll stay. Viktor is outside.”
“I can walk.” Probably.
“That is not the point.”
I cross my arms. “You’re being dramatic.” This earns a snort from Kazimir, who turns away in an attempt to give us privacy.
Liev leans closer, his voice dropping just enough that the warning is unmistakable.
“You are injured.”
“It’s a scratch.”
“It is a knife wound.”
Kazimir chuckles from a few steps away. “I’m enjoying this.”
I glare at him. “Don’t encourage him.”
Liev straightens again. “You stay here,” he says firmly. “Doctor’s supervision. Security outside.”
“And you?”
“I told you; I’m going to meet with some people. I need to see if we can figure out where the threat is coming from. I need to know if there have been whispers elsewhere and if anyone has been approached and is willing to talk.”
I study his face for a moment.
“You’re going hunting again.”
“Yes.”
Kazimir steps in, probably recognizing that this argument could go on forever. “Come on,” he says to Liev. “Before she gets you riled up enough to actually burn the city down.”
Liev pauses at the door and looks back at me once more.
“Rest,” he says.
Then he and Kazimir disappear down the hallway, leaving the doctor working quietly nearby. There is a growing suspicion in my chest that Miami is about to get a lot more dangerous.
* * *
For a few seconds I stare at the empty space they left behind, listening to the fading sound of their footsteps in the hallway. The room feels strangely quiet without their presence filling it.
Then the doctor steps back into view with sterile strips and antiseptic. Her expression is mildly disapproving as she studies me.
“You’re a difficult patient,” she says.
I offer a small shrug. “I’ve been called worse.”
She pulls a stool closer to the bed and carefully lifts the edge of the bandage along my inner thigh. The raw wound is deeper than I thought. I feel a swoop of nausea and have to look away. From the corner of my eye, I see her smirk.
“As I told your husband,” she says, “the wound will be uncomfortable and take about a week to knit properly, but it could have been much worse.”
“So I was right.”
“You were lucky. You can’t be out doing whatever it was that got you into this situation.”
She presses gently around the injury, checking for tenderness or new bleeding. It aches, but not enough to make me flinch.
She places the steri strips, but stitches into the deepest part, bandaging everything with practiced hands. For a moment, I think she’s finished.
Then she hesitates.
“There is something else,” she says.
I glance up at her.
Her expression has shifted again, this time into something more careful.
“When patients arrive with trauma injuries, I run routine bloodwork,” she explains. “Standard protocol. A CBC, platelet count.”
“That makes sense.”
She studies my face for a second before continuing. “I also always run a pregnancy test for women with traumatic injuries.”
For a second, I don’t understand why she’s telling me this. Until she says: “You’re pregnant.”
The sentence hangs in the air between us like a sound that refuses to settle.
“I’m sorry,” I say slowly. “What?”
“You’re pregnant.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It is. Your husband was just here.” The edge of sarcasm in her voice would infuriate me if I wasn’t…shocked.
“No,” I say again, shaking my head. “That can’t be right.”
The doctor remains calm. “The blood test is very clear.”
I stare at the wall behind her, trying to make sense of what’s happening. Of what I’ve just been told.
Pregnant.
I can’t be. We’ve barely—
And then a memory slides into place like a key turning in a lock. The guest house. The office.
Liev’s hands gripping the edge of the desk while he—
My breath stutters. That was a little over a month ago, and we hadn’t used protection. Ironically, that was Liev’s concern the other night when…
At the time I hadn’t even thought about it.
“This has to be a mistake,” I whisper.
The doctor shakes her head gently. “It isn’t.”
Silence fills the room.
My first instinct is immediate and automatic.
Call Mama. Tell Liev.
The thoughts flash through my mind before I can stop them.
Then, just as quickly, something colder follows.
I don’t trust them.
Not completely.
My mother lives in a world where everything bends around power and image. A pregnancy would become a bargaining chip before the shock even wore off.
And Liev…
I don’t even know what we are to each other. Business partners? Allies? Occasionally, something much more complicated.
A child would change everything.
The doctor watches me carefully.
“There is time,” she says matter-of-factly. “If this pregnancy is not something you want, there are options available. It’s early enough that it would be simple to take care of.”
Take care of.
I stare down at my hands. The decision should be easy. My life has never been built for children. It’s been built for survival, strategy, and moving constantly from one dangerous place to the next.
A baby doesn’t fit into that world.
It would tie me to Liev in a way neither of us planned. This truce we have now is new. And yet, when I try to imagine making that choice, something deep in my chest twists painfully.
I think of Alyona rocking Madison earlier and about Mason’s tiny fingers gripping my shirt. The strange warmth that filled my chest when he fell asleep in my arms.
“No,” I say quietly. “I can’t.”
I look down at my stomach, hand clenching into a fist.
Fear coils tightly in my chest, but beneath it there’s something else too. Hope. Or, at the very least, possibility.
For now, this secret belongs to me.
It’s mine to protect.