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“I’m—What?”
“I didn’t see it before. You didn’t say anything. You’re bleeding.”
“I am?” I try to reach for my face, but he pushes my hand away.
“I need bandages,” he barks towards the kitchen. “Now!”
I’m not in pain. I don’t see blood dripping anywhere. Am I in shock? Maybe it all happened so fast that I didn’t feel it. I’ve heard about that happening with stab wounds. People don’t realize until minutes later that they were stabbed at all.
But Francia didn’t have a knife in her hand, did she? If she stabbed me in the head, I like to think I’d know.
“Is it just a cut? Do you think I need stitches?”
Ivan pushes me back to my chair. My knees buckle when they hit the seat, and I drop down. “I’ll take care of you. You’ll be okay.”
A maid rushes out of the kitchen with a first aid kit. Ivan snatches it out of her hands and tears through the contents like I’m moments away from bleeding out.
“Hold this in place.” He presses a piece of gauze to my forehead and then searches for a bandage. Ivan shakes his head. His jaw is set and his eyes are a stormy gold. “You’re hurt. Franciahurtyou.”
“She barely even touched me. You stopped her.”
“Not soon enough.”
He pulls my hand holding the gauze away. I reach up and feel the tiniest cut on my forehead. “This? This is what you’re worried about? Look at the gauze, Ivan. There isn’t even any blood. I’m fine!”
“Stop saying that,” he growls. His lips brush against mine and I slide towards him. My thighs open, straddling him where he kneels on the floor in front of me.
“I’m fine,” I repeat softly.
Ivan doesn’t seem convinced. “No one was supposed to get close to you. The only reason I went through with your plan is because you were supposed to be safe.”
“And Iamsafe, Ivan. Look at me. I’m safe right now. With you.” I grab his hands and press them to either side of my face. He strokes my cheeks with his thumbs and then lets his hands slide lower. He traces every inch of me, taking stock.
“I’m okay,” I say again. “I’m perfect.”
He can’t stop running his hands over me. Even when Yasha and Lev appear, Ivan doesn’t stop touching me.
“What’s the word on this one?” Yasha pokes at Francia’s limp leg with the toe of his shoe. She is still face-down on the tile. “Drag her to the dungeon?”
“How about the bottom of the ocean?” Lev suggests.
“That’s too easy of an ending for her.” Ivan scowls, glancing at her only briefly before he turns back to me. His hands slip over my hips and around my waist. His fingers massage into my spine as he gives them an answer. “Francia told me she wanted to be a Bratva wife, so let’s make her one. Send her back to Moscow. Let the old-school Bratva members watch over her.”
Yasha winces in something very close to sympathy. “We might as well put her in a hole and let her rot. It’ll have the same outcome. They’ll eat her alive.”
Ivan reaches up and brushes his finger over the supposed “cut” on my forehead. “Good.”
Yasha and Lev haul Francia out of the room by her hands and feet. As she dangles between them, I try to feelsomething. Anger or vindication. Maybe even sympathy.
But there’s nothing.
We spent countless hours together in the kitchen at Quintaño's. We used to open together on Saturday mornings and we’d play ABBA on the jukebox while we wiped down tables. On slow nights, we’d split our tips.
She was my friend. And now…
“I thought that would feel more…momentous.”
Ivan is stretched up on his knees now, his face level with mine. “What?”
