Page 4 of Trapped by the Bratva (The Valkov Bratva #5)

DMITRI

I endured countless surgeries. Broken bones were set. Deep gashes were sewn back together. Pins were placed to keep me whole. Skin, bones, and tendons were all tended to in order to keep my body whole.

“Any changes?” the burly nurse asked as she entered my room.

I glared at her.

My first week in the hospital weaned out the green, new nurses and techs.

The second week filtered out the ones who ran out of patience with my attitude.

In the third week, Alek suggested that I just not talk, because at the rate I was going, no more staff would be available to assist me in my recovery since I'd pissed them all off or made them run off crying.

“I said…” the formidable older nurse asked, “Any changes?” She enunciated it like English wasn’t my first language.

This stalwart nurse was the lone survivor. She had to be a veteran, nursing for thirty-plus years not to take my shit. Deadpanned, she raised her brows at me.

In her presence, I almost felt like a child misbehaving for my parent. It wasn’t enough to make me consider acting like a decent human.

“Does it look like there’s been any fucking changes?”

Over a month, I’d been stuck here. If not for the surgeries and monitoring for those issues, it was a constant battle against the infections that set in.

All those open wounds from Erik’s torture hadn’t fared well in the dark room Nadia had found me in.

Back and forth, on and off antibiotics. It seemed like these IVs pumping me with drugs would never be taken out.

And I wished they would be removed—all so I could recover at home, in my room, not here.

She smirked at the guards who stood at the door. Two Valkov soldiers stood there, always barricading my door from anyone entering. When the nurses or doctors entered, the door remained open and they stepped inside.

“He’s in another one of those moods today, huh?” she joked dryly.

“Ma’am, he’s been in a mood since?—”

I shot the soldier a stern look. “If you dealt with what I did, you’d be in a fucking ‘mood’ too.”

He lowered his gaze and nodded. I knew he wasn’t making fun of me for the sake of teasing me. Like the other man, he tried to lighten it up for the sake of the medical staff.

“Huh.” The nurse pursed her lips, ignoring the bickering.

“Looks like I might be able to get rid of you sooner than later, after all.” She continued checking the bandage on my arm where the worst of the infection had set in and spread.

When—if—that wound ever healed, I’d sport a big, gaping scar where my salvageable skin was pulled taut.

I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but I had to agree with her. The scar tissue looked normal and didn’t ache.

“How’s the vision?” She checked my eyes next, lingering on the left one, where Erik’s bat had fractured the bones around the socket.

“Same,” I replied.

She nodded. “Doc will be in later,” she said as she filed out from what felt like the hundredth vitals check.

I was moved out of ICU a couple of weeks ago, and I was glad I was spared the commotion and noise of that department.

Still, I was impatient to get the fuck out of here.

I had plans. I had shit to do. At the top of that list was finding Erik and paying him back for landing me in here like this.

“How’s it going?” Nik asked hours later when he stopped in.

All my brothers checked in on me. Alek was considerate to host meetings here, cramped in my room, so I wouldn’t miss out on any information. If they couldn’t crowd in here, I was granted a tablet to watch a video call of the meetings at the mansion.

Nikolai had been visiting me most frequently this week because he was already at the hospital.

“Why do you bother asking?” I replied as he sat in one of the chairs.

When the guards glanced in the door, he waved them off. “You can close it.”

One nodded and shut the door, giving us privacy.

“Seriously. How are you doing?”

I stared at him. “I want to get out of here.” I didn’t want a long, sappy discussion about how I was feeling or what hurt the most. None of it mattered.

Eventually, my body would recover and I would regain strength.

It would be a long, painful journey, but the end was all I focused on. Being strong enough to go after Erik.

“Sounds like it’ll be soon.”

“Then you can stop wasting time visiting me.”

He yawned, then rubbed his face. “It’s not a waste of time.”

“It is. I was beaten, and now I’m getting over it. Nothing to see.”

“I won’t try to say I know what it feels like. I’ve never been held captive for as long as you have or under those circumstances. But I understand that you’re mad.”

“At myself. For being captured at all. For taking so long to recover.”

He grunted a laugh. “Yeah. You’ve always been an impatient bastard. But I know you’re angry at Erik and want to?—”

“ Angry ?” I narrowed my eyes at him, slightly amused that the skin around my left one was moving smoother. “That’s an understatement.”

My fury for what Erik Avilov did to me was a living, feral beast within me, a monstrous, dark energy that wouldn’t be tamped down.

He lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I know.”

No. He didn’t know. I doubted anyone could comprehend the depth of my rage and the intensity of my need to exact revenge.

“Regardless of how unhappy you are and how unpleasant your company is, you’re entitled to it. I respect that. But you will never be a waste of my time. Nor the time of our brothers, and you won’t convince me otherwise.”

I sighed, looking my older brother in the eye and hating that he was right. I didn’t want their pity or their love. It was a twisted thought, but I couldn’t shake it. I only wanted to be fit to kill my torturer.

“I don’t need to be your priority,” I told him instead. “Go sit with Amy.”

He was hanging around here on the medical campus because of her, anyway.

“She kicked me out of the room.”

My sister-in-law was upstairs in the maternity ward, relegated to a similar status as me with an order for bedrest. Unlike me, she was doing her best to keep her babies in her womb for as long as possible.

Those twins weren’t supposed to be born for another three or four weeks, and her pregnancy had been touch and go with complications.

The urge to laugh faded too quickly. “Why?”

“She says I’m hovering.”

“You probably are.” Nik loved his wife, and I knew he was excited to welcome his son and daughter to the world.

“I don’t care if I am.” He crossed his arms. “And you’re my priority too, Dmitri. You always will be.”

I shook my head and looked up at the ceiling. Already, my vision was improved. With the hits to my eye, I suffered significant retina tears. The doctors were amazed that I wasn’t blind with the evidence of abuse there.

“You all have other priorities now. All of you.”

He huffed a laugh. “Is that what this is about? You’re feeling left out because you’re the last bachelor?”

“No. I’m just saying that you have other priorities that take precedence over me. Your wife. Your kids.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up, man. You’ll always be family no matter how much bigger it grows.” He barked another laugh. “The way you’re talking, you’re starting to sound jealous.”

I glowered at him.

“I mean, hell, maybe that’s not a bad idea for a distraction.” He grinned. “Want me to see about getting a couple of women to visit you?”

I grunted. “Here?”

“Well, at home. And it sounds like they’ll discharge you soon…”

“No. I don’t need any whores trying to distract me.”

“Because you want to stay grumpy and moody?” he challenged.

“Because I don’t want anything to interrupt my recovery.”

“You scared off all the nurses here. Terrorized the doctors.” He chuckled and pulled his phone from his pocket. “And—Oh, shit.” Shooting to his feet, he almost knocked the chair over. “The babies are coming. Now.”

“Go. Go.” I dismissed him with a wave as he ran for the door.

Once the door shut again, trapping me in with the view of these blank white walls, the loneliness crept in faster.

I knew my brothers cared about me, but Nik had hit a sore spot.

I wasn’t handling my recovery well so far, but I doubted the company of an easy piece of ass would do any miracles for me.

That was all I wanted, too. No commitments.

No long-term arrangements. I’d been a bachelor for too long that I doubted I’d ever change, and now wasn’t the time to attempt to.

I had to focus on getting revenge, for personal closure, before considering settling down like my brothers had.

I sighed, waiting for sleep to come. It was peaceful in this room, blocked off from the rest of the world. If I was going home soon, it wouldn’t be as quiet there.

Alek and Mila had their daughter there. Alana was almost two months old now.

Then Nik and Amy’s twins, tentatively named Sophia and Pyotr, would be home sooner than expected.

All those crying babies, and that wasn’t the end of my nieces and nephews.

Emily—Becca’s daughter—had already been toddling around and learning to walk quicker before I was captured.

At the thought of the redheaded baby, I fell into the brief memories of the first time I saw her. She’d been taken away in a carrier, kidnapped by a Rossini bastard. I’d stopped him from taking her, but that wasn’t the only act of rescue I’d done that night.

Hannah.

I hadn’t forgotten her name, the babysitter who’d been hit by the kidnapper. She woke up and was so startled by my rushing into the apartment that I felt sorry to frighten her more.

I hope you’re doing all right.

I’d taken her to the very same hospital I was in right now. She’d suffered a concussion from being hit that night, but despite the injury, she made a hell of an impression, and not one of being a weak, helpless damsel in distress.

Hannah Durmont. She was feisty, stubborn, and determined to know whether Emily was all right.

It had taken me several repeats of telling her that the baby she was watching had been returned to her mother, and that level of concern made a lasting imprint on me.

She wasn’t just there for some easy cash for watching a kid. She’d really cared.

“Ready to go home?” the lead doctor entered the room without warning, jarring me from thinking about the raven-haired woman I hadn’t forgotten about.

It wasn’t time to think about her now. With this doctor’s announcement, I paid attention to my discharge.

Alek entered the room with him. Mila, too.

They were there to coordinate the transfer of care from here to something at home, and I was glad they were here to listen to all the mumbo-jumbo. I lost interest.

All I cared about was regaining my strength at home. It didn’t matter to me who they hired to assist me in the comfort of my own wing at the mansion. Just that it happened.

The first two weeks of being home proved to be much more difficult that I could’ve anticipated, though.

All the home nurses quit. The therapists gave up too.

“If you could just stop being such an asshole to everyone,” Ivan said as he helped me off the floor.

“Shut the fuck up,” I growled. I’d tried to walk across the room with my walker, but my foot hadn’t wanted to cooperate. All the casts were gone, but like I’d been nagged a million times, I couldn’t count on its bearing my full weight yet.

I loathed falling and being unable to get up easily. I hated that anyone had to coach me about not pushing myself too hard. That was all I knew how to do. Pushing myself hard and numbing out the pain were how I’d survived being tortured.

“I’m going to look into finding another home aide,” Alek said from the doorway. He’d come when I texted in the group thread that I needed help after a fall. I debated just staying there on the floor until someone found me. That was how much I hated asking for help.

“The fuck you are,” I told him as Ivan helped me upright.

“Are there any left that he hasn’t scared off?” Becca asked. She held Emily in her arms. The toddler’s leg wrapped over Becca’s growing baby bump.

I shot her a dirty look too.

She shrugged. “I mean it. You’ve had how many come through here in the last two weeks? It’s like a revolving door.”

“I don’t need your input,” I snapped.

Ivan swatted the back of my head. “Watch your attitude.”

He didn’t add with her . He didn’t let anyone talk crap to his woman.

“I’m not offering input,” Becca argued. “I think I know someone we could call.”

I groaned as I sat on my bed. “No. Please no. I don’t want another stranger hovering over me and trying to tell me what to do.”

“You need help,” Alek said. “And I’m not saying that to mean you’re helpless.”

I reclined on the bed. As soon as I did, Emily wiggled to be let down and toddled over and crawled up next to me.

I watched her rub her hand up and down my arm.

“Boo-boo.”

“Yeah, I got a lot of them, huh?” I let her check me over then faced the three of them at the door. “I don’t want to be a burden. Don’t waste time looking for a nurse who won’t last.”

“You’re not a burden,” they said in tired unison.

“And I don’t want to be slowed down,” I added.

Ivan smirked. “Slowed down? Falling on your ass and being unable to get up is a hell of a way to be slowed down whether you like it or not.”

Becca nodded. “Yeah, I’ve got an idea.” She smiled at Emily snuggling against me. “I know someone who could help. Someone who’s exactly what you need.”

I grunted. Oh, really?

All I needed was the chance to seek revenge. At this rate, it was all that motivated me to want to live.