Page 35

MIA

It all happens too fast.

Yulian dives into the rain of bullets, and I can’t stop him. It feels like my heart is right there with him, being torn to pieces with every shot that grazes his clothes.

I want to scream. Want to run out there and throw myself into the line of fire. I want to keep him safe.

But I have someone else to protect.

Without thinking, I press my palm over my belly. It’s okay, I lie. A kind lie, a white lie, but a lie nonetheless. It’s all gonna be okay.

Then Desya aims his rifle at Yulian, and the lie shatters.

My heart stops.

No. No, no, no…

It can’t end like this.

Please, please ? —

Then a body hits the ground. Not Yulian’s—thank God—but a body nonetheless.

And I decide enough is enough.

“Mia!” Yulian roars when he sees me fly out of my hiding place. “What the hell are you?—”

But I’m already kneeling by Zhenya.

Her eyes are glassy, her breathing shallow.

A gaping hole stares at me from her stomach, where Desya’s bullet struck true.

Her thigh is wounded, too, shot clean through, probably in the mayhem earlier.

There’s blood pooling under her body, a growing stain seeping into the Goldenrod’s plush carpet. Red on red.

“Yulian!” Maksim shouts from the balustrade. “Desya’s getting away!”

Yulian stops midway to me. He’s conflicted, I can tell, but I can’t spare the attention right now. He’s unharmed—that’s what matters.

But Zhenya isn’t. She needs my help.

“Go,” I tell Yulian. “I’ve got things here.”

“You need to get back to?—”

“Please.” I turn to face him. “Trust me.”

He hesitates. One second, two.

Then he’s taking off after Desya.

Kallie rushes to my side. “What do you need?”

“A tourniquet,” I tell her. “Water. Clean towels. And a bottle of whiskey.”

“Got it.” She rushes to grab what I’ve asked, already in battlefield mode. When you’ve worked side by side as long as we have, you barely need to speak to each other: you’re in perfect sync. “You,” she snaps at the nearest guy, who happens to be Kazimir. “Give me your belt.”

“M-My?—?”

“Yes. Now .”

With a sigh, Kazimir obliges. “I’ve been shot, too, if anyone cares.”

Right. His foot. It’s not as urgent as Zhenya, but that needs care, too. “Kallie, go to him. I’ve got this. Has anyone called 911 yet?”

“I did,” Maksim says. He looks ruffled by the gunfight, but no worse for the wear than usual. “They’re on their way.”

“ Sestra! ” Anton wails at Zhenya’s side. “Hang on. I’m here.”

“Sir, I need you to step back.”

He ignores me and grabs her hands. “I’ll make that mudak pay! I’ll?—”

“SIR!”

Finally, his head snaps to me.

“I need to help your sister now.” My tone is firm, unflinching. “Either step back, or I’ll have you removed.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?!” he snaps at me. “She’s my sister! She’s?—”

“Maksim.”

It comes out like an order. Like Yulian would say it. I barely even notice that, barely realize how rude I’m being.

But Maksim doesn’t seem to mind. Instead, he springs into action, as if the command had come from Yulian himself. “Come here, Anton.”

“Get your hands off of me! She’s my sister! I need to be with my sister!”

He’s thrashing, but Maksim holds him in a vise. “A little help here, boys?”

Two recruits rush to hold Anton down. With their help, Maksim manages to remove him from the room.

Finally, I can focus.

I touch a hand to Zhenya’s cheek. She’s getting colder, growing paler by the second.

That’s when Kallie comes back to me with the rest of the supplies. She must have given Kazimir first aid, because her hands are bloody. She washes them with water and a generous pour of whiskey, then turns to me. “Well?”

“You take the stomach, I’ll take the thigh.”

She doesn’t make me say it twice.

As Kallie shrugs off her jacket and uses it to staunch the blood flow there, I get to work on Zhenya’s leg. The abdominal wound is by far the worst one, but her thigh is bleeding too much. I don’t like it.

I make a tourniquet with Kazimir’s belt and staunch the blood flow.

It doesn’t cut it off completely, but it’s something.

Carefully, I lift her leg a little. A matching hole is at the back of her thigh—good. It means at least one of the bullets made it out. As for the one in her stomach, we won’t know until she’s at the hospital. Flipping her now to check would be a huge risk, and I’m not comfortable with that.

Suddenly, I realize Zhenya hasn’t moved once. Not while I was tightening the tourniquet, not while I lifted her leg. Nothing, zilch, nada.

As if she didn’t feel a thing.

“Zhenya, are you there?” She doesn’t answer, but her glassy eyes roll towards me. “Can you feel this?”

I poke her softly in the leg. Then, when she doesn’t react, I poke her hard.

She doesn’t budge.

Shit. “Kallie, I think?—”

“Yeah,” she grits. “Me, too.”

We don’t say it. It’s never a good idea to speak the ugly truths in front of the patient, not while in the middle of an emergency.

If the other bullet is lodged in her spine, only surgery can help her.

I clean out the thigh wound as best as I can, then tear a large towel into strips. It’s not the best dressing, but for now, it’ll do.

The ambulance arrives. The paramedics recognize me and Kallie from the ER.

I explain the situation as I help them load her up. The loss of sensation in the lower half of the body puts them on high alert, along with the significant blood loss. The absence of an exit wound at her back, too, all but confirms my theory.

“Call the hospital,” one of them says. “Tell them to prep an OR.” Then he turns to us. “Nurse Winters, Nurse Kathri. I’m glad you were here. You just might have saved her life. Now, it’s in the surgeon’s hands.”

Then they’re riding off.

The paramedic’s words stay with me long after he’s gone. Not because I think I’ve made that much of a difference, but because they remind me of the reason I wanted to become a doctor in the first place.

Nurses help people. They’re the backbone of any hospital. But handing off my patients to an OR after I patch up the worst of it—that’s not what I want.

I want to cure people. Want to stick with them in that OR, make them whole again with my own two hands, and keep tabs on them until the day they’re walking out on their own two legs. I want to be there for them, from start to finish.

I don’t want to hand them off to a doctor.

I want to be that doctor.

It’s a very sudden thought. Going back to med school, finishing what I couldn’t—I haven’t let myself think about that in a long time. Right now, we’re in a crisis, but maybe, afterwards…

I shake my head. It’s pointless to think about it now. Yulian is in the middle of a Bratva war, I’m fighting Brad for custody of my son, and I still haven’t decided if I’m even going to stay. It’s no time to make plans for the future.

For now, the best I can do is keep us alive.

Kallie seems to notice my exhaustion. “Go get some air,” she whispers. “I’ll drive Kazimir to the hospital. You stay with Yulian.”

I give a tight nod. “Thanks, Kal.”

I step outside just in time to see Yulian in the gardens, arguing with Nikita. “—let him fucking go!”

“I didn’t let him go!” she yells back. “There were two of you, goddammit! I couldn’t tell which one was you in the dark! Next time, get me some night goggles!”

“Bullshit,” he snarls. “You froze. Admit it.”

“I didn’t fucking freeze.” Her voice drops to icy depths. “I want that motherfucker dead as much as you.”

“Then you’ve got a funny way of showing it.”

“If you’re done being an asshole about this?—”

“No, I’m not done!” Yulian thunders. “You’re benched. I don’t want you anywhere near Desya Bogdanov again.”

“You can’t?—”

“Yes, I can,” he snaps. “And I just did. So either get with the program or find someone else to botch jobs for.”

Her fists tighten. It’s too dark to see her face, but I could swear I caught a glimpse of tears in her eyes.

She strides off without seeing me.

“That was harsh,” I tell Yulian once she’s gone.

He turns, surprised to see me. But he’s still angry—I can tell. “I won’t take notes on how to discipline my people.”

“Then maybe you should take advice on how to talk to your friends,” I reply. “Because that wasn’t it, Yulian. She’s done everything for us. Whatever her mistake, she didn’t deserve that.”

He balls his fists. “Mistakes aren’t allowed in the Bratva. If she doesn’t know that by now, she’s not cut out for it.”

“Everyone makes mistakes.”

“Not here. Not on my watch.”

“How about your mistakes, then?” I press. “Because you can’t demand perfection unless you’re perfect. And I think we both know you’re not.”

“I’m their fucking boss.” He stalks up to me, his body language furious. “I don’t fuck up because I can’t fuck up. That’s it.”

“Wow.” I cross my arms and fix him with a disappointed look. “I’d love to live in such a simple world.”

“You think my life is simple? That I want this?”

“Don’t you?”

He takes one more aggressive step. He’s towering fully over me now, angrier than I’ve seen him in ages. “This is my duty,” he says. “My legacy. Turning my back on it, living a life outside of it—they’re all luxuries I can’t afford. And making a mistake? It’s the last thing I can do.”

His words dig deep inside me. This side of Yulian feels new. A curtain has been shifted on his pakhan persona, allowing me to see past the barked orders and furious reprimands.

Guilt bubbles up inside me. For saying all those things, for pushing him this far. “You’re human too,” I say. “You’re allowed?—”

“No, I’m not.” His voice is steel. “I’m not allowed to get it wrong. Because if I do, people die.” His face twists into a complicated expression. A mix of fury, denial—and love. “You, Eli, our baby. If I don’t play this perfectly…”

His hand touches my cheek. There’s a faint tremor there, something like relief.

I can tell, because I feel it, too.

He’s safe.

He’s alive.

He’s still with me.

I reach for his hand. He doesn’t pull it back. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

And while he doesn’t say anything to that—because he can’t, because his pride won’t allow it—he squeezes back, just a little. Just enough to let me know he feels the same.

Just enough to let me breathe again.