I walked away before she could ask anything else and before I could freak out. They were deliberately playing mind games with me, chipping away at my sanity. There were so many of them and just me. I had no defense mechanism against the Morozov Bratva.
An alarm sounded down the corridor, alerting staff to an emergency. A nurse rushed past me.
“Trauma incoming. MVC. ETA: three minutes.”
Just like that, Sergei vanished from my mind as cleanly as if he’d never been there.
There was blood to stop and a life to stabilize.
That, at least, was something I could control.
2
SERGEI
“What the fuck, man? This ain’t the way to the club.”
Nik twisted in the passenger seat, looking back at the exit we’d just passed as if in all the years he’d known me, I’d never done anything without intent. The neon glow of the turnoff faded in the rearview mirror, swallowed by the dark stretch of road leading toward the hospital district.
“We have to make a stop first,” I said, keeping my eyes forward.
The digital clock on the dashboard read 22:26. Leo’s shift had officially ended at ten, but in the weeks I’d been watching him, he had not once walked out on time. He buried himself in work the way some men buried themselves in alcohol.
The hospital came into view ahead. The emergency entrance flickered red with the ambulances idling in their bays. I pulled into a parking structure across the street before easing into a shadowed corner that gave me a clean line of vision to the staff entrance, then cut the headlights.
It wasn’t by chance that I’d found this spot. I’d scoutedthe area for the perfect place from where I could see the automatic doors, the security desk beyond the glass, and the stretch of pavement employees crossed to reach their cars.
Nik exhaled slowly beside me. “Look, if I’m going to be an accessory, I’d at least like to know what for. Murder? Kidnapping? And, just so you know, I draw the line at any type of sexual coercion.”
I scowled but didn’t reply, keeping my attention focused on the entrance. Was I too late? I took out my phone and opened the tracking app. His car was still parked at the hospital.
Good.
If Leo knew I’d planted bugs in his home, tapped his phone, and placed a tracker on his car, he would hate my guts more than he already did. The look he’d given me two days ago in the coffee shop—raw resentment laced with disgust—stayed with me longer than it should have. Seeing his grief stirred something in me I hadn’t quite managed to name, but whatever it was didn’t change the reality of the situation.
I still had a job to do, and as long as Leo posed a potential threat to Maxim, he was on my radar. Or so I’d told myself. Otherwise, what other reason could I have for stalking the man?
“For fuck’s sake, Sergei, are you still surveilling the doctor? Didn’t Maxim say he shouldn’t be treated as a threat anymore, given he saved Wren’s life?”
“I’ll be the judge of whether he’s in the clear.”
In the dark, I felt Nik shift to face me even though I couldn’t see the expression on his face.
“What’s the poor guy going to do? Take on the Mafia on his own? I know you’re protective of Maxim, Sergei, but come on. You can’t really think we have anything to worry about with that guy? If he wanted to get back at Maxim, all he had to do was misdiagnose Wren, but he didn’t.”
There was some truth to what Nik said, but I wasn’t known as Maxim’s head of security due to carelessness. Nothing slipped by me. No matter how lonely the doc looked… No matter how grief-stricken, I had never let my humanity stand in the way of doing my job.
“Wait a minute.” Nik snapped his finger. “That can’t be right. There’s got to be more to you stalking him.”
“What the fuck are you getting at?”
He fumbled with the ceiling until light flooded the cabin of my truck. I squinted against the glare.
“Darius is now the head of security, which means if something’s suspicious with the doc, he’s the one who should be handling it, so why isn’t he?”
“I’m going off a hunch. When I have something more concrete, I’ll hand it over to Darius.”
“That hunch wouldn’t happen to be inside your pants, would it? Because I think what you really want is to help the doctor through his grief the old-fashioned way.”