I’ll take care of the rest once K is stable.
It may be six weeks, it may be six years, but India Dvorák should enjoy her last breaths because they’re limited.
Nikolai’s chest rises and falls three times before he mutters, “I don’t know, but I intend to find out. When I do—”
“That fucker is dead.”
Nikolai loses the chance to reply when the creak of a door sounds through our ears. The whiteness on Dok’s face is nothing out of the ordinary, he has super pasty skin, but the concerned pinch of his brows frustrates me. “How is she?”
He half-heartedly shrugs. “Physically, she’s stable. She gained a little weight the past three months, and her vitamin D deficiency doesn’t seem as bad.”
I swish my tongue around my mouth, praying it will help with my next set of words. When I stumble them out like a teen sucking on his first tit, I realize it was a waste of time. “Was she… did they…”
I stop blubbering like an idiot when I spot Dok’s headshake. “There are no bruises or tearing associated with…that. She has old injuries, but from what I could tell, she hasn’t been penetrated the past ten to fourteen weeks.”
Although appreciative she wasn’t raped during my watch, something still feels off. “What aren’t you telling me, Dok?”
He guides me to the back of the jet, so our conversation isn’t overheard by my brothers returning from battle. “K’s mental stability is very concerning. She’s in what we call an acute psychosis. She has no sense of reality and is unresponsive to both touch and command.” He locks his concerning blue eyes with mine. “I don’t even think she knew I was examining her.”
In a way, that makes me happy. The less invaded she feels, the quicker she’ll come out of the dark. “How long will her psychosis last?”
Dok shrugs again. “I truly don’t know. I’ve never seen a condition as bad as K’s. Some patients go in and out of psychotic episodes within hours, some last months, even with intensive therapy.” He licks his lips before breathing out slowly, “Then there are a handful who never recover.” He doesn’t directly say it, but I know he’s placing K in that category. “I wish I had better news for you, Trey, but unfortunately, I don’t. The best we can do is make her as comfortable as possible and for her to know she’s safe.”
I can’t talk. I’m too gutted to speak. The fight in K’s eyes was one of her most attractive features, and I’m devastated a prick like Achim Novak has stolen that from her. Anger surges through me as an overwhelming desire to kill echoes in my heart’s beats. I want to kill a man who’s already dead before resuscitating him so I can kill him all over again.
Sensing my unease, Dok whacks my shoulder in an it’ll-be-all-right way before he moves for a group carrying Eight into the plane. If the way he’s clutching his stomach is anything to go by, he’s sporting a bullet wound. His second for me if the memories in my head are anything to go by.
When I go to help my brother in arms, Nikolai steps into my path. “Go to your queen. She needs you more than Eight.”
“You heard what Dok said—”
“Yeah, I did,” he interrupts, “but I also know he’s full of shit.” He slants his head like we don’t stand at almost the same height before saying, “He said the same thing about you, and look at you now. Life is your fucking oyster, Trey, so show your queen what she’s got to come back to.” After another head slant, he adds, “Unless you want me to order one of my men to keep her warm?”
Nikolai snickers like a dumb fuck not in fear for his life when I pin him to the cabinets we’re standing next to by his throat. I have my blade a millimeter from his jugular, and the adrenaline from a kill is already skating through my veins. He’s all but dead. The only reason he’s still breathing is because it was the air in his lungs that resuscitated mine long after I was freed. He also killed Achim for me without giving me the slightest bit of grief that I was choosing K over revenge because even someone as once heartless as him knows I made the right choice putting K first.
She will always be first.
The fury bubbling in my veins reduces to a simmer when Nikolai says, “That’s what I thought. You want your queen, and you’ll take down any fucker stupid enough to say otherwise, so why are you still standing here? Why aren’t you bringing her back from the madness like only you can. If you want to save her from the blackness, Trey, show her how hell is darker than death, and it’s one hell of a playground if you play your cards right.”
After pushing me away from him without making a move for his beloved knife he’s never without, he returns to the middle section of the jet. “Let’s get this wrapped up. MyAhrenis waiting for me.”
He tells the two emergency whores the men always pack for long trips to piss off to the front of the jet before he lays on a three-seater couch as if it’s a bed. After tossing an arm over his eyes, he instructs for Mikhail to wake him once we land. His admission that he’s planning to sleep the entire trip lowers the bottom lips of the whores hoping to entertain him, unaware the opportunity ended the instant his eyes locked with Justine’s.
It was the same for K and me—and it will be again.
I’ll make sure of it.
Twenty-Five
Trey
“Can I borrow that?” I ask Dok, freezing him partway out the door.
He just finalized his third check-up on K the past fifteen hours. I stayed for the last two, too worked up by Nikolai’s comment to let anyone alone with K. Dok is one of the good ones, but I don’t care if he’s a saint. No one willevertouch K without my permission, and even then, it’ll be a rarity and never in the manner she’s been touched previously.
Dok spins around to face me with his brows pinched. He thinks I want to borrow his thermometer or blood pressure machine. It couldn’t be further from the truth.
“Your iPod. Can I borrow it?” Dok would be lucky to be thirty, but he’s as old-school as they come. He still has his iPod from his college days, and his medical bag looks like it belongs on a British sitcom. “You have weather noises on there, right?”
