“It’s good to see you, Ria,” he said quietly.

The nickname nearly destroyed her.

Nobody had called her that in eight years. Not since before the blood and bullets and training and death.

Riana forced herself to smile.

Here came the lies.

“I’m sorry,” she said gently, “but I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.” She extended her hand toward him. “Anna Morgan.”

Shock flickered openly across his face.

His eyes dropped briefly to her hand before lifting back to her face. Slowly, cautiously, he took it.

The second their skin touched, electricity shot straight up her arm.

Memory detonated instantly. Late nights tangled together beneath cheap sheets. His hand gripping hers across a diner table.

Fingers laced together in the dark. Riana locked every muscle in her body to stop herself reacting.

Zach clearly felt it too.

His grip tightened fractionally.

“Anna Morgan,” he repeated slowly.

Riana nodded once, fighting every instinct screaming at her to tell him the truth.

Tell him you’re sorry. Tell him you didn’t want to leave. Tell him you loved him enough to fake your own death to save his life.

Instead, she smiled politely like a stranger.

“Zach Sheridan,” he said after a moment. “Forgive me for staring, but you have the most incredible blue eyes.”

The words hit like a punch to the chest.

Memory crashed through her immediately.

You have the most amazing blue eyes, blue upon blue. My beautiful Ria.

Her throat tightened painfully.

“They remind me of someone I used to know.”

Used to know. Not love. Not mourn.

The restraint in that choice somehow hurt more.

“Oh?” she managed softly.

“Yeah.” His expression hardened slightly. “She disappeared eight years ago.”

Riana felt that one all the way down to her bones.

She stepped backward before she could do something catastrophic like throw herself into his arms.

“Well,” she said carefully, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Her body angled subtly toward the door.

Zach noticed immediately.

His eyes narrowed. “Are you planning on leaving?”

“I really should—”

“That’s a terrible idea.”

The familiar stubbornness in his voice almost made her smile.

Almost.

“You have a concussion,” he continued, stepping closer. “Cracked rib. Extensive bruising. You can barely stand upright.”

“I’m managing okay.”

“Barely.”

His frustration sharpened visibly now.

Good.

Anger was safer than hurt.

“Thank you for everything you’ve done,” she said carefully, pressing one hand lightly against his chest in an attempt to soften the moment.

Big mistake.

Warmth surged beneath her palm instantly. Solid muscle.

Steady heartbeat.

Zach looked down at her hand like it physically hurt him.

Riana snatched it back. “I really do need to go.”

She turned toward the door just as it burst open.

“Sugar!”

A whirlwind of red hair, purple fabric, orange tights, expensive perfume, and absolute chaos swept into the room like a glamorous natural disaster.

Cherry Stillwell.

Relief hit Riana so hard she nearly sagged.

Cherry took one look at her bruised face and gasped dramatically. “Oh honey, you look terrible.”

“Always nice to feel loved,” Riana muttered.

Cherry ignored that entirely and wrapped her carefully in a hug smelling strongly of Chanel No. 5 and hairspray.

Pain lanced through Riana’s ribs, and she hissed softly.

Cherry immediately pulled back. “Oh, sweetheart.”

Then she noticed Zach. “Well, hello there, beefcake.”

Zach blinked. Riana almost laughed despite herself. Nobody survived their first Cherry encounter with dignity intact.

“I’m Zach Sheridan,” he said cautiously. “I’m the paramedic who brought—Ria—in.”

Cherry didn’t even blink.

“Ria?” She looked back toward Riana with perfect confusion. “You mean our Anna?”

Relief flooded through Riana so quickly it almost made her dizzy. God bless Cherry Stillwell.

Cherry beamed at Zach and grabbed him before the poor man could react, pulling him into a hug that looked alarmingly close to a hostage situation.

“Well, thank you kindly for taking care of our girl, beefcake.”

Zach’s horrified glance toward Riana nearly killed her.

She burst out laughing. Real laughter. The kind she hadn’t heard from herself in years. It lasted all of three seconds before her cracked rib punished her viciously for it.

She clutched her side with a sharp inhale.

When she looked back up, Zach was staring at her. Recognition flickered in his eyes.

I love it when you laugh, Ria. Feels like the whole world lights up.

Panic crashed through her instantly.

Cherry, oblivious as ever, touched Riana’s arm gently. “Ready to go, sugar?”

Riana nodded quickly and followed her into the hallway. The second she stepped outside, her instincts went razor sharp.

Two men approached from the far end of the corridor dressed as doctors.

Wrong.

Everything about them was wrong.

The badges clipped to their coats had been turned backward. Their white coats sat awkwardly over shoulders too broad and rigid for medical staff.

And beneath the hem—military-grade combat boots.

Riana’s pulse spiked.

Hit squad.

Cherry must’ve sensed it too because she shifted subtly sideways against the wall without a word.

Riana moved forward before either man could draw the weapons instinct told her they had.

****

Oh, hell no. Zach stormed out into the hallway after her, anger driving every step.

If Riana thought she could feed him some bullshit story about being “Anna Morgan” and then disappear again, she was out of her damn mind.

He had questions. A thousand of them. And he was done being left behind.

“Ria—”

The word died in his throat.

Because the second he stepped into the corridor, the world went completely sideways.

Riana moved.

Not normal movement either. Not startled civilian movement. She moved with the speed of a predator.

One second she was walking beside Cherry, the next she drove forward and slammed the tips of her fingers hard into the throat of one of the approaching doctors.

The man made a strangled, choking sound and staggered backward.

“What the fuck?” Zach breathed.

He instinctively lunged forward, but before he could reach her, Cherry’s arm shot out across his chest like a steel barricade.

“Wait.”

The single word cracked like a whip.

Zach barely had time to process the fact that the tiny redhead had nearly clotheslined him before the second “doctor” reached inside his coat.

Steel flashed beneath the fluorescent lights.

A knife, not a scalpel, which would have been weird, but at least true to the environment. And this knife was not surgical, it looked military-grade.

Riana pivoted instantly.

The movement was fluid. Controlled and terrifyingly efficient.

Her body turned sharply, and her leg snapped upward in a brutal spinning kick that crashed into the man’s wrist hard enough to send the knife flying across the hallway.

It clattered loudly against the tile floor.

The man slammed into the wall with a curse but didn’t stay down.

He roared and charged her again.

Zach’s heart launched into his throat. “Ria!”

She didn’t even glance at him.

Standing perfectly balanced, she waited until the attacker closed distance before her arm flashed upward.

Zach didn’t even fully see the strike.

Only the result.

The man screamed.

Both hands flew to his face as blood sprayed between his fingers.

Holy. Shit.

Riana stepped inside the man’s reach instantly and drove her knee viciously into his groin. The guy folded with a strangled grunt.

Zach physically flinched at that one. No man could stand stoic when they saw a move like that.

But she still wasn’t finished.

Turning sharply, she twisted into the man as he doubled over behind her, grabbed one wrist with her opposite hand for leverage, and slammed her elbow backward into his stomach hard enough to steal what little breath he had left.

Then, she drove that same elbow up into his face.

Crunch. The sound echoed down the hallway.

The man collapsed unconscious in a heap at her feet.

Silence slammed over the corridor.

Zach stared.

The first attacker was still gasping and clawing at his throat against the wall while the second lay unmoving on the polished hospital floor beside a combat knife.

And in the middle of it stood Riana.

Barely breathing hard. Bruised. Beautiful.

Absolutely lethal.

Her blue eyes snapped toward Cherry and Zach.

“Cherry, there’ll be more.” Her voice was low and razor sharp now, every trace of softness gone. “We move now.”

For a second Zach genuinely couldn’t process what he’d just witnessed. This woman had arrived in his ambulance barely conscious. Five minutes ago she’d looked ready to collapse, and now she’d dismantled two armed men like she did it every day before breakfast.

Cherry chuckled beside him. “Close your mouth, beefcake. You’re gonna catch flies.”

Zach realized his jaw was literally hanging open and snapped it shut hard enough to click his teeth together.

Riana was already moving down the hallway.

Adrenaline finally broke Zach loose from his shock, and he took off after them.

His pulse hammered violently as he caught sight of the knife lying abandoned on the floor. It had to be some kind of military issue. It had a jagged spine and what looked like a sharp as fuck blade

Everything about this was real.

And for the first time since pulling her battered body from the street, Zach realized something that sent cold unease sliding down his spine.

He really didn’t know this woman at all.