Ruthless Vow

At three in the morning I met the most dangerous man in New York.

By half past three I was his wife. It was the only way he could keep me alive.

I saved a patient who came into my trauma bay with no name and a bullet in his chest. Then I read the wound. Someone close had tried to murder the pakhan’s brother — and I was the only person alive who could prove it.

Nikolai Volkov. Pakhan. Twelve years older. Handsome as a loaded gun.

His own men wanted me gone. So he married me instead. His mother’s rings, and a signed promise: the day the man hunting me is in the ground, I walk out and never see him again.

A pakhan’s wife can’t be touched. A witness stays alive until the traitor is found.

Six weeks to find the man who did it.

Somewhere in those weeks I stopped being afraid of him. I started seeing the man underneath, and I couldn’t help what it did to me.

That should have frightened me more than it did.

And the closer we came to his traitor, the closer we came to a grave I’ve visited for twelve years.

The closer I come to earning my freedom, the less sure I am that I want it.