Chapter Forty-Two
In which everyone gets to find out what the hell has been going on.
Scarlett…
We’re back at The Clinic. Again.
“I will never escape this place. This is eternal perdition, isn’t it? An endless round of visits.”
The nurse wrapping up my wrist gives me a stern look.
“You must be feeling better,” Morgan says. “You’re sort of joking, though your sense of humor isn’t great.”
“Dark humor is the best humor, remember?” I say.
I’m staring at Wallace, who is unconscious in the hospital bed next to me. They tried to take me to another room for treatment and I screamed and scratched with my broken fingernails until they backed away.
His beautiful face is cut up, more bruises and gashes down his left side from where he hit the chandelier.
“If I come in, will you try to bite me again?” Dr. Greenwood hovers in the door, his expression making it clear that he is So Done With This.
“I am so sorry, really.” He’s got a scratch down one cheek and I have a horrible feeling I put it there.
“You were like a rabid wolverine,” he says irritably. “I’ve had mob bosses with a chest full of stab wounds who behaved better than you.”
“I apologize sincerely,” I groan. “I’m a horrible person and don’t deserve your care, but Wallace does.”
“We do agree on that.” He checks Wallace’s bandages and examines the readings from the machines surrounding the bed.
“My biggest concern was his spine,” he says. “The angle that he hit the… chandelier, correct?”
“Yes, it was a two-story monster of a thing.”
“The way Michael described Wallace’s position when he landed, there was a real risk of serious spinal injury.
I ordered an MRI - that was when you were being detained by your cousins, there.
” He nods at Kai and Logan, who are lounging in the chairs in the seating area.
They cheerfully wave at us. “I wanted to see if the fall damaged his Lumbar SCI. That’s the area of the spinal cord in his lower back. ”
Sorcha and Alec hurry into the room. Alastair’s suite is right across the hall, so they must have spotted Dr. Greenwood.
“Did we miss anything?” Sorcha asks.
“Here, come sit by Wallace, okay?” I get up and Alec guides her to the chair. She sits down heavily, exhaustion imprinted on her face.
“I was just telling Scarlett that I ordered a very thorough MRI and a CT scan for Wallace. He’s got a couple of broken ribs on the left side, but I’m a bit surprised it wasn’t worse.
His lung is intact, no damage from the impact.
Now, his back; I was very concerned about spinal cord injury, but looking through his results… ”
He shows us his iPad and a series of incomprehensible readings. “It’s clear. No broken bones, or deep tissue damage. Wallace is in remarkably good shape. I believe his muscle mass helped diffuse the damage from the fall.”
“He’s okay, then. Right?” I ask. “He’s going to be fine?”
Sorcha bursts into tears and grabs my hand.
“He got lucky this time,” Dr. Greenwood says with a bleak sort of acceptance. “Knowing your family as I do, it seems certain that I will be treating him again. There is no guarantee the MacTavish luck will continue.”
Cormac appears in the door. “Alastair is demanding to know the prognosis or he says he will crawl out of his bed and throttle Dr. Greenwood.”
“This is what I mean,” the poor man says. “Why are your injuries always met with threats of violence against me?”
“He has a point,” Morgan offers helpfully.
“I’ll go tell him the good news,” Sorcha says, wiping her tears off her face. “He’ll lose his mind if he sees I’ve been crying.”
I want to offer to go with her. But I’m selfish. I sit back down next to my husband, staring at his poor, bruised face.
“Imagine the timing,” Morgan says. “The call you got from Greenwood was a fake, but here Alastair did regain consciousness… how long ago?”
“About three hours,” Alec says, rubbing his eyes. “The cranky bastard. There’s a reason I didn’t update him about the kidnapping and the rescue until we heard from you. He would have charged out of bed, dragging his monitors after him.”
“What’s going on? What have I missed?” Michael comes in with Dmitri and Roman and the room’s getting crowded but I don’t think Wallace would mind. I go over Dr. Greenwood’s findings again and Michael pulls a flask from his jacket, taking a huge gulp.
“Hey, where’s that been?” Dmitri says, grabbing for it. “Don’t drink it all, you selfish zasranets, you asshole!”
“I bow to all of you,” Michael says. “You managed to complete the mission in utter silence. There wasn’t a single sound until Wallace and Xavier broke through the banister and the chandelier came crashing down.”
“Right on top of that fucking bastard.” I smile, remembering his expression. I shouldn’t be so happy. I should be shocked, and disgusted.
But I’m not.
“Ooo, you owe so much money to the swear jar,” Morgan cackles. “So help me picture this. How did Wallace come through the window?”
“There were two guards on the third floor, positioned on either side of the door.” Michael explains. “They would have seen us. Based on their position, there was no way we could have taken them down silently.”
“Wallace crawled up the brick?” I wheeze. “On the outside of the house?”
“There wasn’t much choice,” Michael says. “He took off his boots so he could find the cracks in the brick. We used to rock climb in the Cairngorms Mountains when we were teenagers.”
“Aye, I remember that.” Kai reaches out for Michael’s flask, still making the rounds. “Not quite as high stakes as this, but a toast to life experience.” He drinks and passes the flask to Logan.
“Now it’s your turn,” Morgan points to me. “What happened then?”
I take Wallace’s bruised hand and kiss his palm. “Kholodov, he had me on the bed, pinned down.”
Morgan makes a low, pained sound.
“Murder Mittens charged out from under the bed and leaped on his head like a mountain lion.”
MM, who is sitting on Wallace’s left side - against the strong recommendations of the medical staff - haughtily licks her paw.
“Wallace exploded into the room, he charged at Kholodov. They crashed through the door and against the banister.”
“I was busy killing the guards,” Michael says apologetically. “It slowed me down. You stabbed Kholodov, aye? I saw your arm go up.”
“I cut his throat.” I kiss Wallace’s hand again. “He fell.”
“Where’s Russo now?” Morgan asks. “I can’t decide if I want to poison her or give her a tip.”
“Alec went into Wallace’s accounts and sent her the other twenty-five million,” I say, not sure if I want to kill her or thank her, either. “She could be anywhere by now.”
Dr. Greenwood finally loses his temper as all the MacTavishes and Morozovs get louder - how much booze can one flask hold? Who am I kidding, all these idiots are armed with a flask. Or two. The poor doc orders them all to leave.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Morgan puts her booted feet up on the couch, stretching luxuriously like her Familiars would.
We turn off most of the lights in the family area, and all the monitors surrounding Wallace give off a vaguely eerie glow.
“Do you know how Wallace found you so fast?”
“I thought Russo tipped him off?” I frown.
“She did, but he had you pinpointed immediately.” She leans over, lightly tapping my necklace.
“The Triquetra. The sneaky little bastard put a tracking chip in it because he knew you’d never take it off.
He must have hovered over you like a ghoul until you fell asleep one night so he could insert it.
I have to respect that level of mendacity. ”
“It’s not mendacity.” A groggy voice says, “That’s lying. Inserting the chip without her knowledge was clandestine.”
His beautiful amber eyes are open, and he smiles tiredly. “Hello, wife.”
I hold his face in my hands, crying and kissing him as Murder Mittens looks disgusted with both of us.
Once he’s fully conscious and caught up on everything, Wallace insists on walking into his father’s room because he’s just that infuriating.
“Use a wheelchair!” I beg. “Remember the broken ribs? And your back must be killing you. Please!”
“It’ll upset my father.” He stands up, groaning. “I need pants. Pants and a drink.”
“You’re still coming down from the morphine, so no.” I find him a pair of scrubs to put on, and we start the long process of unhitching him from everything.
Alastair is sitting up in bed, arguing with Sorcha about going to see Wallace. When we walk into his room, his face glows.
“Son.” He stops, choking back a sob.
“I’m okay, Dad.” Wallace grits his teeth into a smile. Liar, he hurts like hell.
Father and son grip each other’s shoulders in the best hug that a man in a hospital bed and a man covered in bandages can manage. They’re both grimacing in pain, though only Sorcha and I can see it.
“Kholodov was nothing but a bag of blood and bones by the time Scarlett finished him off,” Wallace says with enormous satisfaction.
“Could we move on to the key elements here?” Alastair growls. “The kidnapping, the rescue?” He looks at me with a smile and I see why Sorcha melted for this guy. He’s almost as handsome as his son.
Almost.
“By the way, it’s a pleasure to meet you in person, Scarlett.”
“You as well.” I can’t stop grinning, we’re all grinning. This room can barely hold all the happiness, the relief we’ve all been waiting to share.
So, Wallace tells the story. I don’t add in the part where Kholodov was ready to carve me up. He doesn’t need to know what Kholodov said to me. I’m never going to think about it again.
Besides, I carved him up first.
Now that Alastair is awake, he’s exhausting. He’s constantly demanding reports from the legitimate side of the business, and insisting it’s time for him to go home.
“I am begging you to remain here for another few days so we can monitor your progress and make sure there’s no internal bleeding,” Dr. Greenwood says with the expression of a man who knows that his many decades of medical experience will be ignored.
After his father is released and sent off in a motorcade of five armored vehicles, Wallace and I finally return home, Murder Mittens wrapped around my husband’s neck like a scarf.
“This can’t be good for you to be carrying around an extra seven pounds of cat,” I fret.
“After she saved your life?” he laughs, wincing as his broken ribs creak. “I may never set the wee beast down again.”
James opens the door with such a look of existential despair that it kind of cheers me up. “Welcome home, Sir, Madam,” he intones.
I wish it felt like home.
Zasranets - asshole in Russian