Chapter 38 Claire
CLAIRE
The day after what I considered the “big” family dinner, I was thrown out of the almost idyllic mindset that things could be calm and quiet around this place.
It was just like the superstition and jinx that saying things were the Q-word meant the opposite would happen.
Anya and I had just been talking about how quiet and peaceful it was on the back garden patio after lunch when too much commotion sounded from inside the main floor.
“What is going on?” Anya asked, jumping to her feet.
I stood quickly, too. Instantly alarmed, I put my arm out and barricaded her. Scanning the patio space and then squinting to see inside, I was frantic to find the source of danger.
It wasn’t supposed to be dangerous here. Too many guards were all over the place, patrolling and keeping invaders out. Now fully aware of how Anya had been taken from here, though, I knew better than to ever assume the impossible couldn’t happen.
“I don’t know.” I backed her up toward the door that would give her the clearest and fastest route up to her room. “But you need to go. Go to your room and hide. Wait for me or Mikhail to come and tell you that the coast is clear and—”
“What?” She dropped her jaw, scared now.
I was the adult. I had to be the one to take charge, and keeping her safe was paramount.
“You need to come hide with me!”
Shaking my head, I urged her to back up and go. I’d watch her back.
As soon as we entered the main open space of this floor, though, Sergei frowned at us as he approached. “What’s wrong?”
Anya and I shared a look. “That’s what we want to know,” I said.
At least he looks calm…
“We were sitting out there,” Anya said, pointing.
The fear in her voice sliced at my heart. Maybe it was time for me to suggest to Mikhail that we both go through some training, to learn how to defend ourselves or shoot.
“And then we heard all this shouting and everything,” I added, scanning the room. Once I landed my focus back on him, I furrowed my brow. “You’re bleeding.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah.”
He rolled his eyes. I knew these men were tough, but… “Sergei!” I steered him toward the nearest couch. “You’re bleeding out.”
“I hope I’m not,” he admitted candidly. “Anya, do you think you could go get one of the first aid kits this wonderful doctor has insisted upon having throughout this house?”
I shot him a firm look. “What happened?”
Anya didn’t move. “Is it… safe?”
Sergei nodded, moving with me to get his suit sleeve off and then his shirt. It looked like the gash through the fabric lined up with the wound. “Yeah, it’s fine.”
More shouting sounded in the distance, contradicting him.
“We got into a little bit of a scuffle,” he admitted. Now instead of rolling his eyes at being wounded, he almost smiled. As if he were proud.
I winced, doing my best to acclimate and not judge.
I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know…
Proverbially keeping my head in the sand was getting old, though. The more I confronted my fear of violence and helped out, I got quicker and better at reasoning with myself that this was just the way things were.
“No one’s breaking in,” he added with a glance at me.
“Anya, he needs to be stitched up,” I told her, assessing the deep wound.
Pressing the pure-white pillow that happened to be on this sofa on it wasn’t the most sanitary compression.
Nor was it right. This little thing probably cost a fortune, but it was all I had on hand.
“Can you please get the closest kit?” She would know where they were.
When I told Mikhail I wanted to be prepared for any emergencies, he gave me unlimited funds to stock up in the building.
Anya had made it a project with me to find places for all the kits.
She scurried off, seeming to trust my assumption that Sergei was right, that it was safe here.
“Claire, before I forget and since it’s not often I can talk to you privately,” Sergei said once Anya was out of earshot, “I wanted to ask you something.”
“Okay.”
“Did you suggest it to my uncle?”
I frowned at him. “Suggest what?”
“Suggest that he give Anya a chance at a different life somewhere else or to stay. Like he’d offered for you.”
I shook my head. “You are putting way too much confidence in my ability to tell your uncle to do anything.”
Except… maybe how I would like him to make love to me. Mikhail was always accommodating in that department. I hid a sly smile at the naughty thoughts.
“I beg to differ.” Leaning over to stage-whisper, he said, “He would do anything you ask of him.”
It was my turn to roll my eyes. “Ha.”
“You’ve got him wrapped around your little finger, Claire.”
That was how I felt. I was that eager to appease him and please him. But perhaps it was mutual.
“No, I didn’t suggest that. And I’m very touched that he could be that selfless where she is concerned.”
He nodded.
“Now this,” I said, indicating his wound as I checked whether the decorative pillow was helping to stem the blood loss. “What happened this time?”
He shrugged his other shoulder. “Got too close to one of those Popov bastards. And he got lucky with a knife.”
I sighed, doing my best to shelve the frustration, dread, and worry about their violent lifestyles.
It is what it is. Don’t think too deeply about it.
“But it was worth it,” he said as Anya returned.
I gave him a droll look.
“It was. This wasn’t a stupid, meaningless fight,” he insisted. “Because we got him.”
“Got who?” Anya asked.
I masked my reaction to her asking anything at all. It was ingrained in me not to ask for details, but she was still learning. Her curiosity resulted in less of a filter.
“Your old friend,” Sergei said, tipping his chin at me as I began to clean the wound.
“My what?” Instantly, my mind went back to all the people I used to know back home, in the area I’d grown up outside London.
“Jack Harroun,” he replied. “We found him. That’s what part of the shouting and commotion is about. We were bringing him downstairs to, uh…” He looked at Anya. “Downstairs,” he concluded. “And he tried to run off.”
“Jack’s here?” I asked. I didn’t need to seek clarification for what he meant when he said downstairs. I knew. Mikhail warned me to never go down there without him, the lowest level where enemies could be questioned.
Questioned and… killed.
“Yeah,” he replied, hissing a bit as I began to stitch him up. The couch would’ve been wet if I hadn’t laid out the protective drape over our laps.
“Oh.” I furrowed my brow as I focused on helping him. It was far easier in these moments where I could practice adapting my skills. Being here and not assisting was a waste, so it was often like this, spur-of-the-moment emergencies where the men counted on my expertise and skill.
Helping them was a strange way of making peace with their lawlessness, but it felt right.
Everything made sense now, the longer I stayed. I wasn’t quick to doubt my role anymore.
As Mikhail’s lover. As a stand-in motherly role model for Anya. And as the resident doctor on hand. Not helping the Orlov men would’ve felt like a crime.
“I think my uncle will be waiting to see if you’d like to speak to him,” Sergei said as I tried my hardest not to relive the last time I’d seen Jack, when he’d taken me off the street and happily handed me over to those men who tied me up and left me in that wretched room of isolation.
“He thinks I’d want to speak to Jack?” I asked. Shaking my head but not taking my focus off Sergei’s arm, I sighed. “I have no interest in speaking to anyone down on that level.”
“Not even for closure?” Anya asked. She sat next to me, holding out a package of gauze for me to take when I was ready for it.
Already, she was filling in the role of my assistant.
She had helped me with enough of these impromptu emergencies because she was always tagging along with me during the day.
She had been informed about how Jack worked with me at the hospital and how he’d helped me be captured. Withholding information from her felt cruel, and since she wasn’t a child but almost an adult, I wasn’t too worried about her being too delicate or immature to hear some watered-down facts.
“Closure?” I asked, surprised by her choice of words.
“No. I don’t need closure.” If anything had been closed up, it was all I’d experienced before I told Mikhail that I loved him.
I ended the chapter of my work here when I resigned.
I closed up the matter of Jack threatening me when I was saved from that dark room.
“But it might help,” Mikhail said, coming up behind us on the couch. He strolled in, looking casual with his hands shoved in his pockets and his face mostly blank. But as he neared me, I saw the tension in his jaw, the latent anger in his eyes that sparked and burned with impatience, too.
“I don’t need closure,” I told him as I kept my gaze on Sergei’s arm. Nearly done with stitching the gash, I shook my head once more. “I don’t need to even know he’s here.”
“Humor me,” Mikhail suggested. “He was someone involved with the threats on your life and it might help to see that he will never be a threat again.”
I winced, knotting the thread and glancing up at him. “I’m doing my best, but, um… I don’t need to witness any ‘closure’ firsthand.”
“Walk with me,” he said, tilting his head to the side.
It wasn’t an order, but it wasn’t a request either. I sighed, wondering if he had a point. If I’d feel better knowing that Jack was captured and soon meeting his fate at the hands of my man.
“Can you apply some ointment and then wrap this up loosely?” I asked Anya.
She nodded, hurrying to take my place as if she was thrilled to be asked to do something. I had to find more ways to make her feel included.
I got up and went to Mikhail. Before he led me away, he framed my face and kissed me sweetly. “I love you.”
“That’s kind of a weird sentiment to share before taking me down to the torture dungeons, isn’t it?’ I asked, scrunching my nose.