LUKA
I wait by the car longer than I should.
Nina disappears into the building with her purse under one arm and one hand lifting the hem of her dress just enough to manage the steps. She does not look back after the first wave, and I force myself to stay where I’m because she asked me not to follow.
It should be simple.
I took her home. She went inside. She’s safe.
That is how a normal man would think.
I’m not a normal man, and the longer I stand beside the car, watching the closed lobby doors, the worse the silence in my chest becomes.
Sergei walks up from the security car, careful with his distance because he knows better than to speak too soon.
Sergei says, “Do you want us to stay on the building?”
I look at the entrance again. “Yes.”
Sergei says, “Two men?”
I say, “Four. One outside, one in the lobby if the building allows it, two rotating on the street.”
Sergei nods. “Understood.”
My phone buzzes.
Nina.
Elevator. Relax.
For reasons I’m too tired to examine, that one word makes something loosen in me.
Relax.
As if I have ever done that properly in my life.
I type back.
Unlikely.
Then I stand there holding the phone, waiting for the next message. Inside. That’s all she has to send.
One word.
I wait.
Nothing comes.
A minute passes.
I tell myself she is walking down the hallway. Maybe removing those impossible heels. Maybe unlocking the door while rolling her eyes at me. Maybe she has seen Misha’s bag and is checking whether he has come back.
Another minute passes.
I look at the building.
Sergei notices. “Boss?”
I call Nina. It rings.
No answer.
I call again.
No answer.
The small, loosened place in me goes hard at once.
I have to find out if she’s okay. I get out of the car and cross the road. Sergei jogs up to me. “Everything okay?”
“I don’t know,” I say, and I don’t. My instincts are telling me something is wrong.
The night guard in the lobby looks up when we enter, and his face changes when he sees me. He starts to stand too quickly, knocking a pen off the desk.
“Sir?” the guard says.
I don’t answer him.
The elevator takes too long.
Sergei stands beside me without speaking, his hand near his jacket. The number display climbs with unbearable calm.
When the doors open, the hallway is quiet.
Her apartment is at the end.
The door is ajar.
That single inch of darkness does more to me than a gun ever has.
Sergei moves with me, quiet and fast, his hand inside his jacket, his eyes sweeping the hallway while mine stay fixed on Nina’s door. There’s no sound from inside the apartment.
The small gap between the door and the frame sits there like an insult.
I know, before I touch it, that something is wrong.
I push the door open with the side of my hand.
The living room light is on.
For one second, my mind registers the room in pieces.
The overturned coffee table.
The couch cushions thrown onto the floor.
A drawer pulled out and emptied.
Then I see Nina.
She is on the floor near the entrance, half on her side, her dark hair covering part of her face, one hand loose near her phone. The black dress she wore to the gala is twisted around her legs, and one of her shoes has come off.
Everything inside me goes silent.
I start toward her.
A movement comes from the hallway near the kitchen.
I turn just as a man comes at me.
He is dressed in dark clothes, face partly covered, one hand raised with something blunt and metal gripped tight. He swings for my head, and I step in instead of back, catching his wrist with my good hand while his shoulder crashes into mine.
Pain tears through the wound so much so that my vision sparks white.
I don’t let go.
The man tries to jerk free, but I drive him sideways into the wall, hard enough to knock a framed print down.
Glass breaks under our feet. He grunts and throws an elbow toward my ribs.
I take the hit because I need my weight on him, then slam my forearm into his throat and force him back until his head hits the wall.
Sergei shouts from the doorway, “Boss.”
“Clear the rooms,” I say.
Sergei hesitates for less than a second, then moves past us with his weapon drawn.
The man uses that second to twist his wrist. The metal baton slips lower in his grip, and he tries to bring it up between us. I catch his arm again, drive my knee into his stomach, and rip the baton free. It hits the floor and rolls under the overturned table.
I hit him once.
His head snaps to the side. He staggers.
I hit him again, harder, and he drops to one knee.
Then I grab the back of his collar and drive him down onto the floor, twisting his arm up behind his back until the joint strains. He curses into the rug, muffled and furious, and I press my knee between his shoulder blades.
“Move again,” I say, “and I break it.”
He stops moving.
Sergei comes back from the bedroom. “Clear.”
“Secure him,” I say.
Sergei crosses the room, pulls zip ties from his jacket, and takes over with the calm efficiency of a man who knows better than to ask questions while I’m looking at Nina.
I go to her.
I kneel too quickly and my shoulder burns, but it barely reaches me. I touch her throat first because I can’t bear to touch her face before I know.
Her pulse is there.
I breathe for the first time since I saw her. “Nina.”
She doesn’t respond.
I brush the hair away from her face carefully. There’s swelling near the back of her head, and when I slide my hand beneath her hair, my fingers come away with blood. Not much, but enough to make my stomach turn cold.
“Nina,” I say again, lower this time, as if my voice can pull her back.
Nothing.
Sergei says, “Ambulance?”
“No,” I say. “Car. We’ll be faster.”
He nods before dragging the attacker fully onto his stomach, checks the zip ties, and speaks into his phone while moving toward the door. I hear him order two men upstairs and another to keep the lobby clear.
I don’t look away from Nina.
Her phone is on the floor near her hand. The screen is cracked but still glowing faintly. Our messages are there.
Elevator. Relax.
Unlikely.
The sight of it almost finishes me.
I slide one arm beneath her shoulders and the other beneath her knees. I’m careful with her head, careful with her neck, careful with everything except myself. The wound in my shoulder pulls when I lift her, and for a moment the pain is so bright I nearly lose my balance.
I hold her tighter.
Her head rests against my chest, her hair against my jaw.
She’s too fucking limp.
That’s the part I cannot stand. Nina should never be this quiet in my arms.
One of my men reaches the door as I step into the hallway.
“Take him,” I say. “Alive. No one touches him till I get there.”
The man nods and moves inside.
The elevator ride down feels endless.
I keep my fingers at Nina’s neck because I need the pulse under them. Each beat keeps me from becoming something I won’t be able to undo.
Sergei has the car waiting at the entrance when we reach the lobby. The night guard is standing behind his desk, pale and useless, his mouth open as if he wants to ask whether he should call someone.
“Building footage,” I say to him. “Now. Preserve everything from the last four hours. If one second disappears, you will answer for it.”
The guard nods, gulping.
Sergei opens the back door.
I get in with Nina still in my arms.
Sergei says, “Hospital?”
I give him the name of the closest private hospital, the one Mirov uses when something needs to be handled quickly and quietly, then I say, “Call Mirov. Head injury. Unconscious. Breathing. Tell him I’m five minutes out.”
Sergei says, “Done.”
He drives.
I keep Nina against me the entire way.
Her breathing stays shallow but regular. I count it. I count her pulse. I count the seconds between traffic lights and the distance to the hospital and the number of things I should have done differently.
I should have walked her upstairs.
I should have checked the apartment myself.
I should not have let one smile, one wave, one attempt to respect her wishes send me back into the car while she walked alone into a dark apartment with the door already open.
I know what she would say if she were awake.
She would tell me not to make this about control. She would tell me I’m blaming myself because it is easier than admitting bad things happen without permission. She would probably call me arrogant for thinking my presence could stop every harm in the world.
She might even be right.
But it changes nothing.
At the hospital entrance, the emergency team is already waiting.
Mirov arrives thirty seconds later in a wrinkled shirt, his face grim and awake in a way that tells me Sergei said enough. He takes one look at Nina in my arms and starts giving orders before I have fully stepped out of the car.
A nurse says, “Sir, we need to take her.”
I don’t release her.
Mirov steps directly in front of me. “Luka, give her to them.”
I look at him.
Mirov says, “If you want to help her, let them work.”
That gets through. Barely.
I lay Nina on the gurney myself. Her hand slips from my jacket, and the loss of that small weight feels like a wound of its own.
They wheel her through the doors. I follow.
A nurse tries to stop me. Mirov says something sharp in a language she doesn’t understand but obeys anyway, and she steps aside long enough for me to stay close until they take Nina for scans.
Then I’m forced to wait.
Waiting is worse than fighting.
Fighting has direction. Fighting gives the body a task. Waiting leaves the mind loose, and mine goes everywhere it should not.
To the man in her apartment. To Roman at the gala.
To her face in the park when I asked for the dance.
I stand outside the scan room with blood on my shirt, Nina’s blood and maybe some of mine, and I listen to machines I cannot see.
Mirov comes out after what feels like an hour and cannot be more than fifteen minutes.
“She’s alive,” Mirov says before I can ask.
I close my eyes once.