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“The doctor will run more tests tomorrow. We can’t rule anything out.” She steps out of the doorway. “He’s on life support now. He can breathe on his own, but this is more reliable.”
Because he coded three times on the way to the hospital.
Because he was dead on the sidewalk for who knows how long while I was racing across the city.
Because I left my own brother to die.
The room is solid gray in the dimmed lights, broken up only by the blue glow of the machines around him. Medications and fluid bags hang from the IV pole next to him. There are monitors strapped to him and needles inserted beneath the skin. A clear tube runs into his mouth, the machine behind him hissing as it inflates and deflates his chest at an even rhythm.
I barely recognize him. If it wasn’t for his shock of dark hair and thick brows, I wouldn’t even know it was Nik. Everything I associate with my little brother—his wide smile and booming voice—is gone.
I drop down into the plastic-covered recliner next to his bed and listen to the machines keeping him alive.
I try to be grateful, but I’m so fucking angry. At myself for leaving him there. At Akim for not giving me a choice.
“This is fucked, Nik,” I mumble, running my fingers through my hair. “You shouldn’t be here like this. It should be me. I was the target. That bullet was meant for me.”
I pause like Nik might say something. He always has something to say. Most of the time, I can’t shut him up even when I want to. Now, I’d give anything to hear some fucking wisecrack.
“You’d say it’s your job as my second to take a bullet for me, but it’s my job as your brother to make sure you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have let you come with me if I thought there was a chance you wouldn’t—” I stop and pass my tongue over my teeth. “Fuck this. We’ll have this conversation when you wake up. Because you’re going to wake up. You’re going to fight and pull through.”
Nik still doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. I know he can’t because of the medication, but I’ve never seen him so still.
“Mariya told me to kick Akim in the balls for her,” I say with a soft, exhausted chuckle. “I’m sure you’d come up with something more creative. Hell, maybe Akim will still be alive when you wake up. You can kick him yourself when that day comes.”
If it ever comes. The fact that it might not is what forces me up and out of my chair.
Luna was right. None of this is my fault.
There’s only one man to blame.
Time to pay him a visit.
11
YAKOV
The clean-up shed is dead quiet. The only light comes from a flickering streetlamp two blocks down. Otherwise, nothing.
No one to raise any warning flags.
No one to hear the screams.
I pass by two guards at the front door with nothing more than a quick nod. They’re not necessary. The only way Akim is escaping the shed is through death. But unlike him, I plan for the worst-case scenario. There is no way I’m letting him get away now. Not after everything he has done.
Isay put Akim in a soundproof room in the center of the warehouse. No windows, only one door in and out. He’s bound to a metal chair that is bolted to the concrete floor. There’s a drain positioned directly beneath him. It’s about to earn its keep.
When I walk through the door, Akim is sagged down in the chair. I think he’s asleep at first, until he lifts his head slowly, a dazed smile stretched across his pale face. “I was beginning to think you were going to stand me up,” he croaks.
“I had to stop by the hospital.”
He pastes on a sympathetic mask. “I heard about Nikandr. It’s a shame… that my man wasn’t able to kill him. It would have been my consolation prize for losing Luna."
I close and lock the door behind me. I don’t want any interruptions for what’s about to come next.
“I understand what you saw in her,” Akim continues. “I mean, I knew shit had to be serious when I heard you were out on a date. Yakov Kulikov, the Bratva bachelor himself, on a date? Un-fucking-believable. Any woman who could tie you down had to be magnificent. But I still didn’t expect her.”
The way he says it, his lips wrapping slowly around the word, makes me want to rip his tongue out of his mouth. Fuck it—I might.
