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“What’s left of it,” the man replies. “Probably burned pretty good.”

Troy’s eyes find mine across the room. “You think he’s coming for you?” He laughs without humor. “You were nothing when I found you. Now you’re nothing again.”

Needing comfort, I reach for my ring without thinking, the proof of Zevran’s love. But my finger is bare.

I close my eyes, but I can’t shut out the nightmare building behind my eyelids. I saw the impact, the sickening crumple of metal and splinter of glass as the SUV slammed into him. I picture a sudden, blinding fireball. Black smoke billowing into the night. Zevran, motionless behind the wheel as the inferno takes him.

Maybe Zevran really is dead.

My mind refuses to believe it, yet the picture is there, vivid and terrible. Zevran, broken in an intersection, the fire blazing in the dark. He isn’t coming. Not because he abandoned me, but because he can’t.

The thought feels like standing at a front door with a bag in my hand looking at the rain and telling myself tomorrow, except this time there is no tomorrow. The door is closed, and it’s never going to open.

Lorenzo sets his last instrument down on the tray. He peels off his gloves with two sharp snaps and drops them in the bin.

“Done,” he says flatly.

Troy lets out a long, ugly breath. “Fucking finally.”

He pushes off the wall and crosses the basement toward me. I wonder what kind of reward Pyotr Simeon has promised him for handing over his own wife. Whatever is going to happen to me next is going to be painful, drawn out, and bloody. No one knows I’m here. No one is coming.

I have known this feeling my whole life. I am not the kind of woman people risk everything to save. I was never supposed to be the one Zevran rescued, but for a few fleeting weeks, I let myself believe he had changed something fundamental inside me. I thought being claimed in front of everyone who mattered to him meant I was finally visible.

But Zevran is lying dead in an intersection, my ring is in Lorenzo’s pocket, and Troy is closing the distance between us with hatred burning in his eyes.

The illusion cracks wide open, leaving me stripped bare. I am not a bride. I am not saved. I am just a nuisance trapped in a basement, waiting for the end.

I am nobody. I always was.

I press my back against the cabinet and try to shrink out of sight.

The heavy basement door slams open, crashing back against the concrete wall like a gunshot.

A figure fills the doorway.

There is blood down the side of his face. He’s got one arm pressed against his ribs like he’s holding himself up. His lip is split. There are bruises underneath the stubble on his jaw. Blood trickles over his tattooed forearms and drips onto the floor.

Zevran, looking like he just crawled out of hell.

He’s the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen in my life.

His eyes find me across the room. One sweep takes in the broken cast, the blood on my face, and the way I’m huddled on the floor. All the desperation drains out of his face to be replaced by sudden, sweet relief.

He was looking for me. He’s been looking for me this whole time, and he found me. I was wrong. I was so wrong. It was never hopeless.

He was always coming for me.

The man with the leg wound that Lorenzo was just stitching reaches inside his jacket. Lorenzo seizes his wrist in both hands and twists it viciously until it breaks.

The man’s scream cuts off when Lorenzo slams his elbow into his face. The man sits there dazed while Lorenzo snatches up a scalpel and slashes through the sutures he just put in his thigh. He cuts so deep that blood sprays everywhere.

The mobster topples off the stainless-steel table, gasping and clutching his spurting leg on the concrete, and the truth hits me: Lorenzo was never on their side. Lorenzo was stalling. He was keeping them right here the entire time.

Alexei and men I don’t recognize fan out into the room behind Zevran, weapons raised. Two men open fire on the goon with the stitched shoulder wound, the deafening thunder of gunshots echoing off the concrete walls as they drop him to the floor.

Troy backs away, his eyes flicking nervously around the room as he realizes he’s outnumbered. He stammers something incoherent, his hands half raised as though that will save him.

Zevran steps past the exam tables, his breath coming in ragged hitches, his arm clamped to his side. His dark eyes lock onto Troy, burning with murderous fury.