Page 62 of The Breath Before Forever

From her hospital bed, dressed in a standard gray medical gown—with a second that she wore turned around as a cape around her shoulders—Vera stared Vaslav down like she was daring him to tell her differently. He hated to be the bearer of bad news, but they simply didn’t have another choice.

This was for the best.

The further she was from Russia, the more damage he could do to any and everyone who might have put her in this fucking hospital in the first place.

“Oh well for her,” Demyan returned.

Silently, Vaslav thought: touché.

He wasn’t foolish enough to actually say it. Even that didn’t last long before her gaze drifted away to the stiff blankets tucked in tight around her on the bed. It was her quiet moments lately that killed him the most because that’s when he saw the sadness she couldn’t hide in her eyes.

Even if she wasn’t crying.

Even if there weren’t tears.

Inside, in her heart, he knew she hurt. It constantly radiated from her every second that he was in her presence whether they were talking, and she was smiling, or not. An ever-present cloud hanging over the two of them that she, for some reason, wouldn’t speak about.

He tried to understand. They’d had something just long enough to have it ripped away. Before they could be happy or angry; before a single decision about her pregnancy was even considered between them, the selfishness of someone else made the call.

So, he tried. To give her time. For her to be quiet. If that’s what she needs, he thought. Yet nothing, not even her, suggested what he did was helping.

“Tell my daughter that I love her, and her mother and I will see her soon,” Demyan said before he abruptly ended the phone call.

Vaslav didn’t take offense, and tossed the device to the middle of Vera’s bed where she could grab it if she wanted. Not that she did once she seen the screen was black again.

“You are going across the pond,” he told her before she could argue.

“Hannah’s—”

“Still not awake, kisska. And considering it’s been two weeks, and they still won’t let you into her ICU room ... I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Vera’s shoulders dropped with her hard exhale. “She’s not dead just because she’s in a coma.”

“I didn’t say that, either.”

“She’s not even brain dead.”

“Vera—”

“Who is she gonna wake up to if you make me go?” she asked. “Hannah shouldn’t wake up alone.”

He didn’t correct her.

That was still a what if.

Vaslav’s silence said more than he could, anyway. His wife blinked, and wet tears spilled down her cheeks instantly. The droplets clung to her lashes just long enough for him to see them drop, and down with them went what remained of his sad, broken heart.

Fuck him for even having one.

“You’ll be better in New York,” he said. “Safer.”

He needed time to work. Igor required time to heal. It was obvious why Vera would be better off in a place farther away from him and danger while those things happened.

Everything took time; something already too precious, and lacking in Vaslav’s life. The irony of it wasn’t lost on him.

“I don’t want to send you away, either,” he told Vera, shrugging under the heavy weight of his parka that he hadn’t even taken off after entering the hospital. Just before visiting hours were officially over and security locked the private halls.

Kiril took the Hummer to Dubna.