She looks terrified, but she still stands there. Brave woman.
Anya turns her head on the stretcher. “Let them check me.”
I look at her. Her face is too pale. Her lips are dry. There are shadows under her eyes. She dragged herself out of a hospital bed with a bullet wound in her side because she thought I was about to become something I couldn’t come back from.
She came to save me.
Not from a gun. From myself.
That thought is worse than any wound Dmitri gave me.
“Please,” she says.
So I stop. Barely.
The door closes between us, and for a few seconds I stand there staring at the wood like I can force it to open by will alone.
Viktor stands beside me. He looks almost as bad as I feel. His coat is torn. There’s dried blood near his collar, though I don’t know if it’s his. His face is drawn with exhaustion, and for once, he doesn’t bother pretending he’s fine.
“You found her,” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “You can punish me as you see fit.”
I look at him then. He doesn’t flinch, but something in his face shifts. He expects anger. Maybe he deserves some. Maybe I do too. There’s enough blame tonight to feed the whole city.
Instead, I say, “Thank you.”
Viktor goes still.
I don’t think I’ve ever said those words to him.
He looks away first. “I did what needed to be done.”
“You brought her to me.”
“She brought herself. I only pushed the chair.”
Despite everything, a rough breath leaves me. Almost a laugh. Almost pain.
Viktor’s mouth moves faintly, then settles again. “She knew you wouldn’t stop,” he says.
“I know.”
“She was afraid for you.”
I look at the closed door. My wife is inside that room because she refused to let me drown in grief. She had every reason to stay in that hospital bed, every right to let me burn my way through the Volkov house and call it justice.
Instead, she came.
She called my name. And I stopped.
The realization sits heavily in my chest.
A doctor comes out twenty minutes later. He’s older, serious, and smart enough to address me plainly. “She’s stable,” he says.
My lungs work again.
“The wound reopened slightly from movement, but not badly. We’ve cleaned and dressed it again. She needs rest. Actual rest. No more leaving the hospital.” His tone grows stricter at the last sentence.
