Chapter 13
LEO
The door hadn’t even fully closed behind Sergei before my body gave out on me.
One moment I was standing there, staring at the space he’d just occupied, trying to convince myself I still had control over what had happened, and the next, my knees buckled.
A violent wave of nausea surged up my throat, stealing the breath from my lungs.
I barely had time to turn before I was stumbling toward the half bath, my shoulder knocking into the wall as I went.
I dropped to my knees in front of the toilet and got sick.
It came hard and fast, my body heaving in harsh, uncontrollable waves that left my arms trembling from the effort of holding myself upright.
The sound echoed loudly in the small space, mingling with the pounding in my skull and the burn in my throat.
By the time it passed, I was left shaking, sweat clinging to my skin, my breath coming in shallow pulls that didn’t feel like enough air.
I slumped back against the wall, my head falling into my hand as I pressed hard against my temple, as if I could quiet the storm building there. My stomach twisted again with a heavy sense of wrongness.
“Get it together,” I muttered, but my voice sounded distant, unconvincing.
The moment my body stopped reacting, my mind took over, dragging me somewhere I hadn’t let myself go in weeks. The day they let me see Brad’s body.
“You don’t need to view the body, Dr. Cavanagh,” the coroner said, clicking the gold-tipped pen he had in his hand. “We’ve already confirmed identification, and usually in cases like these, we try to spare the loved ones of the deceased.”
Deceased.
My breath caught in my throat. How was it possible for Brad to be gone? We were supposed to fix our marriage and grow old together. What about the children we’d planned to have one day but never got around to? How was I supposed to keep our picket-fenced dream alive by myself?
We were standing in the corridor at the morgue, and I had my arms folded. I wasn’t taking no for an answer. I didn’t care if all that was left of him was a finger. I needed to see him. To tell him I was sorry for not making his coffee this morning.
“I’m a doctor,” I said with as much authority as I could muster. “I understand what I’m walking into.”
“That may be,” he said gently, “but I must warn you that this is different. This is personal.”
Of course it was personal.
That was the point.
“I said I want to see him.” The words came out sharper than intended, but I didn’t care. I needed to see him. Needed to know that it was real, no matter how much it hurt.
“Okay, but I reiterate that this is something that you can’t unsee. Follow me this way, please.”
“Thank you. I hope you know I do appreciate your concern, but I need to do this.”
The doors opened with a low mechanical hum, and cold air rushed out to meet me, sharp enough to sting my lungs. The cold seeped into everything, into my skin, into my bones, into my heart.
The smell came next. Sterile and clinical, layered with a faintly metallic odor. I’d felt many things since Brad’s death—mostly anger and an intense sorrow. Walking into that room was the first time I felt fear, but I pushed through my hammering heart and the churning in my gut.
The drawer slid open with a soft scrape, and for a second, my brain refused to process what I was looking at. Because that man on the table—
That wasn’t Brad.
That wasn’t my husband.
I thought I would get to see him one last time, but all I got was an empty, shattered shell.
Without consciousness, it was no longer him.
What was left of him was even worse than I’d thought.
The structure beneath the skin no longer held him together the way it should.
His limbs were set at unnatural angles, and the swelling and trauma to the head had rendered him virtually unrecognizable.
There were just enough pieces of him remaining to make it possible to identify him.
“What were the injuries?” I heard myself ask, my voice distant, detached, like I was standing outside my own body. The moment felt surreal.
“Severe blunt force trauma consistent with his fall,” the coroner replied. “Multiple skeletal fractures—ribs, pelvis, long bones. There’s also significant cranial impact. Internal hemorrhaging would have been immediate.”
Each word landed harder than the last.
“He died on impact?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
“Yes.”
At least he didn’t suffer more than that agonizingly brief moment. I inhaled a shaky breath into my lungs, then let it out.
“I’d like some time alone,” I said, because I didn’t trust myself to hold it together much longer.
He nodded and left, the door closing behind him with a quiet click that sounded far too final. Then it was just me, and Brad.
What remained of him.
I stepped closer, my hands gripping the edge of the table as it became the only thing keeping me upright. My legs grew weak, and I could hear myself hyperventilating in the cold room.
“Brad…” My voice broke on his name, the sound barely more than a breath.
I bent forward, my forehead nearly touching the cold metal, and everything I’d been holding back gave way. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
Sorry for not handling us better and for not making his coffee that morning.
Sorry for wanting a separation. But most of all, I was sorry for the terrible men in this world who did this to him and convinced the rest of us he’d died by suicide.
That he’d tried to kill someone else. I was sorry I was such a coward that, even though I suspected the truth, I couldn’t tell anyone.
There was still so much I didn’t know. Who were these monsters at his workplace who had the capacity to cover this up? Brad didn’t speak much about his work, and I never asked him. I just knew that he did a whole lot of research even when he was home.
They claimed Brad jumped after being rejected and trying to kill his boss’s personal assistant.
I believed only the part where the young man had rejected him.
Brad had shared with me that he fancied his new coworker and wanted him in our bed.
I’d told him more than once to let it go if Wren wasn’t interested, but he’d thought of it as a challenge.
I’d thought it was nothing but harmless fun. I never would have imagined his boss would have done something so cruel simply because Brad hit on his lover.
“They have to pay,” I choked out, the words shaking. “I swear to you, Brad, they’re going to pay for what they did to you.”
The memory released me as abruptly as it had taken hold, and I dragged in a shuddering breath, blinking hard as tears coursed down my cheeks.
The bathroom felt too small, too warm, the air thick in my lungs as I pushed myself up unsteadily and gripped the sink.
My reflection stared back at me, pale, with hollow, red-rimmed eyes.
“I need to pull myself together,” I said more firmly this time.
If I fell apart, I wouldn’t be able to go through with this revenge plan.
I had a lifetime to grieve Brad, but for now I needed to vindicate him.
And that meant dealing with Maxim Morozov.
Not Wren, since I didn’t believe he had anything to do with the incident, but if I found out he had, it wouldn’t be too late to finish what Maxim’s former friend, Archibald, had started.
Cold water hit my face, dripping down my neck, grounding me. By the time I straightened, the trembling had eased. I crawled up the stairs, plagued by the memory of Sergei carrying me up them last night.
At the threshold of my bedroom, I stopped cold.
The bed was still unmade, the sheets twisted and tangled.
For several weeks, I woke up with no indentation in the pillow next to me.
This morning there was one. The exact spot where I’d woken up pressed against him burned into my mind, the memory fresh and vivid.
The weight of his arm. The heat of his body.
The way he had unraveled on top of me last night as he rode my thigh.
My jaw tightened. I needed to get him out of this room. I’d spent over a decade of love here with my husband. He had no right to sully that. Anyone but him.
I crossed the room and yanked the sheets off the bed. The pillowcases followed, the fabric bunching in my fists before I dropped them to the floor in disgust. But it wasn’t enough. It didn’t erase the memory of him.
The bathroom was worse. The moment I stepped inside, it all came rushing back. Sergei straddling me, riding me, and kissing me. My breath hitched, a traitorous spark flaring low in my gut that made me recoil inside.
“I can’t stay here.”
I gathered everything—the towels, the sheets, anything that held even the faintest trace of him—and carried them downstairs, dumping them into the laundry without care.
Then I went back and cleaned. Every surface.
Every inch. Scrubbing until my hands ached and the sharp scent of soap filled the air, drowning out everything else.
When I was done, I stepped into the shower again. The water was hot enough to sting, but I didn’t lower the pressure. I scrubbed at my skin like I could erase what had happened, like I could undo the way my body had responded to him, the way I had wanted him.
It was just a physiological response.
The thought wasn’t as comforting as it should have been. My hand stilled against my chest, my breath catching as the memory threatened to surface again—the way he had felt tight around me, the way he had moaned, the way I had—
“No.”
I shut it down. Finished quickly just to get out of the shower.
Why was he so receptive and shameless about what we’d done earlier?
He’d made no attempt to hide his pleasure; his cries and moans soaked into the fibers of the glass enclosure.
He knew our history, yet he had no hesitation about letting me see him fall apart because, for some reason, he wanted me.
Packing was mechanical. Clothes, essentials, laptop—the one I’d stopped using last year when Brad purchased the new one for my birthday.
The new one stayed behind with my phone on the nightstand.
Sergei could not be around me twenty-four seven, yet he seemed to know exactly where I was and what I did.
I didn’t put it past him to have a tracker on me, and those two devices were the ones I carried around with me all the time.
I wasn’t giving him a way to follow. He must never know where I was going.
A cab took me and my one hastily packed suitcase to the airport. During the drive, I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting Sergei to show up, but whatever had called him away seemed to be important because I arrived at the airport unencumbered.
The airport blurred past in a series of motions I didn’t have to think about.
I didn’t buy a ticket directly for my destination, but to another city just in case I missed something and he found out where I was heading.
I was probably being too cautious, but the people I was up against weren’t ordinary citizens.
I had to wait an hour and fifteen minutes for boarding, which was another moment of torture, checking faces, panicking at everyone who approached too close to me as if I’d be dragged back to Sergei. I killed time by charging my laptop and buying a new phone with cash, which I set up quickly.
By the time I boarded, the shaking had subsided. I slid into my seat in business class and opened my laptop.
The first email I sent out was easy. A request for the immediate leave they’d been forcing on me.
I knew the way I was leaving would set the department back.
I might even be penalized for it, but I softened the request by referring to my accident last night and how I realized I needed time to get myself together before causing an incident at the hospital.
The second email took longer. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, hesitation creeping in for the first time since I’d decided to leave. This one changed everything, and once I sent it, there was no going back.
I swallowed hard and typed anyway, each word chosen with care.
On the surface, it might have seemed as if I’d dismissed everything Archibald had told me about Morozov when, in truth, I’d soaked up everything.
At the time, I had no idea when—or even if—I would need it, but I never forgot, including the contact information Archibald had slipped me.
When I finished, I read the email twice, committing it to memory like it might disappear if I didn’t.
Then I hit send before deleting it and emptying my trash.
I shut the laptop immediately, my pulse picking up as I leaned back in my seat and glanced toward the aisle, then the back of the plane, scanning faces without meaning to.
My fingers curled against the armrest as I forced myself to look away. He won’t find you. Not this time.
But the unease lingered, coiled tight in my chest as I closed my eyes and tried to rest.