Page 235 of Lethal Obsession

Or maybe, I think, it’s what love is for us.

A merging of souls, some part of each lost forever to the other.

I need him here to anchor me. I want to be his safe harbor.

I dream that we will sail forth together, into the gleaming horizon that for so long seemed like an impossible dream—and which now feels so tantalisingly close I can almost taste it.

47

Alexei

“Mr. Petrovsky.” Dr. Moretti gives me a wary look. “Nobody warned me you were returning to Sicily.”

“That’s because nobody knows I’m here—and I’d like to keep it that way, at least for an hour or so. Who is with him at the moment?”

I don’t bother saying Lars’s name. It’s not like I’d be in the ICU ward for anyone else.

“You’re in luck,” she says, “since I forcibly evicted Mr. Al Sudairi and Miss Borovsky some time ago. It does not help, all this worry and tension. I am not some kind of hippie,” she goes on, with a ferocious frown as far from love and peace as it’s possible to imagine. “But I know brains. They do not respond well to tension, even when unconscious. So if you’re planning to yell at me, Mr. Petrovsky”—she folds her arms belligerently—“I suggest we do it before you go into that room.”

I resist an inappropriate urge to laugh with no small effort. “Noted,” I say politely. “And please accept my apologies for any yelling that might have taken place the last time we met.”

“Hmm.” She gives me a skeptical look. “As I mentioned when we spoke, your friend has been taken off sedation.”

“Yes.”

“He still hasn’t woken up, but as I told Mr. Al Sudairi and Miss Borovsky, this is completely normal.” She goes on to explain further, but I already know the basics: Lars might wake up, but until he does, we won’t know how he will wake up.

“I understand.” I do my best not to sound impatient. “I just want to see him, if that’s okay.”

She gives me a rather sour look. “Visits are restricted to one or two people, for very short periods, only a few times per day. Since Mr. Al Sudairi is usually a permanent fixture in the waiting room, he’s unlikely to be happy that you’ve taken one of those windows.”

“Understood.”

Benny. I feel a rush of affection and amusement for Lars’s lithe, quick-witted companion.

“One other thing.” Dr. Moretti pauses at the door to the ICU. “Grateful as I am for your financial generosity, Mr. Petrovsky, I am not your personal surgeon. I am a specialist in a major hospital in Rome, a job I would like to return to as soon as possible.” She pauses. “I will tell you something I have not included in my briefs to your friends: despite the fact that he is breathing unassisted, there is a chance that Mr. Andersson will not wake up at all. It is an outcome you must prepare yourself for.”

I close my eyes briefly, waiting for the acerbic mental asides I’ve become accustomed to, but for once my mind is strangely quiet.

Don’t you dare, I think, with a savage bolt of fear. Don’t you fucking dare leave me now.

“I understand.” My voice rasps in my chest, and Dr. Moretti, wisely, doesn’t push it, just opens the doors and walks me down the corridor.

I pause in front of the opaque glass doors, staring at the green button beside the sliding door. Lars is nothing more than a dim outline behind the opacity.

“Would you like me to clear the glass for you?”

“No.” I still her hand as she reaches for the switch. “I’ll go in.”

“Ten minutes, Mr. Petrovsky,” she says sternly. “Not a minute more.”

Taking a deep breath, I press the button, and the door slides open. I step inside, and it seals behind me like a tomb.

I’ve been bracing myself for this during the entire flight from Miami.

And it still kills me to see Lars’s long, lean figure beneath a hospital blanket, bandages swathed over the top of his head and one eye.

It is inconceivable to me that the still, silent body on the bed could possibly be the same animated friend who is unable to sit still for more than a few minutes.