The Surgeon He Kept

Elena Marsh has spent ten years learning how to keep people alive. She has never learned how to say no to a man with a ledger. When Anton Agapov's accountant takes a bullet, Anton doesn't call a hospital — he calls a car. Elena is walked into a basement operating room, told to save a man she has never met, and offered a contract she can't refuse: her silence, twice a week, in exchange for her brother's life. She expects a monster. She gets a man who takes her 3 a.m. post-op calls himself and knows the names of every artery she names back. When a rival family decides she is worth more than the war she is causing, Anton puts a ring on her before he puts a bullet in anyone — and signs his own name off the family he built. For the first time, Elena is the patient. And she is already pregnant.