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She shakes her head, and I hold her champagne in my hand.
"The shipments have arrived," Lev says in my ear. Perfect. Aria’s plan worked.
I turn to tell Aria when I realize she’s doubled over in her seat, clutching her abdomen.
“What is it, baby? Are you alright?”
She shakes her head.
"Poor baby," a cold voice says over my shoulder. "Was it something she drank? Or something she ate?"
I have to ignore Volkov to tend to her. Her face is pale and she's in obvious distress.
"Something’s wrong," she says in a whisper of a voice.
“Polina!” I hail my sister from across the room. She stares at me when she hears my tone. All eyes in the room come to me but I don’t care. Polina runs to me in a rush of shimmery silver clothes.
“She said she's sick. What's going on?" Polina bends down and whispers to Aria. Aria clutches her abdomen. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. Polina puts a hand to her head and asks her a few questions.
“Call an ambulance, Mikhail,” Polina says quietly. "She needs to be seen immediately." She’s kneeling beside my sister, hernormally pale face even whiter than usual. She holds her hand. "Now."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Aria
"Mikhail, please. Sit down."
I sip the glass of water Polina gave me and wish she could talk some sense into him. He's been ranting and raving and insisting onattention since we got in here.
“What’s fucking taking them so long?”
Polina shakes her head. "Aria isn’t the only patient. You threatening the doctors isn’t going to make her better anytime soon."
Still, I can't help but find it a little bit endearing.
"That guy at the nurse’s station? He decided he was going to eat dinner. Dinner — when my wife could be in danger. I saw him leave and come back with food!"
Polina's lips twitch, and her eyes quickly come to mine before returning to him. "A doctor is allowed to take a break, Mikhail,especially when it's not an emergency. And Aria’s stable and fine.”
He might be complaining, but there are six doctors in the hallway and four nurses in the room with me. When a Romanov comes into the ER, it's all-hands-on-deck. They’ve been practically rolling out the red carpet since we got here. I don’t blame them, really, Mikhail’s as volatile as a ticking time bomb.
"You look familiar," one nurse says with a smile to Polina, probably trying to ease the tension in the room.
"I was in here recently. I had a clinical.”
The nurse's eyes widen comically. She's just realized that Mikhail Romanov's sister is going into nursing. I don't blame her. This could mean a lot of things for the staff here.
I put a tentative hand out to her. "He can be really nice when he wants to be," I say quietly.
The nurse laughs. "I'm sure he can," she replies before she pats my arm. “He’s not the first overprotective husband I’ve met.”
Do I enjoy his overprotectiveness? Yeah, I think I do.
"The small talk is great," Mikhail says, his attempt at calming himself down laughable. "But where is the doctor? We're not getting anywhere."
"We are, sir," the nurse says with a placating smile. "We've ruled out poisoning, as you suspected. We've also ruled out abdominal distress. The doctor will be in momentarily to explain what's happening."
Of course, my husband immediately thought Volkov was responsible for my illness. Who could blame him? But I only ate the food Ekatarina herself gave me, and I've been socializing so much that I barely ate.
