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“Nobody sent me, I clean for a contract company, they assign me wherever—” She’s talking fast now, the words tripping over each other, and none of it lands anywhere useful. A story like that writes itself in about four seconds if you’re good at lying, and everyone who’s ever tried to get close to me has been good at lying.

I take a step toward her, gun still level, and that’s when something in her face changes. Not fear. Not yet. Something more like a decision.

She moves for my wrist before I’ve finished my next step.

I don’t expect it. That’s the only reason it works. Her hand clamps around my forearm and twists, and the gun angles off her, off center, and her other palm drives up into my throat hard enough that I choke on the air I’m pulling in.

I stumble back half a step, more from the surprise of it than the force, and by the time I’ve recovered enough to react she’s already moving again, elbow snapping toward my jaw.

It connects. My head rocks sideways, and there’s a ring in my ear that takes a second to clear.

She fights like she’s trained for this. Not street brawling, not panic swinging. Someone taught her stances, taught her how to close distance and use her whole body instead of just her arms. It’s clean. It’s fast. And it’s the last thing I expected to find in my own home tonight.

I get my balance back and step into her instead of away from her, which throws off whatever she’s set up to do next.

She goes for my wrist again, and I let her have it, let her grab on, and then I use her own grip against her, twisting my arm free and getting my hand around hers before she can pull back.

She fights the hold. Her free hand comes up toward my face, and I catch that wrist too, get my body against hers and use my weight to walk her back into the wall behind her.

She’s still fighting, shoulder driving against my chest, trying to get an angle to knee me, and I pin her there with my forearm across her collarbone until the fight in her starts running out of places to go.

“Stop,” I tell her. “You’re not walking away from this one.”

“Let go of me—” Her voice cracks on the last word, breath coming ragged now, and I can feel her heartbeat where my arm’s pressed against her chest, going fast enough that it’s starting to work against her more than for her.

I reach into my jacket with my free hand and pull the cloth from the inside pocket, already folded, already soaked. I’ve carried it for years and never once needed it inside my own home.

She sees it and starts fighting harder, head twisting away, and I get my hand around the back of her skull and hold the cloth over her nose and mouth anyway.

She thrashes against my arm, nails catching my wrist, a muffled sound against my palm that isn’t quite a word.

“Breathe slow,” I tell her, low, close to her ear, though I know she can’t hear that as anything but a threat right now. “It goes faster if you fight it less.”

She doesn’t listen. Nobody ever does. Her struggling stays sharp for another few seconds, her whole body straining against mine, and then it starts to slow, her breath dragging longer, her grip on my wrist loosening one finger at a time.

By the time her knees give out, I’m already shifting my hold to catch her weight before she hits the floor.

She’s lighter than I expect. Her head tips back against my arm, jaw slack, and up close I can see the clip in her hair has come half undone, a few strands stuck to her cheek where she’s started to sweat through the fight.

There’s a smear of something on her sleeve, cleaning solution probably, and it strikes me as an oddly ordinary thing to notice while I’m holding an unconscious stranger in my own front hall.

I look down at the caddy by the door. Spray bottles. A folded rag. A name tag clipped to the strap, HARPER printed in block letters, someone’s gone over it twice with a pen to make it darker.

I holster the gun and pull my phone out instead, thumbing through to Yuri’s number while I get my other arm under her knees.

He picks up on the second ring. “Yeah.”

“I need you at the second property. Now.”

“What happened?”

I look down at her face again, slack against my forearm, breathing slow and even now that the fight’s gone out of her.

“Someone got into 12A. A woman. I’ve got her; she’s out cold, but I don’t know yet if she’s alone in this or not.” I shift her weight against my chest, already moving for the door. “Meet me there. I’ll fill you in when you see her.”

I end the call and stand there a second with her weight against my chest. If the Sokolovs got a woman past my doors, then the whole Bratva will hear that their pakhan left his own building open, and by the end of the week every man who ever resented my father’s choice of heir will be repeating it.

I tell myself that’s why my pulse hasn’t slowed. It’s a reasonable explanation, and I’m not ready to look for another one.