Page 93 of Sexting the Bratva Beast

My head is so foggy, my thoughts swimming in dense gray mist, that it’s hard to decipher if the voices are in my dreams or if they’re real.

Beep… Beep… Beep…

I focus on the mechanical noise, waiting for it to ground me enough to open my eyes. I haven’t slept this deeply for as long as I can remember. Since I was a kid and got a concussion falling off a motorcycle that I stole.

Then another sound penetrates the murky interior of my brain.

It makes no sense. Is someone sick?

From somewhere deep inside my consciousness, the need to get up, to get out of bed, and go protect the people closest to me, pushes through, and the name escapes my lips with a gasp that sends those steady beeps haywire.

“Cartier!”

I sit up too quickly, tugging on the tubes inserted into the back of my hands and attached to my chest. The room spins. My chest feels tight, and I realize that it’s from the dressing and bandages wrapped around me. I’m in a hospital room. There are monitors on either side of the bed, a drip containing clear liquid attached to my arm, and more dressings on my shoulder and thigh.

A mussed-up blanket covers the visitor’s seat next to the bed.

But I’m alone.

Then the bathroom door opens, and Cartier appears. Her face is pale. Her hair is tied back into a messy ponytail. There are dark smudges underneath her eyes, and her clothes are creased, but when she sees me sitting up in bed, her face lights up like she just stepped into the sunshine.

“Andrej, you’re awake!” She rushes to the bed and perches on the edge, reaching up and smoothing my hair away from my face.

I take her hand and press it to my cheek. Her body heat seeps into me, and I realize with a jolt that I’ve never felt so cold.

“You’re shivering.” Her eyes darken with concern. “Shall I call the nurse?”

“No.” My voice is hoarse. “I want some time alone with my baby.”

She chokes out a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a sob, tears welling in her eyes. “I was so worried about you. I didn’t realize that you…” She sniffs loudly and wipes her damp cheeks with the back of her hand. “…were so badly hurt.”

I smile. My lips are dry, but I can’t help smiling when I’m with Cartier. And she is wearing my engagement ring.

“You’re stuck with me, baby.”

She releases a deep sigh, her shoulders slumping. “You don’t know how desperate I was to hear you say that again.”

Images of the bloody scene in the library crawl across my mind, tentatively, as if gauging how much I can handle right now. I relive them all. I didn’t get to where I am today by erasing all the bad stuff that ever happened in my life.

“Ivana?”

Cartier has washed the blood from her hands and face, but her face will always reveal glimpses of that story, even though her clothes don’t.

“She’s been in surgery all night.”

I pull Cartier closer. She wriggles in my arms to avoid touching the dressing on my chest, but I hold her tightly. I need to feel her back where she belongs.

“You did everything that you could, Cartier. Without you, Ivana wouldn’t have made it down to the operating room.”

“Without me, she would still be in Chicago,” she says flatly.

“Hey.” I hold her at arm’s length and run my thumb across her bottom lip. She has never seemed so vulnerable, so unsure of herself, so beaten down by life. “Don’t ever think that. Ivana knows the risks that come with being an enforcer. She faces danger every day of her life.”

I could add that she led Yuri Asimov to Cartier, but she doesn’t need to hear this, especially from me.

“But—”

“No buts. Ivana would risk her life to save any one of us.”