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  There’s a kitchen there—a small one, anyway—composed of a dingy fridge, a sink, and a single row of cabinets. He snatches something from the top of the fridge and then turns to the sink. Water runs. His shoulders move. He’s assembling something. Another syringe? I wince; the throbbing in my inner arm is too distracting to focus for long.

  “You injected me with something… Didn’t you?”

  Guilt laces his tension, stiffening his shoulders. He doesn’t answer, and by the time he returns to my side, I can’t remember why the question even matters.

  “Let’s sit you up.” His voice deepens as he crouches in front of me.

  He has a boxy object tucked under his arm and a wad of wet rags in his fist. He sets the rags aside and lifts the lid of the box. It’s plastic, with compartments inside that separate what appears to be a makeshift first aid kit—gauze, scissors, and vials of liquid.

  Liquid potentially potent enough to cause the disorientation disrupting my senses.

  “What did you give me?” I muster up enough strength to grab his shoulder. “What did you inject me with?”

  He shrugs me off in order to hunt through the case. “A tetanus shot,” he finally grumbles.

  “What else?”

  He meets my gaze, appearing as if he’s trying to decide how much he can get away with hiding from me. In the end, he shrugs. “A sedative.”

  Shock doesn’t have time to finish racing through my system before he rears back on his knees, his expression grim.

  “Look, I don’t know if you remember or not, but you weren’t exactly jumping at the chance to have me help you.” He tugs on his collar, revealing a jagged scratch stretching toward his shoulder, and my nails throb as if in guilt. “You were going to either scream loudly enough that someone called the cops or bleed out. I couldn’t let that happen—”

  “So you drugged me?”

  “Yeah. I did.” He holds my gaze without flinching.

  There’s no gray with him. Just black and white. Either I inject you with an unknown substance, or you die.

  “I need to stitch you up.” He rummages within his case and withdraws a black satchel, scissors, and a packet of surgical thread. The sort of stuff the average gangster wouldn’t keep above their freezer.

  “Stitch me?” My words run together, thick and garbled. “You do this often?”

  “It’s going to hurt,” he says rather than answering my question. “It’s going to hurt bad. I don’t have any lidocaine. I used the last bit of my narcs on you too, not that it seems to be helping with the pain.”

  Only now do I realize how heavily I’m breathing. Sweat coats my skin. I blink, and there’s suddenly two of him.

  “I could get you some whiskey…”

  “No.” I shake my head. That was Ksenia’s old vice. These days, I barely think about the bottle anymore. “Just…just do it.”

  He rises to his feet, and I can’t help the way I stiffen when he lowers himself beside me. Up close, I’m assaulted by his conflicting smell. He’s darkness. Smoke. Unknown. Clean. Too many different scents to pinpoint.

  Then he touches the makeshift bandage and deciphering him takes a back seat to breathing. He wasn’t lying. With every sickening tug on the damp towel, blinding agony descends in full force. Gritted teeth can’t silence my cry.

  “Jesus Christ—”

  “Whiskey it is.” Without hesitating, he heads for the fridge.

  I watch through blurred vision as he fishes a bottle from inside it and pours a small amount into a shot glass snatched from a nearby counter. He brings both back over to the couch and sets the bottle on the floor between my feet.

  “Here.”

  My fingers tremble as they accept the glass he’s shoved into my hand. I take a sip as the bastard uses the distraction to pour some of the liquid from the bottle directly onto my wound.

  Liquid sprays from my mouth, along with a stream of curses I can’t even make out, though he calmly acknowledges each one.

  “I know. I know.” With a suspicious sense of practice, he lays his tools out beside us while the alcohol sears its way through torn flesh and muscle. “All right,” he grunts out by way of warning. “Here we go.”

  I can’t watch, so I stare at the wall and count the millions of ways my body succumbs to the whiskey along with whatever else he injected me with. Whether it’s due to delirium or the alcohol, I don’t feel a damn thing. Just the sickening push and pull of rent skin being sewn back together, stitch by stitch by stitch.

  “It doesn’t hurt as much if you don’t focus on it. My brother taught me that. Once I busted my knee open jumping off the monkey bars, and he had to rush me to the ER, carrying me on his back the whole damn time.” He laughs.

  The sound chimes through the dulled mush of my brain. It’s beautiful. Men shouldn’t sound beautiful.

  “I had to get ten stitches,” he says grimly. “Before they even got the needles, I started to wail like a fucking baby, but Dante… He tried to tell me a story to take my mind off it all. He was fucking terrible at telling stories. I think this one was about a duck or something?” He trails off as he racks his mind for the memory. “I can’t remember, but it barely made any sense, and he finished it off with, ‘Fuck, that’s it. The end.’” He laughs—more softly this time, but I don’t miss the broken edge to the sound. It’s pained, shattering the beauty. “I was too busy laughing that I barely even noticed when the doctor finished up.”

  He worked the entire time he spoke, gently manipulating the wound despite the prosthetics.

  “You’ve done this before.” The words cling to my tongue as I blink more rapidly, fighting to maintain my view of a dingy, beige ceiling.

  Focus. Don’t go under…

  I think he’ll ignore me, but after four more tugs, he sighs.

  “You’re going to need a lot more than ten stitches.”

  I’m not sure how many it takes to seal me up by the time he finally swipes at the wound with more alcohol and wraps the whole thing in gauze fished from his kit. No answer comes as he carries his bloodied tools over to the sink. I watch him as my eyelids flutter, memorizing the careful way he scrubs each tool before neatly laying them out on a dishtowel. The ease alone gives me the answer to the question he wouldn’t acknowledge.

  He’s done this a lot.

  “I’ll put you up on the couch,” he declares while cutting the faucet off.

  I suspect he leaves the prospect of the cot out on purpose. Out of respect or a simple desire not to have his sheets bloodstained some more? I can’t tell.

  It’s too hard to focus. It’s too hard to care. But his eyes hold me captive, the sole feature of his I can make out clearly. They’re electric, outlasting the darkness calling my name.

  “Don’t die,” he tells me sternly. If his voice weren’t so soft, the words could be mistaken for a command. Not a plea. “I used my last bit of nylon thread on you.”

  Chapter Six

  Espi

  Yellow is the color of crazy. Some art professor claimed that once during a lecture on additive color theory. Eight hundred dollars for those credits and it’s the only advice I remember. What do you get when you mix something as volatile as red with something as vibrant as green? You get yellow.

  This woman—she’s the definition of the color yellow. Vibrant. Volatile. Her hair. Her skin. Even her eyes seem yellow in the right lighting—not to mention crazy. She has to be insane to have gone into that club alone.

  Vlad sure knew how to pick his girls. He even gave me a rundown of what he looked for. Vlad liked them meek. Pretty. “A bitch who knows how to give good head.” Ironically for him, this one gave him very good head. The cops won’t have much of his left to identify him by.

  He tried his best to take her with him though. At least she’s still breathing, her chest rising and falling at a steady rate. I attempted to drape a sweater over her, but she shrugged it off. My brother was like that. Too fucking proud to accept so much as a Band-Aid if he hadn�
��t earned it himself.

  He’d know what to do if he were in my shoes right now. He’d do the smart thing and pass the buck. Or cut and run.

  I grit my teeth at the thought and fish a pack of cigarettes from my pocket. I slip two cigs in on either side of my mouth and flick a lighter, burning both ends. One drag clears my head.

  And Little Miss Yellow must take my sigh as her cue to wake up. “Where am I?” The brave Russian stripper’s been replaced by a tired, weary American.

  “Your accent’s gone,” I tell her. So Domi was right—She was undercover. Though as a cop? I’m still not sure.

  “Where am I?” she wonders, her voice hoarse.

  I kick back from the table, flipping my sketchbook closed. With one hand, I snatch the cigarettes from my mouth. “My place. It’s safe,” I add as her teeth skewer her lower lip. “Look, do you have some family I could call or something? I’ll admit it—I looked for ID, but you’ve got nothing.”

  Just like that, her expression falls flat. She feels along her chest as if searching for something. Her fingers shake as they pull away empty. “I guess I don’t,” she says. “But why help me?” Her gaze darts to the front door. Even though she’s sewn up, I doubt she can stand on her own yet.

  “I don’t know.” I take another drag on both cigs and then put one out on the surface of the table, observing the trail of ash left behind. “I think it’s a good idea if you stick around for a while though. You can crash here as long as you need to.”

  “Thank you.” With her good arm, she feels around for the edge of the discarded sweater and drags it over her, blocking my view of any clues that might give her away. Like the scars on her legs. Or how the blood on her hands doesn’t seem to bother her as much as my doubt does. “But I should get going.”

  “You should take this.” I reach into my pocket and withdraw a wad of cash. She merely stares when I toss it onto the table. “I got that from…our little friend. It’s yours—”

  “Keep it,” she says. “Consider it a gift.”

  I exhale, and the smoke distorts my view of her, Little Miss Yellow. Even so, her emotions are as easy to decipher as paint on a blank canvas. She’s in pain. She’s tired. Scared.

  Don’t I know the feeling.

  “Let me get you something to eat.” I stand and head for the fridge. “Do you want eggs? Or…” I yank on the fridge door and scan the contents inside it. So much for being generous. I don’t even have milk. “Or eggs.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  I glance over my shoulder and find her still on the couch, her head braced against the cushions. The act doesn’t fool me. Her fingers keep fidgeting with the sleeves of the sweater. She’s antsy.

  “I know this isn’t the ideal hotel, but again, I think you should stay here for a while, if that’s all right with you,” I suggest as I close the door.

  “Or you’ll handcuff me again?”

  “I apologize for that.” Going off her strained frown, I don’t think she accepts it.

  “What’s your name?” she asks. This time, she doesn’t even try to aim for tact in steering the conversation.

  “Ksei. Is that your real name?” I dare her to tell me it is.

  Her mouth opens and her pink tongue darts around the rim of her bottom lip. “It’s Ksenia.”

  It’s the truth. It’s a lie. She’s red and green, wavering between two sides of the same color. I don’t challenge her though.

  “Espisido,” I say. “Everyone calls me Espi for short.”

  “Espisido.” She draws it out like she’s memorizing each letter, and I find myself gripping the fridge handle tighter. “That’s an unusual name.”

  “So is Ksenia.” When she doesn’t run off, I decide to push my luck. “So, if you’re not a cop, then what were you really doing at Piotr Petrov’s little playground, Ksenia?”

  “These will have to come out, won’t they?” She innocently runs her good hand down the arm wrapped in gauze as if counting the stitches underneath.

  “Five days,” I tell her. “Ten tops. Don’t go over that.”

  “Will it scar?” She’s stalling. No. On second thought, she’s trying to distract me from my original question.

  “Yes.” Only god knows why I play along. “It’s gonna be a nasty one. If you like wearing tank tops, don’t. Keep it out of the sun. Unless you want a nice, dark—”

  “Thank you.” She purses her lips as if she’s not used to saying the words.

  “Don’t,” I say. “I didn’t disinfect it well enough. If that sucker turns gangrene and falls off, you can’t sue me. Khorosho?”

  “Da… You know Russian?”

  “Enough to get by. I’m not a part of the Syndicate though. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Fair enough.” She extends one of her legs along the length of the couch, still anxious.

  If she’s not stupid, she won’t try to stand. Though the smart thing to do would be to let her leave. All I need is to get mixed up with another Russian.

  “So, you’re not a part of the Syndicate,” she says carefully. “Then who are you? Part of some other gang? Or is that tattoo on your chest just for show?”

  Touché. “I prefer the term artist.”

  She raises an eyebrow, silently demanding more. An explanation. Something concrete.

  I hate to disappoint the lady. “That’s it. Espi, the artist. Not a part of the syndicate or any other gang. I do commissions at request.”

  “An artist.” She eyes her arm with renewed interest. “You do your commissions often?”

  “Only for the people I like.”

  “And for those you don’t?”

  I have to laugh even as I look away, hoping I smother the disgust that claws through my skin. “I prefer to make friends.”

  “Friends,” she says carefully. “Who you like to keep captive?”

  There’s no way to skirt the loaded question, so I say nothing.

  “I…I want to try to stand up,” she says.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  She moves anyway, placing her feet onto the floor. To my surprise, she manages to stand on her own. One step and her knees buckle, pitching her forward.

  “Hold on.” I’m across the room in an instant, and I reach for her arm.

  But she pivots, suddenly steady. Air rushes past my ears as her right arm swings out, brandishing something she must have been hiding beneath the sweater. Glass. Cylindrical. The whiskey bottle. I dodge the blow, ducking against the couch, only to open myself up to the kick she delivers right between my legs.

  “Fuck!” I limp back, gritting my teeth at the pain.

  She’s out of the room by the time my vision clears. The moment I make it to my feet, the front door slams shut.

  Shit. I could go after her so that she can’t bring her Russian friends back to pay me a visit later. I could. But, in the chaos, I lost my last cigarettes. I need a new pack. I need a shower. The mounting excuses never address the real issue—I’m tired of chasing after people.

  Chapter Seven

  Chloe

  I’d almost forgotten how poisonous guilt is. After all, Piotr taught me just one simple rule to live by—Survive. Endure. Trust no one. He wouldn’t appreciate the newest addition to his mantra. Don’t die. I used my last bit of nylon thread on you.

  Going off how badly my arm’s throbbing, I’ve probably undone his hard work already—not that it matters. The blood dripping down my fingertips might as well be invisible. I don’t catch notice here, even barefoot. Sluggish movements propel my body forward without requiring too much input from my brain, and it isn’t long before I spot my destination up ahead—Chloe Parker’s home, a flat in an apartment complex on the outskirts of the Syndicate’s reach.

  The hallway is empty when I stagger through the doorway and past the main stairwell. Tears burn behind my eyes, impossible to fight back. If Anna were here, her captors would have her on the move after last night, along with the rest of
the girls. Disappearing is my only hope to lie low and catch up. Find her.

  The plan forming in my head is a simple one. Considering how badly I screwed up the op, Grey would sooner kill me than help cover my ass. Leaving is my only option.

  I don’t have much to pack. One bag should be enough. Some clothes. Some money from the stash in my mattress…

  Every plan falls apart when I spot my door—namely what’s on the generic welcome mat in front of it.

  There shouldn’t be a package lying there. This apartment isn’t even listed under my information stored with the department, but I can’t seem to halt my approach toward the box. Maybe I know all along who it’s from, even before I notice the neatly penned script gracing the box’s white lid, legible from yards away—For my Ksei.

  No. I shake my head and force myself to blink. It’s not him. Hope, the pathetic thing it is, forms a pitiful mantra that plays over and over with every step I take. It’s not him. It’s not him. It isn’t him.

  I come to a stop inches from the box. On autopilot, I stoop for the lid, running my finger along its crisp edge. It doesn’t disappear. The words don’t meld into something else. I know that script. The heavy-handed placement of the ink and the telltale dash above the I in my name. No one could fake that detail.

  My fingers find the end of the lid, and I lift it free. There’s a small, black device inside. A tablet. A note rests on top of it, but I ignore it and turn the device on. The screen lights up, already displaying the still from a single video. A white symbol dares me to strike it. Play.

  My fingers shake. I reach out, intending to flip the damn thing over. Somehow, I wind up pressing on the screen instead. A grainy, black-and-white frame begins. Surveillance footage? This snippet stars two figures—a man—hulking, fat, with a balding head. Vlad. He towers over a woman. Blonde. Skinny. Half-naked, with wings sprouting from her back. She has something in her hand.