“Your boss has been shot and he’s losing blood. We’re in an alley at Twenty-Fourth and Tenth—please, hurry!”
She dropped the phone into a puddle and pulled Danylo’s head into her lap, rocking slightly in shock while the rain kept falling over Kyiv. It washed at the blood on her hands but didn’t take it away.
At that moment, Alena Lynnyk stopped being a frightened bystander. She became a player in a deadly game. And as she looked down at the unconscious crime boss in her arms, she realized something that scared her almost as much as the gunfire.
She was falling for him.
Rain doesn’t wash a city clean. It just makes the streets slicker.
Alena stayed there in the puddle, her emerald silk dress ruined at the hem and knees, her numb hands pressed to the wound in Danylo’s side. He had passed out from blood loss moments after she made the call. Now he was just a heavy, frighteningly warm weight beside her on the pavement.
His breathing was shallow and rough. “Come on,” she whispered through chattering teeth. “You don’t get to die in an alley next to a dumpster. You’re supposed to be the king of Kyiv, remember? Kings don’t go out like this.”
Headlights cut through the rain.
An old gray van screeched to a stop at the mouth of the alley. The side door slid open and a stooped man jumped out. He wasn’t dressed like the others. He wore blue surgical scrub pants under a raincoat and carried a black duffel bag. He was older, balding, wearing wire-rim glasses already speckled with rain.
“You—move,” he barked, hurrying over.
“He’s bleeding out!” Alena cried.
The man, Viktor, Danylo’s cleaner, wasted no time. He dropped to his knees in the puddle, checked Danylo’s pulse, lifted an eyelid, and assessed him with practiced speed.
“Bad,” he muttered. “He’s lost a lot of blood. Grab his legs. We move him on three.”
“I can’t lift him.”
“Then he dies here.”
Alena let out a broken sob and grabbed Danylo by the ankles. He was dead weight, all muscle and bone. Together they hauled him into the van.
Inside, there were no passenger seats, only medical gear and monitors. As the van tore through the city, Viktor ripped open what was left of Danylo’s shirt. Buttons flew.
“Hold this here,” he ordered, shoving a metal clamp into Alena’s trembling hands. “Hard. And if blood makes you sick, look away.”
She didn’t. She looked straight at the wound and saw torn flesh and dark arterial blood. Her stomach lurched, but she swallowed it down.
“Blood doesn’t bother me,” she lied. “Just save him.”
“Bullet missed the liver by a hair,” Viktor muttered while working fast. “But it nicked an intercostal artery. Either this man is very lucky or too mean to die.”
As before, they did not go to a legal hospital. The van stopped at a hidden basement clinic on the outskirts of Borshchahivka, tucked beneath the sign of a twenty-four-hour laundromat. The air downstairs smelled like bleach and cheap detergent.
For the next four hours, Alena sat on a plastic stool in the corner of the operating room, still wearing her ruined evening dress, shivering while Viktor operated on the most wanted man in the city. She stared at the green line on the heart monitor. Every beep was a relief. Every pause felt like a cliff edge.
At four in the morning, Viktor finally stepped back from the table and peeled off his bloody gloves.
“He’s stable for now,” he said, lighting a cigarette directly under a NO SMOKING sign. “But he’ll be out at least a day, maybe two. He needs blood.”
“Thank you,” Alena whispered, tears in her eyes.
“Don’t thank me. Thank the very generous deposit your boss put into my offshore account five years ago.”
Then Viktor narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re not one of his usual women. No gang tattoos. No old scars. But you’re wearing a dress worth more than my house. So who are you?”
“I’m just a waitress,” Alena said wearily, dropping her face into her hands…
