The side of my fist pounded against Georgiy Petroff's front door, leaving a blood stain along the wooden panel.

Somehow, I'd made it.

And Desirae was likely not far behind, probably with Artemisia on her heels, along with whichever gang-banger of the week who wanted her dead in tow.

And I sure as shit was not taking another stray bullet for her.

"George!" I pounded again. Searing pain tore through my shoulder as warm blood continued to seep past my fingers. The bullet wound was far from clotting on its own. A dizzying fog swept through my mind. "Open the fucking door."

His armed bald-headed guard dogs were oddly nowhere in sight. Normally, one would have intercepted me at the driveway before I'd ever reached the lavish landscaping. Upstairs, a light flicked on and a shadow behind the curtains moved. Seconds passed like minutes before I finally heard the metal rattle of the door handle.

"Took you fucking long enough, dedushka," I mouthed off as the door cracked open.

But instead of the silvery white brows of Georgiy Petroff behind the door, I was greeted with the dark eyes of a beautiful stranger.

Which was the last thing I needed right now.

"Who the fuck are you?" I groaned.

"Who the fuck am I?" she shot back in a proper accented English, eyeballing me head to toe. Golden interior light warmed the tawny brown tones of her cheeks. "Who the fuck are you?"

"Georgiy's business partner."

She looked me over again. "You're Mac?"

As I breathed out a soft laugh, another gush of blood trickled past my fingers and down my arm. I held out the hand that was least bloody. "And you are?"

She didn't move to shake it. "Georgiy's granddaughter."

Georgiy was an ethnocentric prick. All of his ex wives that I knew of were very Russian. And very white. She was neither. "His granddaughter?" I lowered my hand. "But you're..."

"And you're bleeding." As she moved my bloody hand away from my shoulder to peek at the wound, her face twisted into a grimace. "Oof. All right then, Mac." Her eyes darted around me through the darkness beyond. "In you go."

As she shut the door behind me, she punched in a code to re-arm the security system. I stumbled through the parlor and collapsed into a wooden chair beneath a stolen Caravaggio painting. Or what Georgiy believed to be an authentic stolen Caravaggio. Something looked a little off to me, but fuck were my eyes blurring. "Where's George?"

The woman disappeared down the hall, but returned quickly with a dishcloth and a bottle of Georgiy's private reserve vodka. "Holiday in Baku." She soaked the cloth and I braced myself for the inevitable sting.

"Fuuuck. Me." My knuckles went white, gripping the table. As she wiped my shoulder clean, I swiped the vodka from her and downed as much as I could bear. Not that it made me feel any better. She leaned in close and I tried not to inhale the jasmine perfume on her neck that reminded me of Desirae. I cleared my throat to try to clear her from my mind. "Are you uh, really his granddaughter? Or are you one of his..."

"Does that matter to you right now?"

"I uh, well, no. But I—"

Tugging me forward, she unzipped my dress from the back. Her fingertips pushed and pulled at my skin, examining my shoulder blade and neck. The cold sting of the cloth meeting my raw flesh cut through me again. I hadn't even thought to check for an exit wound. I hadn't really thought of anything after running from the palazzo other than get to Georgiy's. Get Artemisia her fucking money.

I clenched my teeth as the cloth pressed against me once more. "I need to withdraw some cash."

"Hmm. Can't help you with that, love." She pushed me back upright in the chair, not even remotely gentle, and met my eyes. "But I can sew you shut. So you live long enough to sort that out for when you see Georgiy next."

"Ahh, great. Long enough for my ex-girlfriend to kill me then."

She sucked her teeth at that. "How much do you owe her?"

"Just let me bleed out."

Her lips lifted with a slight smile. "Did she shoot you?"

I breathed out a heavy sigh and tried to look down at the wound now that it was clean. "...not exactly."

"Well, the bullet missed all the important stuff in here." She poked hard at my chest and I tried not to wince. "It also went clean through so that's good. But we'll have to stitch up both wounds. Fortunately, I have some lidocaine upstairs."

"Are you a doctor or something?"

She tucked a loose mahogany curl behind her ear and looked up at me. "...not exactly."

I knew from experience in this line of work not to ask any more questions about that. As far as I was concerned, she really was Georgiy's South Asian granddaughter, using his seaside Sicilian villa on spring break from med school in London.

"Here, hold that." She let go of the bloodied cloth and nodded to the stairs. "My kit is upstairs."

But I had my reservations about following her up there to the bedroom. "You can't just do it down here? I nearly bled out running halfway across town to get here. I feel like if I take one more step, I'm gonna pass out."

"Do you whinge at your ex like this? No wonder she shot you."

My mouth fell open with an irritated smile. "Well, it fucking hurts. When was the last time you got shot and had to run up and down these ridiculous streets in heels?"

The woman tugged the bottom hem of her tank top up over her head and tossed the shirt in my face. As I pulled it away, my mouth fell open again. Three violet brown scars dappled the side of her ribs beneath a black strappy bralette. Another long scar cut across her hip into her abs. She flexed as my eyes traced over her body.

"About seventeen months and twenty four days ago," she answered casually. "But hey, who's counting?"

Who indeed.

And it took me a second to find my tongue to ask. "Who are you?"

"You may call me Chaya."

"Chaya...?"

"Just Chaya. That's all you need to know, Mac."

"Fair enough." Crossing my legs, I held her shirt back out towards her and poked her thigh with the pointed toe of my pumps. "Were you wearing heels though?"

Chaya's eyes slid slowly up my bare legs where the dress parted. "No, I guess you got me beat on that one." She took the tank from me and pulled it back down over her head, fluffed her curls out and off to one side. "Now if you're done complaining, I'd like to stitch you up before you bleed out in my grandfather's parlor. I'd really hate to leave a mess like that for Amondi to have to tidy in the morning."

"Well, I guess for Amondi's sake I can make it up to the bath." I tried to hide the pain in my face as I stood up. The bleeding had slowed, but a little puddle of blood had formed at my feet.

"Ladies first."

I rolled my eyes and made my way up the stairs, feeling her close behind.

"You know, if you need somewhere to hide out from your ex or whomever tonight, you're welcome to stay here with me, Mac. Georgiy has always spoken highly of you. And I trust his judgment."

"I can't pay you, Chaya," I murmured over my shoulder, "in case I haven't made that obvious."

"Pay me?" She walked past me and opened the double doors into Georgiy's master. Hallway light streamed in to highlight another stolen Caravaggio that hung over his bed. Some rendition of the beheading of John the Baptist. "You really think I'm a sex-worker when you're the one showing up at my grandfather's villa in the middle of the night looking like that?"

I glanced down at the thigh high slit along the sleek black dress I had picked out for Artemisia's opening. I hadn't expected to see her tonight of course, but had hoped Desirae would find me—and find me in it. And I had also hoped it would have found the floor of her hotel room. Instead, it was about to meet Georgiy Petroff's ugly modern bedroom rug, saturated with my blood.

"You know what? I'm just gonna take that as a compliment." I walked past Chaya and went straight to the bath.

"Grandad never did go into much detail about what kind of business partner you are. I had just assumed art dealings of course, but I suppose we both know how utterly close the art world is tied with sex work. And trafficking, unfortunately."

"Which is where I draw a very bold line." Easing my arm out of the shoulder strap, I slid the top half of my dress down and readjusted the bloody cloth to keep most of me covered. I peeked at Chaya over my shoulder as she closed the pocket door to the bath. "You really are his granddaughter, then?"

"Some bastardized version of one, yes." She rummaged around in a duffle bag and then unzipped a small case to pull out a capped syringe. "He refused to accept my mother as his for most of her life. She passed when I was young. For whatever reason, Georgiy took me in. Or rather, had me shipped off to the best boarding schools in Europe."

"If you were a few years older, you likely would've bumped notebooks with my ex, Artemisia."

"Ahh... Well, that explains a lot."

"What does that—" I turned again to look over my shoulder as she approached me with the needle and a smile, but I quickly spun back around at the sight of it. "You do know her?"

"We both had a tendency to run in the same circles, I guess you could say. Many mutual friends—and girlfriends. Although, we all thought she was dead."

"Yeah, so did I," I mumbled.

Chaya rubbed at a sore spot on the back of my neck. "Small prick."

My breath caught in my chest as the needle pierced my skin. I exhaled long and slow until I felt her pull away.

"Good girl," she whispered close to my ear.

I swallowed hard and readjusted the cloth across my chest. "What uh, kinda circles did you run with her?"

Chaya laughed softly as she dragged the vanity stool over to the tub next to me. "I never fucked her, if that's what you're after."

"How fortunate for you."

"Lu keeps me on a pretty tight leash now. I'm strictly forbidden to socialize with members."

"Lou...?" I racked my brain for a face behind the name. "Members to what?"

"So many questions, Mac," she laughed again. Her thumb rubbed around that sore spot along my neck. "Can you still feel that?"

"Just a little."

The tools in her suture kit jingled. I glanced back again to see her pull out a bottle of water. And a scalpel. My hand instinctively went to my neck where my scar from Cora was still fresh. "What uh, is that for?"

Without answering, she stabbed the bottle then set the scalpel down next to me on the side of the tub. "Just need to clean you out a little better."

As she squeezed the bottle, a tight stream of liquid shot out. I nodded and turned back around. Her fingertips pressed along my shoulder as the cold water flushed out the wound. My racing heart began to settle.

"You'll probably feel a wee bit of pressure and some tugging, but I'll be quick."

Quick and quiet she was. I don't know if it was the adrenaline wearing off, her calmness, or just my exhaustion in general, but I had to fight falling asleep right there on the edge of the tub. She spun me around to face her and carefully pulled the bloody cloth down from my shoulder. I fumbled with the top half of my dress to try to cover back up, then decided why bother.

Her bandaging up my chest was the last thing I remembered when a blue sliver of early morning suddenly woke me.

I rubbed at my eyes, trying to unblur them along with my mind. Instantly, pain shot through my shoulder. The room was dim, but the white wrap of my bandage glowed, still in place. My clothes, however, not so much. As I reached to cover up with the sheets more, I felt the weight of another body next to me.

Fuck.

As if things weren't complicated enough.

But there wasn't much I could do about it now so I closed my eyes again and rolled over to cuddle.

As I reached around her stomach, my fingertips dipped into a cold, wet spot on the blanket. Maybe we had showered afterwards. I snuggled in closer and slid the blanket down to find her skin.

Cold.

Wet.

Hairy?

I jerked my hand away and sat up, yanking the blanket down.

But instead of the dark eyes of a beautiful stranger, I was met with the bloody stump of a very dead, very headless Georgiy Petroff.