AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“If you aren’t happy here, then you could go back home. Things with Nik could go on like this for months. I don’t want you?—”
“You don’t want me here?” She lifts her chin, but her eyes are watery. “If you didn’t want me here, you shouldn’t have called. Of course I’m going to be here for my baby boy.”
“I don’t want you to be miserable,” I finish as if she said nothing.
“Oh. I’m not miserable. It’s just going to take some getting used to, I suppose. I haven’t been back here since before your father—” She sniffles. “I’ll have to learn what it’s like to live in this house when it isn’t mine. But I’m not leaving. I haven’t seen Mariya or met your fiancée. Plus, I have to stay until my grandbabies are born. That’s non-negotiable.”
In the end, I leave my mother on the patio and tell Isay to rehire the groundskeeper. Dealing with my mother has to take a backseat to everything else. I can’t afford any distractions.
I close myself in my office and stay late into the night, Budimir’s file and a bottle of vodka on my desk.
Pavel can’t get away with making a threat against my family and then disappearing. If he isn’t going to show himself and fight me like a man, then I’ll start taking out his associates one by one. I just need to figure out who they are first.
I’ve been putting out feelers and making calls for hours when my phone rings. I have so many irons in the fire that I don’t check who it is before I answer, assuming it’s someone getting back to me with information.
“This is Yakov.”
“Mr. Kulikov?” a female voice says.
Dr. Tung’s name is on the screen. I check the time and sit up. If she’s calling late, it can’t be good. My heart squeezes. “How is Nik? What is?—”
“You need to get down here immediately,” she says. “Nik is awake.”
The drive to the hospital is a blur. I drank more than I thought, so I order Isay to drive me.
I don’t even tell him why. I can’t.
Partly because I don’t know much. Dr. Tung told me Nik was awake and I needed to get to the hospital immediately, but she didn’t want to say more beyond that.
The other part of it is that I don’t believe it. Not really. I just began accepting my brother’s probable death. Now, he’s awake?
Isay drops me at the front doors. A night janitor is loading a cart onto the first-floor elevator so I pivot and take the stairs. I sprint up five floors. As soon as I get to the lobby, the receptionist buzzes me in. She recognizes me. She knows what is going on.
I don’t bother asking her if it’s true, though. I won’t believe it until I see him.
“Mr. Kulikov.” Dr. Tung is standing at the nurse’s station, a cup of coffee in her hands.
“I want to see him.”
I start to edge around her, but she follows me. “Of course you can see him, but I want to prepare you for what you’re going to see.”
“He’s awake. That’s what you said.”
“He’s conscious,” she corrects carefully. “There is a difference. He’s still delirious, but his eyes opened. He tracked me across the room.”
“Can he speak?”
“He is still intubated, so I don’t know yet,” she says.
I’m so goddamn tired of hearing that answer from people. “What the fuck do you know?”
If she’s bothered by my cursing, she doesn’t show it. She lays a hand on my shoulder. “I know that you care deeply about your brother and he would love to see you. Go on in.”
Nik’s room is dark. The blinds are drawn. The only light comes from the monitors behind his bed and the ambient light from the hallway. But as soon as I walk in, I see his eyes on me.
His lids are heavy and his gaze wobbles when he tries to follow me, but his eyes are open. He’s looking at me.
My brother is looking at me.
