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Lorenzo’s expression doesn’t change. His eyes drop to my left hand. To my engagement ring.

There’s a spark of interest in his blue eyes.

He reaches for it with a tattooed hand.

I gasp and pull my hand back against my chest. “What are you doing?”

He lifts his eyes to mine, and they’re so flat and cold that it takes my breath away. He waits, palm up, for me to give him my engagement ring.

“You have to be kidding,” I burst out.

“Do I look like I’m kidding, Viktoriya? Cora. Whatever your name is.”

So that’s where Lorenzo’s loyalty lies. He’ll help whoever’s right in front of him offering him the most money.

But that gives me an idea.

My voice drops to a whisper. “I’ll give you the ring if you call Zevran and tell him where I am. Or Dragan. You must know Dragan, the owner of Kosmos in Corvale? He’ll know how to—”

Troy starts forward. “What are you two whispering about?”

Lorenzo’s hand closes around my elbow. He twists the ring off my finger with one motion before I can do anything to stop him.

“That covers my fee,” he says, and gets smoothly to his feet. My ring goes into his pocket.

I stare down at my bare hand, my breath hitching as tears finally spill over my lashes.

Zevran gave me that ring on Russell Street after the ordeal in Kosmos. He pressed his lips to my fingers and said that everyone would know I’m his. I knew it. I felt it. I wore it every day like proof of everything I’d never had before. I meant something to someone. The life we were building was real.

But the last thing I did before any of this happened was get into a different car and close the door in his face. He was trying to apologize. I shut him out because I was hurting.

What if that’s the last thing I ever did to him?

“How can you call yourself a doctor?” I call after Lorenzo, my voice raw and shaking. “You treat people like they’re not even human. We’re just objects for you to cut and drug and stitch. Those men threatened to kill me and you just—”

Troy’s face splits into a grin. There’s a gleam in his eyes that I know well, that means he thinks I’m being mouthy, and he’s going to do something about it. He comes toward me, his hands closing into fists at his sides.

As Lorenzo passes him, his hand shoots out and grips the back of Troy’s neck. With one swift, lethal movement, he slams Troy’s head down onto the metal table with a sound that rings off every surface in the basement.

Troy cries out in pain and crumples to the floor.

“What the fuck, bro?” he complains. “You’re supposed to be a doctor.”

Lorenzo glares down at him. “I’m not your bro. Did I say you could move? Did I give you permission to open your stupid fucking mouth in my house?”

Troy blinks up at him from the concrete, dazed, blood beginning to well from his split eyebrow.

“I—” Troy swallows. “No. Sorry. I’m sorry.”

Lorenzo steps over him like he’s roadkill and goes back to his patients.

Troy picks himself up off the floor slowly, one hand pressed to his bleeding brow, and retreats to the far wall without another word. His eyes find mine across the room, and the malice in them burns harder than ever.

As Lorenzo works on the man with the leg wound, he complains, under his breath, about the angle of the bullet path. He drops an instrument onto the concrete floor, examines it, and goes to sterilize it again while the man on the table curses at him. Lorenzo ignores this completely.

Troy leans against the wall with his arms folded and his jaw tight. The other man, whose shoulder was stitched, watches me from across the room.

“Do you think Komarov’s crew found his body yet?” Troy asks him, his eyes never leaving my face.