Page 61 of The Breath Before Forever

“I’m fine, Papa. I can’t help that Vaslav won’t answer your calls or return them. He barely returns mine ...” Vera’s assurances for her father trailed off just long enough for her to let out a sigh. “That’s ridiculous. You’re being ridiculous.”

Vaslav decided that was the moment to make his presence known to his wife. Whoever had been last to leave her private hospital room left the door open a couple of inches. Just enough to allow someone outside in the hallway to eavesdrop.

Him, unfortunately.

Pushing the door open, earning him a swing of Vera’s head as he entered the room, Vaslav asked, “What is Demyan saying that’s so ridiculous, hmm?”

The smile that fettered across his wife’s lips as she saw him was short lived. But only because she had to return to the conversation with the man on the other end of the phone.

“Yes, Papa, that’s him.” Vera rolled her eyes Vaslav’s way, and rubbed at her cheek with her IV-connected hand. A friend she would hopefully be rid of soon if everything went well over the next couple of days. Or so her doctor said when Vaslav cornered the man in the carpark that morning. “If he hasn’t picked up your calls yet, then I think we can both assume he doesn’t want to talk to you n—”

“Give me that, spasibo,” Vaslav said, arriving at Vera’s bedside and pulling the phone out of her hand before she could finish her defense of him. He appreciated it, but now wasn’t the right time. A worried Demyan was low on Vaslav’s list of priorities, but he could appreciate that Vera was high on her father’s list, respectively.

They wanted the same thing.

Essentially.

“Demyan,” Vaslav greeted as he put the phone to his ear.

“Imagine I’m having a conversation with my injured, hospitalized daughter, and now is the time you decide is the best to take a fucking phone call from me,” Demyan returned, hotly.

It was due.

Vaslav didn’t correct the man.

“Da, well,” Vaslav muttered, lamely. “There are only so many hours in the day, Demyan.”

“You said she was safe.”

That accusation, not nearly as angry but still heavy, sent Vaslav glancing Vera’s way as he rounded the foot of her bed, but she only glowered back at him. Obviously, she wasn’t happy about his trick with her phone. The room wasn’t much bigger than the first she’d had in the same hospital two wings over, but it had a television.

And there was him, of course.

He opted to stay night after night—holding her if he could in her bed, or making due with the reclining chair in the corner—more than he didn’t.

“It wasn’t about me,” Vaslav informed, likely the most information Demyan had been able to gather since the bomb blew. “So it had practically nothing to do with her.”

“Someone put a bomb at her house! And you really think—”

“There’s no need to yell, but I honestly don’t have the patience for it, either. I could hang up, except this is a prime opportunity for the two of us.”

“For what?” Demyan barked.

“To inform you. I’m sending Vera to spend the rest of the winter with you and her mother, stateside. Shouldn’t that make you happy—or is the job too hard for you, Demyan?”

The revelation gained him two drastically different reactions from Demyan and his daughter.

“Absolutely not,” Vera snapped.

Demyan, on the other hand, only asked, “Are you getting the flight plans together, or should I?”

“I’ll leave that to you.”

“Fine by me—get my daughter’s walking papers.”

Vaslav sighed, but the woman across the room hadn’t taken her eyes off him for a second. “She’s not particularly happy about it.”

“I’m not going to the states for the winter.”