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My paternal grandmother used to call her “fanciful.” Otets preferred to say she was batshit crazy. I grew up with this notion that she was simply unpinnable, dancing as she wished back and forth across the line between sanity and madness.
The clearest memory I have: one night, she slipped into my room and woke me up. It was the last time I ever saw her. But I didn’t know that when I blinked my eyes open to find her face hovering above mine.
“Come with me, Dimi. We can run away together.”
“Where are we going?”
She smiled and her eyes disappeared. “Anywhere you want. To the moon.”
“I don’t wanna go to the moon,” I mumbled, hiding my face beneath my blankets. “I wanna sleep.”
I can still hear her last words to me, filled with disappointment, stained with unshed tears. “Please, my sweet boy. Come with me. Please.”
I said no again. I was seven; I didn’t know what she was asking me, and in truth, I don’t think she fully did, either.
She sighed and kissed my forehead and when she pulled away, she left behind her tears. I wiped them off, turned over, and went back to sleep.
“Dmitri?” The door squeaks open and Aleksandr sneaks in. Judging from the dark circles around his eyes, I’m not the only one who hasn’t been sleeping.
“I’m awake.” I sit up against the hideous green couch that Wren decided she loved and gesture him over. “Any news?”
Even in the dark, I can see him shake his head. “Nothing so far. Just spoke to Locksmith. Nothing new there, either.”
“What about Liza?”
Aleksandr sighs as he drops onto the armchair, legs cast askew. “If Cian has to take Wren to a doctor, it’s not going to be Liza.” He cracks his knuckles, yawns, and squints at me. “Did you manage to get some sleep?”
I glance at the clock. It says twelve, but I couldn’t honestly say if it’s noon or midnight, not with the curtains drawn as tight as they are. Who cares in the end, anyway? Night, day—it doesn’t fucking matter anymore.
“No.”
He starts to say something, but a buzzing sound interrupts him. I look down at my phone, startled to see an unexpected name on the screen. My eyelids twitch with anticipation as I hold the phone up to my ear.
“Liza?”
“They just left,” she gasps. “They just fucking left.”
I’m on my feet in an instant. “Where?”
“I’m at the hospital. I don’t know where they’re going,” she says, tripping over her words. “She tried to tell me where he’s keeping her, but I think he got suspicious. He might be moving her, Dmitri. He might be?—”
“It’s okay. I’ve got this. You did good calling me.”
I hang up while she’s still talking and dial in Pavel’s number. “Pavel, where are you?”
“Uh, outside St. Joseph’s, where you told me to?—”
“Wren and Cian are exiting the building as we speak. I need you to get eyes on them. Do whatever it takes to get Wren back unhurt. I’m coming.”
The car roars all around me, but it’s not enough. Not fast enough by a longshot, though I have the gas pedal pressed to the floor and people scream and swerve out of the way as I rip through the city.
The hospital looms ahead. Aleksandr is saying something in the passenger seat, but I can’t even hear him over the crackling bellow of the engine.
“Dmitri, look out?—!”
I leap the car onto the sidewalk. The curb tears against the undercarriage and thus millions of dollars’ worth of Ferrari’s finest mechanisms get shredded to pieces, but I couldn’t give a fuck less.
Wren needs me.
