Page 3 of The Bratva’s Secret Heir

“I know.” I find another torn vessel beneath the damaged lung and extend my other hand. “Vascular clamp.”

Marina gives it to me.

“Keep the blood running,” I say as I close the clamp. “He stays on this table.”

A nurse opens the side door to pass in fresh blood, and a narrow strip of the corridor appears beyond her shoulder. The armed men have multiplied, but one stands apart from the others.

He’s older, maybe late forties, dressed in a dark suit beneath a security jacket that doesn’t belong to him. Salt-and-pepper hair, expensive shoes, one understated ring. I recognize him from a donor gala two years ago, where he spoke to the hospital director for twenty minutes and never once looked at the auction display.

Arkady Belov.

Senior Volkov captain. Old money. Older violence.

I know his name because surgeons hear things. Men whisper before anesthesia. Women confess while waiting for scans. Nurses date dangerous people and regret it loudly in staff kitchens. In Moscow, information walks into hospitals on its own two feet and bleeds on the floor.

Belov watches through the glass, and he catches my eye. His brows draw together before he turns back to his phone. He looks almost annoyed to find me operating on Alexei.

“Doctor, pressure’s falling again,” the anesthetist says.

“I heard you.”

I repair the vessel, check the lung, and search for another source. The chest injury is ugly, but it’s survivable if the blood products keep coming and his heart doesn’t decide it’s done. The flank wound worries me more.

“We need to open the abdomen.”

Marina looks at the clock. “He may not tolerate it.”

“He won’t tolerate bleeding to death, either.”

We reposition, prep, and cut. The bullet entered through the side and tore across tissue before lodging near the spine. The liver is bleeding. So is the spleen.

“Pack all four quadrants.”

Hands move around mine. Gauze disappears into blood and comes back soaked. The monitor drops into a slower rhythm, each beat farther from the next.

Through the glass, Belov turns to one of Alexei’s guards. The side door hasn’t sealed properly, and their voices slip through beneath the alarms.

“If he wakes,” Belov says, “this becomes harder.”

The guard beside him gives no visible reaction.

My hands stop for half a second.

Inside the theater, no one else appears to hear. Marina is watching the suction. The anesthetist is drawing medication. The nurse beside me is counting packs.

Belov glances through the glass and finds my eyes. He knows I heard him, but his face doesn’t change, and neither does mine.

I lower my attention to Alexei’s open abdomen and understand exactly how much trouble has just entered my life. The attack came from inside the Volkov house. One of the men waiting to hear whether Alexei survives wants the opposite answer.

“Close that door,” I tell the circulating nurse.

She hurries across and shoves it until the latch catches, and Belov disappears from view.

This is the correct moment for me to be afraid for myself, to think about Misha at home asleep beneath his dinosaur blanket, one hand curled around the yellow car he refuses to share. Who will pick him up from preschool if I’m dragged into a black vehicle before sunrise?

I look at Alexei and know that I can’t let him die. He vanished once and left me to make every choice alone, so he doesn’t get to vanish again before I decide what to do with him.

“Come on,” I mutter as I find the liver injury. “You arrogant bastard. Stay alive long enough to inconvenience me.”