Page 95 of Nikola

My father’s voice. “He’ll be okay,malyshka.”

“You can’t know for certain.” My mother sounded distressed, and regret hit me. I didn’t like to worry her.

Beep. Beep.

“Yes, I can. You’re a doctor. You hear his heartbeat. Strong and steady.”

Skye.I needed to know if she was okay, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t talk. Damn it, what was going on? Did someone drug me?

“How is he?” Another voice. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

Beep.

“He’ll live.” It had to be a friend, otherwise Dad wouldn’t allow him near me. “How is Skye?”

“Safe and alive, thanks to Nikola.” Relief flooded me, and recognition. Dante Leone was here too. Now Iknewit was bad. “And his knees?”

“One shattered. The other?—”

Beep. Beep.

What did they just say? What about my knees?

“It’s too early to tell.” Uncle Alexei’s voice filtered in. Jesus Christ—I had to be missing a family reunion. “Sasha and I got the shooter.”

“Good, put her in the basement.”

Her?

Beep. Beep.

Then… silence.

Skye

This couldn’t be happening.

One minute, Papa and Nikola were talking. The next, I was slammed against the ground, Nikola’s body on top of mine. There was so much blood, although he was only grazed in the arm. But his legs… knees. She shot him in both knees, almost as if she was aiming for them.

Oh my gosh.

Nausea clogged my throat and I had to push the memory out of my mind.

Instead, I focused on the flashing lines on the screens of the machines keeping him alive.

The doctors said he’d be okay. He wasalive.

That was the only thing that mattered right now.

Isabella was arguing with the doctors, but I tuned it all out. Branka and Sasha were here too, their anger completely forgotten. Mama was clutching Papa’s hand, the realization that she could have lost him rendering her completely immobile.

And I… I was unraveling, piece by piece, as I stared at Nikola’s lean, powerful body lying motionless on the stark white hospital sheets. His skin, usually vibrant and warm, looked pale and drawn, his chest rising and falling in shallow, uneven breaths. The sight of him like this—so vulnerable, so broken—gnawed at me, threatening to consume the fragile grip I had on my own composure.

I had never seen him like this—never imagined him as anything other than unbreakable—and that terrified me more than the gunshots, more than the blood. My fingers dug into the cold windowsill, trembling as I fought the urge to crumble to the floor.

Just hang in there, I pleaded silently, swallowing the sob clawing at my throat.Please, Nikola. Just hang in there.

Papa came to rest his hand on my shoulder, and I turned my tearstained face to him.