5. Dimitri
5
Dimitri
I have not stayed alive so long by ignoring my own shortcomings
I explode into the first-floor bathroom, nearly shattering the glass mirror on the back of the door. I rip the shirt over my head and use my left hand to pull my right deltoid forward so I can see the damage. Blood forms rivers down my arm, pooling between thick muscle and staining the skin bright red. I hear it dripping to the floor.
Fuck. It needs at least four stitches.
Grumbling to myself in my mother tongue, I open up the medicine cabinet. The first aid bag takes up so much room in the built-in space, we had to remove the shelves. It is equipped with more than your average kit; I grab the silver box that has the sterile needles in plastic packaging.
I should make James stitch it for me for several reasons—I am not left-handed, he has the steadiest hands, and he is the reason I got fucking shot in the first place—but he likely will not return soon enough.
I grip the edges of the sink as a wave of dizziness overtakes me. It is just a graze, the pain barely registered, but blood loss and shock are not weaknesses I can train out of myself. But I can treat it and prevent the shock, so I bring the whole kit with me into the kitchen.
The kitchen, much like the rest of this rental house, is huge, ostentatious and made of cold stone and glass. Its luxury is not the quiet kind, but it does have its perks. The fully-loaded gym downstairs is one of them.
I navigate around the large middle counter, pausing to rinse the blood from my hand in the built-in sink. I look up to the opposite wall as I let the water flow over my skin. Dark as it is, the large wall of windows shows only the light inside and my own reflection back, making me uneasy that I cannot see out into the expanse of open yard behind the mansion. But the perimeter is not only secure, it is easily securable. I made sure of that before I allowed Wesley to sign the lease.
The refrigerator and freezer stand in the middle of a wall of cabinets with no handles, their dark finish the same, making them almost indistinguishable. I grab an unmarked glass bottle from the freezer, uncork it with my teeth and take a deep drink. The taste is familiar, smooth, and I welcome the burn in my throat.
I let my stomach settle around the alcohol, take one more drag, and breath out in relief as my face starts to warm. My hand grips the neck of the bottle and I start to lift to pour some of it on my wound—force of habit—before I remember this is not the field. The kit has disinfectant, I do not need to waste the best potato vodka from my home country.
To offset the dehydrating effect of alcohol, I pour a glass of water and take it with me to sit at the ornate glass table near the windows that easily fits ten. After some spritzes of hydrogen peroxide and a few minutes applying pressure over a gauze pad, the bleeding slows enough so I can work. The first stitch is the hardest, mostly a mental hurdle, easier done with a little liquid bravery.
This injury is infuriating. It is infuriating because it was avoidable. The gunman met his own untimely end with a knife to the throat, but James could have easily picked him off long before he had the chance to aim his gun at me.
Though, truthfully, he was in my line of sight the whole time, and within knife-throwing distance. Maybe it is not completely James’s fault.
I have not stayed alive so long by ignoring my own shortcomings, few as they are. The truth is, I have gotten complacent knowing he has my back. But the trouble is, I need to be able to trust my team. A man is only as good as his word in our line of work, and James said he would clear the second floor.
I hear the front door open and the Englishman call into the house, “Dimitri?”
“Here,” I respond, pulling the string through the last stitch I will have to make. I work the curved needle under the suture to tie it off, a difficult task with fingers slippery from blood.
Wesley walks into the kitchen with his usual carefree manner, laptop tucked under his arm. That thing is a permanent fixture, an extension of his body in a way similar to my knives. He stops by the refrigerator and I glance his way to see his stare locked on the pile of bloody gauze in front of me at the table.
He is deadly enough—we have sparred plenty of times for me to know that he deserves my respect—but he spends less time using those sparring skills he practices. His work is mostly done with the blue light of his screen reflecting on his face while he makes this technology bend to his will. It is truly a sight.
And he is many things, including a crucial member of our small team, but I am never quite sure if ‘good with blood’ is one. We have been on enough missions at this point that he should be used to the sight of me cleaning myself up.
I hear the soft clack as the laptop hits the surface of the counter, then see him rest his upper body on his forearms as they strain against his shirt. He was not exactly scrawny before, but he has put on some muscle since we formed our team. Those ridiculous tattoos that wind down his arms are slightly distorted from the thicker limbs and veins. I credit myself with this. As James is closer to my size, he has always been a stronger fighter than Wesley, but it is still my job as the strongest of us to push the others.
“Can’t be that bad if you’re still sitting upright,” Wesley says with a smile curling his lips.
He smiles too much, like a woman or a child. It made me suspicious when we first met. James, too, though I think that is just an American thing.
“A scratch,” I grumble, clipping the string and placing the medical scissors back in the metal box.
“That’s good to hear.”
“I should not be scratched at all,” I point out. Our research was thorough, the meeting and setup went to plan, the execution should have been easy. “What happened? Where is he?”
“You know I don’t like to speculate…”
I glare at him as I tear a piece of tape with my teeth, then place it over the edge of the gauze pad. “Tell me.”
“I think someone walked in on him. Exterminus interruptus , as it were.”
I curse. “How could this have happened?”
“Well,” he begins, pushing himself up off the counter, “we don’t know that it did. ”
I eye him. Wesley’s unwillingness to speak in absolutes or believe assumptions is one of his most frustrating qualities in conversation. An asset when he is triple checking everyone’s work, though. “But you think he was compromised?”
“I do.”
I swallow some of my anger and shift in my chair to face him more fully, now that the wound is taken care of. “Does he need backup?”
“He said he was handling it.”
Good. I would not bother concerning myself with it, then. “We lost Rossi. We need to regroup. We are back to our first square.”
“Square one,” Wesley corrects.
“That is what I said.”
His lips twitch and he grabs his laptop. “I’ll put out some feelers and see if I can find anything that’ll help us nail down their next move.”
That is a fine, cautious approach, but I know a few likely scenarios. “He will either go into hiding, if he does not care about seeming brave, or they will believe that I was acting alone. Either way, they will move their operation.”
“I’ll create a flag for your picture in all the usual places, in case they put out a hit.”
I nod, approving of this plan. “James will watch for the new location. It is the least he can do to clean up his mess. Will you be telling the General?” I ask as an afterthought.
The man who brought us together, each of us with our own specific set of skills that work together so nicely. The man who sends the details for the jobs, and takes a cut off the top for his service. The man who communicates almost exclusively with Wesley. I know so little of this man.
“This isn’t Charlie’s fucking Angels, mate. The General doesn’t give a good goddamn about screw ups, as long as we get it right in the end.”
I nod. This is as I would expect, but I cannot have one setback making my team look bad. “I will be downstairs. If I am not back in two hours, call for an IV delivery.”
I grab two water bottles out of the fridge and make my way down to the gym in the basement. There is a sauna, which will be good for the cold shock setting in .
The heat of the sauna helps with the shivering, but does little to help my anger.
A month of work down the drain. I will have to take some time to recover from this injury, and even after I heal, we will have to rework our strategy. Too many of Rossi’s men have seen my face.
Nothing makes me angrier than not being able to do my job because of stupidity. Whatever happened, I hope James confronts his errors. There is no doubt in my mind that this fuckup was someone’s error, and I know it was not mine. I will not work with people who do not learn from their mistakes.