At exactly 2:13 in the morning, Evelyn Carter lifted a shot of cheap tequila to her lips while blood crawled toward her elbow across the polished mahogany bar.

The operation took forty-two minutes.

By the time Evelyn placed the final staple into Grant’s abdomen, the air in the small room was heavy with the metallic stench of iron and the sharp, vinegar bite of antiseptic.

Grant was unconscious, his breathing slow and shallow, saved from shock by the eight hundred cubic centimeters of blood that had flowed directly from Adrian’s arm into his own.

Adrian sat on the small metal stool, his right sleeve still rolled up, a small square of white gauze taped over his elbow. His face was slightly paler than it had been an hour ago, but his hands were perfectly steady as he buttoned his cuff.

Evelyn set her instruments in a tray of cold disinfectant and leaned against the counter, her shoulders dropping three inches as the adrenaline finally began to clear her system. She took off her mask, letting it hang around her neck by one blue string.

"He'll survive the night," she said, rubbing the bridge of her nose where the mask had left a red dent. "He needs broad-spectrum antibiotics and four days of absolute bed rest. If he tries to walk before Friday, the arterial repair will tear open and he'll drown in his own abdomen before you can get him to an elevator."

"He stays here," Adrian said.

It wasn't a question.

Evelyn looked at him, her dark eyes narrowing. "This isn't a recovery ward, Cross. I have three patients coming in at eight tomorrow morning—a woman with chronic diabetes who needs insulin she can't afford, and two kids with strep throat. I can't have a gunshot victim sitting in my dental chair."

"You have a back room," Adrian said, pointing his chin toward a narrow wooden door near the sink that she used for storage. "Two cots. Old blankets. An empty oxygen tank."

Evelyn’s mouth tightened. "You've been in my clinic before."

"I know this building better than you do, Dr. Carter," he said softly, standing up from the stool. He was tall enough that his head cleared the fluorescent fixture by only a few inches. "I bought the mortgage on this entire block three years ago."

The room went very quiet.

The rain outside seemed to retreat, swallowed by the sudden, heavy silence between them.

Evelyn felt a small, cold ball of anger form behind her breastbone.

"You bought it," she repeated.

"The city was going to foreclose on the property for back taxes in 2023," Adrian said, walking slowly toward the small window that looked out onto the alley. He pulled the edge of the yellowed shade back two inches with one finger. "The tax bill was forty-two thousand dollars. You didn't have forty-two thousand dollars. So a shell company registered in Delaware bought the paper, paid the county, and let the tenant remain."

"Why?" her voice was dangerously low.

"Because I like quiet neighbors," he replied, looking back at her over his shoulder. "And because five years ago, when you left Northwestern Memorial, I wanted to see where a woman with your reputation went when she decided she was done with rich people."

"You were spying on me."

"I was protecting an investment."

Evelyn crossed the floor in three long strides, stopping eighteen inches from his chest. She was much smaller than he was—her head barely reached his collarbone—but the authority that had dropped Tyler Mercer at the Blue Lantern was fully present now, sharp and hard as a surgical chisel.

"I don't belong to you, Cross," she said, pointing a finger at his wool coat. "I don't care how many tax liens you buy or how many bars you own. This room is mine. The work I do here is mine. And if you think you can bring your gang wars into my clinic because you pay the property taxes, I will throw you and your lieutenant out into that alley right now."

Adrian looked down at her finger, then up into her eyes.

For the second time that week, he smiled.

It wasn't a cruel smile. It was the quiet, terrifyingly genuine expression of a man who had finally found something in Chicago that didn't break when he pressed on it.

"I don't have a gang, Evelyn," he murmured, his voice dropping so low she could hear the subtle, dry rasp in his throat from the blood loss. "I have a logistics firm. And the men who shot Grant aren't competitors. They're public servants."