Ruth learned that Boris Kovalev and one of his sons had disappeared. The police went to arrest them the day of her testimony and found a cleaned-out office and an empty apartment. In a single day, he shot up to the number one most wanted criminal in America. “Are you worried?” Ruth asked Victor over Chinese take-out.

He shrugged, grabbing a chunk of orange chicken with his chopsticks. “I’ll just say that I’ll be happy when the trial is over, and I’m no longer under armed guard.” He gestured at the door. “The more people who have to protect us, the more people there are who know where we are. My family has a lot of pull and a lot of reach. We will be lucky to stay safe.”

“Do you think they know what you’ll say?”

He used his chopsticks to poke at his box of rice, but finally, just set it down. “I don’t know. I don’t know the level of their arrogance. My father certainly has no idea.”

Ruth had a hard time falling asleep that night. Her mind swirled with memories, thoughts of how her testimony had gone, and worry over Victor’s upcoming time on the witness stand. She listened to the murmur of voices coming from the Federal Marshals in the other room and Major breathing in his bed under the window.

Clinging to those sounds—those sounds that meant safety and some facet of security—she drifted off only to wake with a start just a few hours later. What had woken her up? Major still slept under the window but moved his paws and gave a little yelp in his sleep. She smiled, thinking of him dreaming his dog dreams, chasing a rabbit or maybe a deer.

Restless, she climbed out of bed. Major hopped up and followed her as she quietly left her room. She lifted a hand in greeting to the guard at the apartment door but did not stop to speak to him. Instead, she slid the glass door to the patio open and stepped out onto the concrete. Sheets of rain poured down, sending a cooling spray onto the porch. Major scooted back away from the wet, keeping his back to the door. Ruth laughed at him. “Don’t want to get your paws wet?”

“He never did like the rain much, I remember.”

Startled, she spun and saw Victor sitting in a chair angled away from the splash of rain. As her heart slowed back to a normal pace, she walked toward him and felt the seat of the chair next to his, checking to see how much rain had splashed on it, then deciding it was dry enough. “I hated rainy days in the city with him. In Florida, he didn’t mind it too much. Probably because it rained so often.”

“Maybe different smells associated with it. I remember Esther found him during a storm in the city. Would have been terrifying for a little pup like he was.” He held his hand out into the stream of water. “Do you think it will cool it down any?”

“Until the sun comes out and it all evaporates into steam. Then it will be like breathing underwater.” She pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around them. “Can’t sleep?”

A wry look crossed his face. “Signing my own death warrant has taken a bit of a toll on my circadian rhythms.”

“Victor—”

He shook his head. “I am doing the right thing. I went about it the right way, and there’s a solid case now against everyone I know of in the family. I’ll likely be testifying for months at different trials.”

She studied his face in the faint light coming from a lamp inside the building, seeing a muscle tic in his jaw. “But?”

“But it’s my father. And there’s an emotional connection I didn’t expect to feel. Something I’m severing with every word I will speak on that stand tomorrow. It was one thing to talk about it privately, in the office of the FBI. It will be another to look at him and say the words.”

They sat in silence while Ruth digested what he said. Finally, she replied, “I can’t pretend to understand that. But I know that to follow Christ, sometimes we have to leave the dead to be buried by someone else. I think that is fitting for your circumstance.” She paused. “Have you ever tried to talk about God to your father?”

With a short bark of a laugh, he shook the water off his hand. “Once. He punched me in the jaw and told me to concentrate on winning my next fight and not some deity that had poisoned my mind. That was a couple of years ago.”

Remembering the few times she’d had personal conversations with Antoly Kovalev, she said, “I imagine that trying was a bit intimidating.”

Turning his head to look at her, his eyes reflected the weak lighting from inside the building. “There are so many things you couldn’t possibly imagine, Ruth. The Kovalevs are evil, and I long for the day I sign the papers to change my name.”

They sat on the porch until the rain stopped, and the sun started to rise. As the sky lit up with pink and yellow streaks, they both went inside and to their own rooms to prepare for the day. An hour later, she met Victor in the kitchen. He looked like he’d aged overnight. “I am praying for you today,” she said with a forced smile, putting a coffee pod in the coffee maker and pressing a button.

“I know. I am drawing strength from that.” He leaned against the counter. He wore a navy-blue suit with a white shirt and bright blue tie. “Hopefully, it will be over today.”

“Then what?” she asked.

“Then we go into hiding. You go one way; I go the other.”

She’d hoped that as they rekindled their feelings for each other over the last couple of days that his plan to leave her after the trial would have changed. “But—”

He shook his head as he straightened and dumped the remaining coffee in his cup into the sink. “But nothing. It’s the only way you’ll stay safe.”

Feeling her heart break all over again, she tried to argue. “Victor—”

Without warning, he pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her. She felt safe, shielded, secure. Closing her eyes, she rested her head on his chest and listened to the steady beat of his heart. His shirt smelled clean, but below that, she could smell the scent of him. Of Victor. Ruth took a slow, deep breath and drew his smell inside.

“I can’t bear the thought of you being in danger anymore,” he confessed in a gruff voice. “I cannot risk you. Please understand that.”

Knowing how much he had sacrificed just to keep his mother safe, she knew he truly meant what he said. He didn’t want to leave her for himself, he actually did feel like it would protect her. A tear slid out of her eye, and she did not speak. Instead, she hugged him tighter.

Twenty minutes later, they loaded into the back of a black SUV. Marshal Andrew Brown took the wheel. A female Marshal followed in an unmarked car.

“So, tell me about that pastor,” Victor said with a teasing smile.

Ruth thought back to the little village in Florida. Her time there felt almost like a dream. “Ben? Good man. I enjoyed working with him.”

“He was very protective of you,” Victor observed. “He did not like the way you acted when I went there.”

Thinking of that day—had it truly only been a week ago - she said, “He knew something was wrong with me, something in my life. He just didn’t know what it was.”

“He probably thought I was some abusive ex-husband who had hunted you down.”

She laughed, a little uncomfortably, knowing that she intentionally guided that assumption. “No doubt.” Almost immediately, her face grew serious again. “I hated deceiving him. The idea that I’ll have to live a lie for the rest of my life is still a little unsettling.” She ran her thumb over the fingers on her left hand. “I told them that wherever I go next, I want to be a doctor again.”

“Again?” He smiled. “What were you before?”

She screwed her face up. “I did medical transcription. I tell you what, I learned what not to do when I record my—” Before she could finish her sentence, she found herself thrown against Victor, her seatbelt ripping into her chest and hips. The sound of metal grinding against metal screamed in her ears as the side of the SUV barreled into her.

Marshal Brown fought for control as the SUV slid through the intersection and crashed into an oncoming car. With the impact, her head hit the side window, dazing her. The next thing she knew, Victor had her face framed in his hands. She could see his mouth moving and could understand the intensity of what he said, but she couldn’t hear anything through the ringing and roaring in her ears. The pain in her head made her vision jitter and jump. First, she saw two of him, then they merged into one as the ringing in her ears subsided, and his voice became clear.

“Now! Come on, Ruth, move!” Her stomach rolled, and she fought the impulse to lay her head back against the seat and close her eyes. She watched as Marshal Brown kicked the front windshield out and climbed out of it, pistol drawn. Victor reached over her and pushed the passenger door open. Ruth’s hands slipped on the seatbelt twice before she managed to unbuckle it. Victor climbed over her and out of the vehicle, then crouched at the open door and held his hand out to her. “Come on!”

She felt like her brain disconnected from her body. As soon as she placed her hand in his, the panicked nausea that had started to overtake her withdrew along with the pain in her head. On her side of the vehicle, she could see the impression of the dump truck that had T-boned it. As she crawled, she glanced over the hood and saw two men get out of the dump truck, pistols in their hands. She heard the screams of onlookers before she heard the gunshots. The window next to her head suddenly cracked, shattering in a spider web pattern, and she heard the pings of bullets hitting the side of the SUV. A burning smell filled her nostrils, and smoke stung her eyes.

“Go!” yelled Marshal Brown as he crouched next to the tire. He held his phone up to his ear and looked at Victor. “Get to cover!”

She began moving on autopilot, refusing to let her mind process the sight and sounds of a gunfight in downtown New York. Without looking back, she held tight to Victor’s hand as he led them away from the intersection. “Don’t stop,” he yelled, dodging his way through the heavy rush-hour pedestrian traffic. “We’re in Kovalev territory.” He shoved past a delivery man wheeling a cart full of boxes and looked over his shoulder at her. “Not safe.”

He didn’t say another word. As adrenaline pumped through her system, her headache receded, and the pain she’d initially felt in her knee faded. Who knew what kind of damage she did to her body sprinting with an almost certain concussion and possibly strained knee and dodging through the crowd. Deciding that if she felt the pain in the morning, she would praise God for the glory of surviving this day, she focused on keeping up with Victor.

Without warning, he ducked into a recessed building entrance, spinning her so that her back pressed up against the brick wall. Through the arched entryway, she saw a man in black jeans and a black T-shirt run down the street, gun drawn, arms pumping. Her mouth went dry, and she lowered her head and closed her eyes, begging God for protection. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that one of her shoes had lost a heel. She slipped the other shoe off and used the brick wall as leverage to break the heel off. When she put it back on, it felt a little strange, but better than one heel on, one heel off.

“Hello, Mr. Kovalev.” Frightened, Ruth spun around and saw two women, the brunette from the other day and a blonde, both in tight miniskirts and teetering platform heels descending the steps of the building. “We just got a call about you.”

“Nina,” Victor gasped. “I need to get out of the territory.” He put his hands on his knees and bent over at the waist. Sweat dripped down his forehead. When he straightened, he shrugged out of his suit jacket and folded it over his arm. With his back to the brick archway, he glanced back down the street.

“You’ll never get out,” Nina whispered in a heavy Russian accent. “Boris put a bounty on you. Whoever finds you, she is free to go.”

He walked up to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “When I finish my testimony, everyone is free to go,” Victor clarified. “Use your network. Get me out of here.”

She glared at him as she shrugged away and adjusted her purse strap. “One time, one of the girls ran away. Boris brought all of us to one of your gyms and asked where she was. When we didn’t speak up quick enough, he grabbed one of the girls and put her in the boxing ring with Vyacheslav Markoff.” She spat on the ground as she said his name. “Vy beat her until she died while we all watched.”

Ruth gasped, and Nina smiled at her. “And to think, all this happening every day around you and all of the other Americans in this city, and you get to say you never knew.” Unable to meet her stare, Ruth looked down, and Nina continued.

“Boris told us he’d work through all of us until we told him where she’d gone. After I told him where she was, he had her beaten to death and left her on my couch.” As she stepped out into the street, she turned and spoke to him in Russian before she walked out of sight.

Was she going to turn them in?

“What did she say?” Ruth asked, lifting her hair off her shoulders.

“That she’ll never be free.” He looked at the blonde woman, who dug through her purse then offered Ruth a rubber hairband. She felt tears sting her eyes at such a simple gesture.

“Thank you,” she said as the girl walked to the archway and posed, leaning against the brick wall on the street side. “What are we going to do now?” she asked, quickly wrapping her hair into a bun high on her head.

“Nina will pull through. Give her two minutes.” He looked at his watch. “Hopefully, the judge will postpone.”

Ruth felt sick to her stomach at the plight of these girls, and so many like them. When despair started to descend over her, she reminded herself that the Kovalev Empire crumbling would free her and hundreds like her. Even if they died this morning, her testimony should put the father in prison. She knew the FBI had recorded Victor’s interviews. She wondered if, in the event of the worst-case scenario, if the court could use those videos as evidence posthumously.

In the distance, she could hear sirens. “Should we go to the police?”

“Not until we’re out of this neighborhood.” The blonde girl reached in and tapped the wall behind her. He gestured with his head. “Here comes Nina.”

She slipped into the alcove and pointed west. “Go. Watch for the girls’ signals.”

He smiled and kissed her cheek. “I owe you our lives, Nina. I won’t forget that.” Grabbing Ruth’s hand, he said, “Let’s go.”

If she hadn’t known a team of Russian prostitutes signaled him for the next three blocks, she would have never seen it. With subtle signs, they told him when to stop, when to turn around, and when the passage was safe. When a young black-haired girl held up a hand at a passing cab, Victor led her into a coffee shop and ducked behind the wall.

As Ruth craned to see the street, she saw a navy-blue SUV with Victor’s gym logo emblazoned on the door slowly creep down the road. Instead of going back out the way they’d come in, they crossed over to the back and went out the back door into the alley. Like a few days before, they went into one building and out another, moving that way for a solid block. Finally, they stood right inside a bank’s doorway, looking down the street at the courthouse.

Ruth instinctively knew that the moment they stepped out into the street and approached the courthouse, they would instantly have targets on their backs. Victor sighed and leaned his back against the wall. He reached up and gently touched her temple. “If you didn’t look like a truck plowed into you, some of these bank employees wouldn’t stare at us so obviously.”

Now that they’d stopped moving her head hurt. In a bad way. So did her knee. She felt her temple with her hand and could feel the dried blood matting her hair. “We can’t make it there on foot,” she said, looking at her blouse and seeing the line of red that had clearly come from her head wound. She untucked her blouse and ripped a piece off the bottom of it, folding the cloth and pressing it to her temple, wincing a bit as she pressed against a bruise. “They’ll be watching all entrances.”

“I know.” He looked at his watch. “Court would have started thirty minutes ago.”

“Without you there, what will happen?”

He shook his head. “I have no idea. Hopefully, the judge will just recess until they find out what’s going on. The Marshal Service knows what happened. Marshal Brown contacted them as soon as we were hit.”

“Excuse me, do you two have business here at the bank?” The security guard approached, looking at blood-covered Ruth suspiciously.

Victor smiled and placed his hand on the small of Ruth’s back. “We were in an accident. Can I use your phone?”

“Accident? Where?”

Ruth gestured over her shoulder and lied. “A few blocks away. A bicycle messenger knocked me into the wall. I hit my head hard.” She let her eyes fill with the tears she had forced at bay, and with one hand holding the cloth to her forehead, covered her stomach with another shaking hand. “I thought I could make it to the police station, but I started getting really dizzy.”

A sympathetic look crossed the guard’s face as he pulled a phone out of his pocket and handed it to Victor. “Come sit down over here,” he insisted, leading her to a sitting area in between some desks. “Can I get you some water?”

With a shaking smile, Ruth nodded. “That would be wonderful. Thank you so much.”

As Victor sat in the chair next to her and dialed a number, she gingerly prodded at her knee that had already started to swell up. “Marshal,” Victor demanded, “where are you?” His face paled, and he immediately hung up the phone. “That was Boris.”

Ruth’s blood froze. Her throbbing knee forgotten for the moment, she straightened in the chair. “Now what?”

The guard returned with the water. Ruth wet the cloth and held it back up to the cut on her head.

Using the smartphone in his hand, Victor did an Internet search for the Federal Marshals’ office. “I guess I’ll just call the switchboard,” he said. He held the phone up to his ear and raised his eyebrows when an operator answered. “My name is Victor Kovalev. I am currently with Doctor Ruth Burnette. We were attacked on our way to the courthouse and got separated from our detail.” Ruth leaned over and put her ear up to the other side of the phone and heard the panicked operator ask him to hold the line.

Seconds later, someone answered. Victor gave him their location and hung up the phone. “Now we wait,” he said.

The convoy of NYPD police officers and Federal Marshals escorting them the two blocks from the bank to the courthouse looked like a presidential detail. Despite the undeniable threat against their lives, Victor felt safe. He held Ruth’s hand in his as they exited the Suburban and entered the courthouse, surrounded by law enforcement officers. Inside the doorway, Marshal Andrew Brown met them. “I thought they killed you!” Ruth said, shaking his free hand.

“They shot me in the vest. Anyway, when I went down, I lost my phone. Guess they found it.” He shook hands with Victor. “Great job getting here. We were out looking for you.”

He left them in a secure room to wait for the judge to call the court to order. As they took their seats at the small round table, he studied Ruth. She had a dried trail of blood down the side of her face, and her ripped white silk blouse had black smudges and blood all over it. She’d pulled her hair back off her neck and wrapped it in a haphazard bun. Her freckles stood out dark against her pale face, and she had dark circles under her eyes. Even sitting here in the courthouse on a vinyl chair under fluorescent lights, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

What she had endured for the last six months should have destroyed her. Instead, she still carried herself with the same grace and dignity that had attracted him to her in the first place.

He’d known when he met her that they could never truly be together. Personally, having nothing to do with his family’s business dealings did not equate to ignorance of them, but through Ruth, he came to know Christ. What a beautiful gift God handed to him on his knees at the altar that Sunday. Redemption from sins, a love that came with no conditions, and a beautiful offer of grace that would sustain him through this earthly, oh-so-erred-human life. He couldn’t believe he’d spent the first twenty-seven years of his life without the presence of God. And he fell hard for Ruth—beautiful, brilliant, loving Ruth. The longer he got to know her, the more time he spent with her, the more he convinced himself that he could find a way to separate from Antoly and Boris Kovalev and their nasty business and have a normal life.

When he lost Ruth, he felt like he’d lost everything. He turned off a part of himself to go undercover. For six months, his father thought he finally had a son to make him feel proud and boastful. A boxing champion who, after retiring with the national title, finally took an interest in the family business. Instead, Victor made detailed logs, took notes, recorded conversations, and videoed everything he could using a high-tech camera that looked like a jacket button.

Going into it, he knew he would have to give up his life and go into witness protection. He would leave the courthouse today and disappear from New York forever, returning only to testify at various trials. He had already told his mother goodbye, but he wondered if he would have it in him to tell Ruth goodbye at the end of this day. Only the certain knowledge that Boris would hunt him down for the rest of his life kept him from falling to his knees and begging Ruth to marry him and go away with him.

A cell phone vibration broke his thoughts. He watched the agent at the door respond to a text then look at him. “Court is about to reconvene.”

Ruth remained sitting. “I’d rather stay here,” she said. “If they want to call me again, they can come get me here, right?”

Victor stopped at her chair and knelt down. Her eyes had a bit of a panicky look to them. “He won’t be able to get to you in a crowded courtroom.”

Her smile did nothing to take the skittish look out of her eyes. “I’m not willing to trust that.”

Wondering if his familiarity with Nina and her friends had anything to do with this sudden desire to not be by his side, he put a hand over hers. “Ruth—”

“Good luck in there. I will wait here, and I will be praying for you.” She put a hand on his shoulder and leaned forward, brushing her lips over his cheek. He closed his eyes, breathing in the smell of her, savoring the feel of her. “They’re bringing me a medical bag so I can patch myself up.”

Standing, he winked down at her. “I’ll need the prayers.” He smiled, then straightened his tie and followed the agent out of the room.