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With Arseny off my back—literally—I turned my attention to Nikolai, who had my right arm in a hold. Nikolai instantly leaned out of range for me to headbutt him, not that I planned to. Instead of throwing my head at him, I leaned over and sank my teeth deep into his arm.
"Blyat'!" Nikolai hissed in pain while trying to pry me off.
"Hanna, stop it." Angel pleaded, grabbing onto my shoulders to help pull away. She wasn't successful though.
"Angel, please step back, I don't want you getting caught up and getting hurt." Nikolai begged his wife through gritted teeth.
"Hanna, just listen to me, please. You don't want to see Stepan like this. Seeing him right now in his current condition won't do you any good, trust me. If this is the last time you see him then you don't want the final images of him to be less than ideal. Please, we're doing this for your own good." Angel looked at me with a soft frown and down-turned eyes as she pleaded with me.
Releasing her husband's arm from my jaws, I looked at her with pleading eyes. "I need to see that he's okay, please."
Frowning further, Angel shook her head slowly. "He's not okay right now, that's the thing. Alive, yes, but I really don't want you seeing him in that state. It's for your own good."
Feigning a sigh of defeat, I forced my body to relax while I hung my head. I couldn't muscle my way through this, not against three bratva bosses and my pregnant friend. I had to play it smart.
When their holds on me loosened and released, I sprung like a tightly coiled spring. My first target was my friend; my hands shot out and grabbed her shoulders, shoving her—gently—at Nikolai, who immediately braced her and fretted over her to pay me much attention. Then, I swung my elbow back and cracked it into Arseny's face, stunning him enough to grab him by the front of his shirt and pivot him into Lev to stop him from going after me.
With that little mess going, I turned on the balls of my feet and booked it for the closed door, throwing the heavy door open with a huge slam when it impacted the wall.
It never bothered me to see a body on an operating table being sliced into with tubes sticking out of them, but the sight of Stepan brought a frigid shock to my system. "Alexei, why does he look like that? He's not going to die is he?" The heart monitor was beeping steadily at a good pace, I think, but seeing all the tubes going in and out of Stepan while he was opened up on an operating table did something else to me.
"You really think I'm going to let my own brother die?" Alexei scoffed back, glancing up at me with a quick glare as if to tell me, 'How dare you question my abilities' or some shit like that. "Go lay down before you pass out, you're as white as a ghost. The others can tell you what happened."
Yet, I couldn't budge with this heavy dread chaining me to the ground. If I forced myself to move, then my body might fall apart and crumble into nothing. I also couldn't bring myself to take Stepan out of my sight; no matter how horrible he looked, I needed to ensure with my own eyes that he was alive. On the other hand, if I didn't leave now, I'd hurl, and I didn't want to think what Alexei would do to me if I threw up in his operating room.
"Hanna, come on, let's go sit down." Angel's usual comforting touch sent a shock of chills through me when I felt her hands on my shoulders.
"No, I don't want to leave him." I was afraid he'd cease to breathe the moment I took my eyes off of him.
"He's in good hands Hanna, Alexei's not going to let anything happen to him. I know it looks horrible, but he will be fine after he gets patched up." My legs felt like stiff sticks when Angel forced me to move back outside.
The emotional turmoil threatened to break my body as I sat outside the door with the others. I wanted to cry, scream, throw a huge hissy fit, go berserk. "What happened?" I demanded in an emotionless voice, locking my cold gaze at Nikolai, who was being tended to by Angel.
"He got hit." He stated the obvious, which made my eyes roll out of annoyance.
Gritting my teeth, I balled my hands up into fists. "No fucking shit Sherlock, now answer the fucking question before I rip your throat out." I seethed with a growl.
"We don't know the details, just that he was covering us one minute and the next he said he was hit and needed backup. We got to him as fast as we could when he called for help. When we caught up to him, we saw the damage. He passed out on the car ride back. All we know is that he was shot three times, a bunch of contusions, broken ribs, punctured lungs, that's it." Lev sighed heavily with a groan, hanging his head and holding it in his hands as he paced his erratic breathing.
"You better have gotten the fucking bastards that did that to him." If not, then I'd burn the whole fucking world to ashes to make sure I got every last one of those motherfuckers.
"Of course we did, they weren't too keen on retreating even after we showed up." Nikolai grunted with a hiss when Angel pressed something against the fresh bite mark. "But we kept some alive and captured for questioning." He added quickly.
"I want them, I don't want anyone touching them for questioning but me." Even if they couldn't give me the information I wanted, I'd still get a kick out of beating them up for what they did to Stepan.
With a heavy sigh of worry, I switched back to the important matter at hand. "Why is he open on the table like that if it's just a few shots and injuries?" Digging out a bullet didn't require opening someone fully up, so what the fuck was going on?
"One of the bullets traveled from his abdomen all the way up into his chest cavity, so we have to repair the damage and fish the bullet out." Angel answered me with a disheartened smile.
"He's going to be okay though, right?" It sounded more like a demand than a question.
"So far, he is stable. He got lucky and no major arteries were hit, nor was the internal damage that bad. We'll have to see what Alexei says 'cause he's the doc, but given my experience, that's what I assume." That wasn't the answer I hoped for from Angel.
"Ange, I need you to give it to me straight, as a friend, not a nurse. Is he going to be okay?" I hated it when she got all medical and professional with me. I understood why she'd default to that side of her, and I appreciate her attempts to prevent my hopes from being raised or crushed, but still.
Angel let out a long exhale and looked at me for a moment with conflicting eyes before caving. "From a medical standpoint, he is stable in there, odds of him surviving are high right now given his condition, but you and I both know that things can take a turn for the worse out of nowhere and for no reason. So, you know why I can't give you a definite 'yes he will be fine and dandy' and shit, not when I know he could just crash for no reason. Even if he does make it out of the OR, he still has to wake up and recover, which brings up a whole different bag of bullshit with it. He might have dodged the bullets to major arteries but he still lost a lot of blood, and we don't know the extent of his full injuries because no one witnessed what happened fully."
"Thanks... I'm going to step outside for a moment." I needed to move and get some fresh air. Otherwise, I would shut down right now. Well, I needed to go outside to scream out my anger at the world; no way in hell would I do that in here in front of everyone.
