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I can’t risk it. Absolutely no cops.

I have no friends to seek help from. No family to run to. I have nothing and nobody, and the only person in the world who seems to want me is currently finishing off my husband so he can marry me.

Marry me.

Did he really mean that? Did a lethal, terrifying man look at broken, lying Cora Banks and decide he wants to keep her forever?

Maybe I should go back. Or maybe I should run away faster. My instincts have always been terrible.

My chest aches with a sensation I’ve never felt before, and I press my fist into the hollowness. Every second I spend away from Zevran feels less like freedom and more like loss.

19

Zevran

Ibrace both hands against my knees and breathe through the blinding pain. I’ve been shot, stabbed, and once had three ribs broken by a man twice my size, but nothing compares to the agony and indignity of Cora punching my balls.

On the floor, Troy is whimpering. When my head snaps up to glare at him, he stops instantly. I’ve killed men for less than what Troy has done, and I am going to enjoy every second of finishing him off.

I crouch down to his eye level. He flinches hard.

“I’m coming back for you,” I tell him with a deadly smile. “Don’t go anywhere.”

I hear Cora’s bare feet slapping against the hallway stairs, desperate and frantic as she flees.

Troy isn’t going anywhere. He’s bleeding, bound, and broken.

Cora is the only thing that matters.

I straighten up, holster my gun, and run after my wife.

She’s not hard to find. There are bloody footprints leading straight to the doorway she’s shivering in.

When she sees me, her eyes go wide, and for a moment she just stares at me like she’s calculating whether she can outrun me.

She can’t. We both know she can’t. She’s barefoot and half my size.

“Please,” she says, her voice coming out very small. “Please don’t hurt me.”

I look at her, wild-haired and breathless, the cast on her wrist catching the bright morning light. Seeing her standing there in the cold, so small and terrified, makes my chest feel tight. I want to scoop her up, wrap her in my arms, and lock her away where no one can ever make her feel like this again.

“I promise you, Cora. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The disbelief that crosses her face tells me all I need to know about how little she trusts me.

“But I—” she begins, balling her fists up.

I tilt my head to bring myself closer to her eye level, stepping slow and steady so I don’t spook her. “But you lied about who you are? You stole from me? You ran from me?”

“I didn’t tell you I was Viktoriya,” she bursts out. “I didn’t lie to you!”

I look at her for a long moment.

“Sure. But you didn’t tell me you weren’t Viktoriya.”

She has nothing to say to that.

I’ve been tearing this city apart for days looking for a woman whose name I didn’t know. Losing her at that gas station felt like someone had reached into my chest and ripped my heart out.