Page 90 of Wicked Refusal

“You wanna give birth to a kingpin’s heir?” Kallie frowns. “While being chased by gunfire and flying knives?”

“Hey, I’m a New Yorker. I need excitement in my days. Why do you think I take the J Train to work?”

“Fair point.”

I let myself sink into my friends’ banter, their familiar voices. For a while there, locked inside Brad’s gilded cage, I thought I might never see them again. That I’d lost my chance to even say goodbye.

But that didn’t happen. They waited for me. Kept their faith in me andstayed.

Without Yulian, I never would have been able to live up to that trust.

“I love you guys.” I say it without thinking, one arm around each of their shoulders. “So freaking much.”

“Aww!” they go in sync. But as they cuddle up to me in my embrace, I can tell their eyes are a little bit wet, too.

Soon, however, a cough sends us scattering. “We’re out of gauze,” Gwen announces.

“I’ll go grab some,” I volunteer.

It’s ridiculous. Even a simple trip to the hospital pharmacy puts a skip in my step now. Just how badly had I missed this underfunded hellhole?

It’s your home.The answer comes before I can stop it, unbidden.Like the Brownsville apartment, this was your home for five years, too.

Yeah. A lifetime ago.

I stop by the pharmacy, but the desk’s unmanned. Not surprising—from what I’ve heard, staff cuts have been rampant in the past few months. Something to do with the new year’s budget.

Slipping into the pharmacy without permission could get me into trouble, so I don’t do that. Instead, I remember the storage room on the basement floor.

I take the stairs, itching to burn some kinetic energy. On the basement floor, I pass the morgue, the coroner’s office, and a tiny break room with a microwave and what looks like brain sashimi on a platter. Probably not intended to be eaten, but I’d rather not run into another one of the MD’s, ahem,experiments.Last time, I had to burn my scrubs outright.

I get to the storage room, push the door?—

—and freeze at the stern sound of Gwen’s voice.

“Winters.” She marches straight towards me. “You shouldn’t be down here.”

I try to make myself very, very small. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wander off. It’s just, there was no one at the pharmacy’s desk, and then I remembered about the supplies here?—”

“I see.” Her gaze clears. “Pharmacist’s back now. You can go up.”

“Oh!” I blurt. “Okay, then. I’ll just?—”

“I’ll find the keys for that door.”

Keys?I frown.It’s just a storage room.But Gwen doesn’t look like she’s in the mood to be second-guessed, or even first-guessed, so I give her a quick nod and rush back up. Very demure, very mindful, veryplease don’t fire me on my first day back.

By the time my shift is over, I’ve forgotten all about the door.

31

YULIAN

The hospital cameras blink back at me with footage of Mia.

I had Tikhon hack into the system weeks before her reinstatement became official. Just the ER floor, but that’s where she is most of the time anyway. Working. Running around. Saving lives.

I never thought a woman could look so fucking gorgeous in a pair of dirty scrubs.