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MIA

Kallie stays in surgery for two hours.

It’s not long by any standard. I’ve once seen a surgery run fourteen hours straight. No breaks, no pauses.

But those two hours feel like infinity to me.

I spend them in the waiting room with Maksim. He’s still shaken up, speechless, eyes fixed on nothing. Taking care of him is the only thing that keeps me sane.

Because, if I’m not doing that, then I have to think.

And I really don’t want to be thinking right now.

Yulian. The shooting. The confession.

The lies.

Lies, lies, lies—all of them lies.

Finally, at two minutes to midnight, the doors open back up.

I spring to my feet. “How is she?”

Of all people, it’s Dr. Adams who is on call tonight. I never imagined our first interaction after my suspension would be like this. That I’d be begging him for anything.

But for Kallie, I’d beg the devil himself.

He walks up to me. He’s still wearing his surgical mask, making his expression even more unreadable than usual. When he puts a hand on my shoulder, I nearly burst out crying.

But then he rips off his mask—and smiles . “The surgery went well. She’s okay.”

Tears fill my eyes. “She—she’ll be fine?”

“Good as new. Soon as the anesthetic wears off, you can go see her.”

“Thank you.” More words I never thought I’d say. “I— Thank you, Dr. Adams. I know we haven’t seen eye to eye lately, but?—”

“Don’t mention it,” he says. “This is medicine. We will always agree on medicine.” Then, with one last squeeze of my shoulder, he heads off.

Maksim appears at my side. “Did I hear right?” he rasps. “She pulled through?”

“Damn right she did.” I quickly wipe my eyes. “Kallie’s a fighter. It takes more than one bullet to take her out.”

But it almost did.

I ignore that thought. Right now, I don’t want to process what could have been.

I just want to see my friend.

A coworker smuggles me into her room. Under the circumstances, it would be a “family only” situation, but Kallie has none. All she has is me.

And now, Maksim.

He sits on her left. I take the chair to her right. Kallie is deathly still in her bed, an oxygen mask secured to her face, IVs everywhere. I’m used to seeing people like this, but never her. In my mind, Kalinda Kathri is invincible.

“I thought I’d lost her.” It’s my thoughts, but not my voice. Instead, it’s Maksim’s. “I never even kissed her.”

“Yeah. She was pretty pissed off about that.” I force a small smile. “So make it up to her.”

“If it’s the last thing I do, I will.”

“Good. That’s what I wanna hear.”

Maksim’s gaze fixes on me. “I don’t suppose you want to talk about what happened with Yulian?”

The wound in my heart rips open again. “As a matter of fact, I don’t.”

“He didn’t mean it, you know. What he said at the end.”

“Maks, I really?—”

“He loves you.” His tone is firm, certain. The most certain I’ve heard him all night. “He’s been wrestling with demons all his life. Dark things straight from the pit of hell, stuff that most people can’t even imagine. When he met you, he had no idea how to handle it.”

“He made me bait,” I whisper bitterly. “That’s how he handled it.”

“And he’s regretted it ever since.”

“He still did it, though.”

“Yes,” he murmurs. “He isn’t that good at handling regret, either. Last time he felt it, there was nothing to be done about it.”

Uncertainty mixes with the pain in my heart. It makes the fortress of my anger waver, if only just a little.

“Did you know?” I ask with little emotion. “About his plan?”

“I suggested it.”

I fist my dress. Of course he was in on it. They were all in on it.

Only I was stupid enough to believe it.

I try to turn my anger at Maksim, but it fizzles out like an old lightbulb. “Don’t tell Kallie,” I warn him. “She’ll never forgive you.”

Maksim’s smile turns sad. “If tonight’s taught me anything, it’s that secrets don’t lead to good places.”

“So you’ll tell her?”

“All of it. As soon as she’s well enough.”

I shake my head with fondness. Leave it to Maksim to redefine the standards for Bratva boyfriends. “It’s your funeral.”

“Who’s dead?”

We both turn towards the third voice in the room.

“You’re awake,” I whisper.

Kallie gives me a shit-eating grin and lifts her oxygen mask. “Ding-dong, this witch hasn’t kicked it yet. So stop planning my funeral.”

“We wouldn’t dream of it,” Maksim says, hoarse. “You’d have opinions about everything.”

“Damn right. I want elephants.”

“Is this the drugs talking?”

“Nope.” I smile through the tears. “That’s all her.”

“Wanted them since I was four. The elephants, not the drugs. Those didn’t come up until my Sweet Sixteen wish list.” She tries to sit up and winces. “Ouch. So, what’s the damage?”

I update Kallie as best I can. Letting the nurse in me take over is the only thing keeping me from bursting into tears again. I don’t mention Yulian, nor our final argument.

If she notices the lack of a ring on my finger, she doesn’t say anything.

“So Adams was inside me? Damn. I’ll never live that down.”

“You took a bullet to the spleen,” I murmur. “He had to remove it. I’m sorry.”

“Spleen? Pfft.” She waves me off. “Nothing I can’t live without.”

“You’ll have a scar.”

“Cool. I’ll get a tattoo around it.”

“You’re impossible, you know that?”

“I do.” Her smile turns soft. She squeezes my hand once. “Learned it all from you.”

I stick around a little more, until Kallie’s eyes grow droopy. “I’ll stay with you tonight,” I promise.

“No way in hell,” she says. “You’ve got a kid at home.”

“Tamara can handle it.”

“Okay, let me rephrase that: You’ve got a bed at home. Go use it. Sleep. Hug that hunk of yours for warmth if you have to.”

I don’t let my smile waver. She doesn’t need to deal with any more of my messes tonight—she’s already taken plenty of damage from them.

“Alright,” I whisper. “I’ll keep in touch with Maksim.”

“Don’t answer her texts until the sun’s back up,” Kallie instructs him. “I mean it. If you do, I’ll eat your phone.”

“That’d be one surgery too many, Kal.”

“Try me.”

I roll my eyes. “Fine. You win. I’ll see you both in the morning.”

After bidding goodnight to both, I head back out into the parking lot. I spend five whole minutes looking for my Honda before remembering I didn’t drive here. That I didn’t take my car at all tonight.

Because Yulian came to pick me up.

I banish that thought and hail down a cab.

The whole ride home, all I can think about is Eli. I’ve never missed him so much. I want to hug him so bad. Bury my head in his perfect curls, smell his shampoo-and-Cheez-It-dust cologne.

The thought of having to tell him about Yulian is enough to break my heart all over again.

I climb the stairs two by two. It’s well past the time Reese should have headed off. He’s the one person I want to talk to right now. With Kallie out of commission, he’s the last emotional support human I’ve got left.

Tomorrow, I tell myself. We’ll talk tomorrow.

Except that, when I open the door, he’s still there.

On the floor.

Bleeding.

“Oh my God.” I rush to him, tossing my bag on the ground. “Reese, talk to me. Are you okay? What happened?!”

His face is swollen, his nose bent at an awkward angle. One eye is puffy and bruised, and his teeth are stained red.

Fear grips my heart. For a moment, I’m terrified this will be Kallie all over again. That he’s too hurt, that it’s too late.

But then Reese’s good eye cracks open. “Mia…?”

Relief rushes through me. “I’m here,” I whisper.

Abruptly, Reese sits up. “Eli,” he stammers. “Where—where’s Eli?”

My breathing stops. “What?”

“Tamara,” he says. “She—she wasn’t who we thought she was. She grabbed him. I tried to stop her, I?—”

The fear in my heart grows into dread. “What did she do, Reese? Where’s my son?”

“She took him,” he murmurs. “She must’ve.”

I spring to my feet and rush to Eli’s bedroom. “Eli?!” I call, desperate. “Eli, are you?—?”

But he’s not there.

The bed is empty. The room is empty. I trip on his Garfield plushie on the way back to the living room, abandoned on the cold hard floor. The sight makes my heart sink faster.

I search the rest of the apartment, but he’s nowhere.

Panic grips me. My breaths start coming in short, my vision tunneling.

He’s gone.

He’s gone, gone, GONE ? —

“Mia.”

Reese’s voice snaps me out of it. “What?”

“Look at this.”

He’s dragged himself to the counter. His leg is a little wobbly, but aside from that, it looks like his face took the brunt of the injuries. A bad beating—nothing more.

Relief bursts in my heart, but it’s a short reprieve.

He holds something out to me. A piece of paper—a note. The handwriting is girly, curated. Perfect the way Tamara always seemed. But the words…

The words, I recognize.

And they’re not Tamara’s at all.

Did you really thing you could hide him from me forever, sweet thing?

Come to our love nest, or you’ll never see him again.

The world spins.

He’s got him. He’s got my son.

He found him because of me.

“It’s him, isn’t it?” Reese hisses through gritted teeth. “She was working for him. For Brad.”

Brad.

Fury rises within me. Bright, burning, fire and brimstone and the goddamn meteor that killed the dinosaurs.

I hand Reese a bag of frozen peas and pick up my bag. “Wait,” he says. “We need to call the police. We?—”

“They won’t help. Not with this.”

“Then we call Yulian!”

“He’s not who we thought he was, either.”

“Then—” Reese stammers, eyes wide. “Where are you going?”

“To get back my son.”