Chapter 14
Alina
Waking up feels less like opening my eyes and more like being dragged back into my body.
I don’t feel relieved to be alive. I just feel…trapped.
My head is too heavy to lift, my thoughts lagging seconds behind my breathing.
All that I can process is how weak but also comfortable I am on a soft bed, cuddled up against something firm and warm.
Comfort feels wrong after how miserable I was, and how close I came to disappearing.
I open my eyes, squinting against the brightness filling the room until my vision adjusts. Blurry shapes slowly sharpen into objects that I can identify. A cream-colored wall. An expensive dresser. A pair of masculine arms that look vaguely familiar holding me tight.
Dom?
My eyes close again as memories finally breach my foggy mind, filling in the gaps about where I am and whose chest I’m lying on right now.
Gavriil?
I’m in his bed, his arms?
I immediately stiffen as I hear him draw in a deep breath.
“Why…” The rest of the words remain stuck in my throat.
The events of last night slowly return to me. I think I remember hearing a woman, Yelena’s voice, speaking in Russian, along with Gavriil’s. I felt like I was light enough to float away.
I shift my left hand that’s resting on Gavriil’s abdomen, his hard, bare, and hairy stomach, pausing when I see an IV needle nestled in my skin. Oh, so things must have been really bad last night.
I think I almost died last night, but he refused to let me go.
The thought scares me more than Gavriil ever has.
“How are you feeling?” His deep, accent-heavy voice hits my heart like a jolt of electricity.
I should get away from him, but the thought of even lifting my head off his chest is downright impossible at the moment.
My body choosing rest over hatred feels like failure.
But exhausting myself to spite him won’t do me any favors. I remain still, becoming even more aware of his hand resting on my lower back as his fingers shift.
“Sleepy,” I say, giving up the silent treatment before I permanently lose my voice. “Confused. Why…why am I in your bed?”
He lets out a faint hum. “You should be feeling better soon. Yelena gave you fluids, glucose, and electrolytes.”
“Why did you call her?” I ask him as I stare at the wall across from me just because I need to hear him say it.
Gavriil pauses for a few seconds before answering. “You were slipping away.”
A weak scoff leaves me. “And?”
I refuse to accept that he called her out of care for me.
“Is that what you think I want? You rotting away in my cage?” Gavriil questions me.
“Why am I in your bed?” I ask for what feels like the hundredth time.
“So that I could keep an eye on you,” he finally answers. His hand slides up my back, causing goosebumps to zip up the back of my arms. At least I’m wearing a shirt and he has on pants, but that’s it. Nothing else. He’s fucking insane.
“Dom would cut your hands off if he walked through the door right now,” I say, my throat growing tight at the thought. Gavriil chuckles but his arms don’t budge at the reminder of his overprotective brother.
That’s when it suddenly hits me.
The reason I’m in his bed, why he’s being nice, the way he’s still holding me tight like I might disappear. It’s not to make Dominik jealous or try to prove some stupid point.
Gavriil feels…guilty.
He cares about me. He could’ve let me die, but he didn’t.
And I don’t think he kept me alive just for Dom either.
Glancing over at the gigantic canvas on the wall, it occurs to me that as much as Gavriil gives Dominik shit about his feelings for me, Dom’s not the one who bought a life-sized photo of me before I ever stepped foot in his house.
I’m not just Gavriil Morozov’s hostage or captive.
I’m his obsession.
The thought makes me even more lightheaded because it means I may have more control over the ruthless Pakhan than I realized.
Testing my theory, I let my fingertips graze along his lower belly, just above the waistband of his sweatbands before lifting my hand to my mouth, faking a yawn.
His entire body shudders, making me smile.
“I should probably get back in the cage,” I say, which causes his arms to tighten around me. “Dominik will be furious when I tell him about this…” I trail off, blowing out a heavy sigh over his chest that makes Gavriil groan. Still, he doesn’t let me go.
He clears his throat. His voice is deeper, quieter, accent heavier than usual when he says, “Speaking of Dominik, I have another offer for you.”
A rush of words come flooding back to me. While I was in and out of my heavy sleep, I heard Gavriil’s voice. Mostly he spoke in Russian, but I remember a few things he said in English, whispers spoken like prayers.
You have to save her.
Alina, please.
Whatever it takes, just save her.
Beautiful, stubborn girl.
Forgive me.
Gavriil, admitting aloud that he made a mistake? I must have dreamed that part.
“What’s your offer?” I ask and he lets out the breath he was holding.
“Eat breakfast, drink a glass of water, and I’ll let you see him.”
I manage to gather enough strength to halfway sit up, feeling his hand linger on my spine to support me. My temples pulse for a few seconds, but once I’m upright, I feel somewhat steady.
“What?” I ask.
Gavriil sits up as well, his upper body crowding mine since we’re still so close together. “Eat, drink, and I’ll let you see Dominik.”
My eyes dart up to his blue ones, the air leaving my lungs. “You’re lying.”
His expression remains blank. “I’m not. Don’t you want to see him?”
Despite how much I miss Dom, I don’t jump to answer Gavriil’s question. I can’t because how I feel about seeing him right now is too complicated for even me to comprehend.
He killed my brother, and even if he had his reasons for it, I can’t bring myself to forgive him. Just like I can’t forgive myself for the part that I played in Archer’s death too.
So many people are at fault, and it kills me that the man I’ve grown so close to is one of them.
“You should’ve killed me and Archer yourself. You shouldn’t have made Dominik do it.” The words scrape out of me, bitter and raw, like they’ve been waiting for air. He ruined everything when he gave that fucking order.
Gavriil looks away from me, his brows knitting together. “I couldn’t kill you then, and I won’t let you die now.”
“Because of Dominik? Who you locked up in a cell?” I question him with a shake of my head. He claims to care about his brother, but he certainly has a funny way of showing it.
Gavriil exhales long and slow. “He would never forgive me if anything happened to you. He already blames me for losing the first woman he loved.”
Shock hits me like a punch to the stomach. Picturing Dom with another woman is inconceivable. “What?”
Gavriil turns his head toward me, eyes sharp and captivating. “Daria. She was pretty. At least on the outside.”
“What…what happened to her? What did you do?” I ask, assuming the worst.
The sides of his mouth wilt a little. “You think I killed her? You always think so badly of me.”
Does he actually sound…offended?
“You said that Dominik blamed you for losing her.”
Gavriil clicks his tongue and shakes his head. “I didn’t kill her. The thought crossed my mind, though.”
I blink at him. “Why?”
His eyes sharpen a degree. “Because of how badly she hurt him.”
That smidge of emotion makes my pulse quicken.
“What did she do?”
“She cheated on him. Got pregnant. And ended it without telling him whose child it was.”
My head spins as I try to imagine all of this, Dominik in love with another woman who stabbed him in the back in one of the worst ways possible.
Of course, I shouldn’t expect to be the first person he’s ever loved, or claimed to love, but this just proves how little I know of Dom’s life before meeting me.
“The baby may have been his…”
“She never confirmed either way,” Gavriil tells me.
“Why does Dominik blame you for that?” My eyes narrow with a guess. “Were you the other man?”
Gavriil’s jaw tenses for a moment. “No. Dominik blames me because I’m the one who told him the truth about Daria’s betrayal. I popped the bubble of his fantasy future with her.”
That’s somewhat of a relief. I guess. “He was that devastated?”
Gavriil shrugs. “I’ve warned him since we were children not to get attached to other people. He never listens, so his heart will continue to get broken.”
He probably thinks that I’ll be the next one to break his brother’s heart. I don’t want to do that, though. Even if Dominik hurts me with his actions, I don’t want to intentionally cause him pain.
“He never mentioned her to me,” I tell him.
“He doesn’t like to talk about what happened,” Gavriil replies. “And why would he talk about a past flame with his current one? However long it lasts.”
Now, he sounds like an asshole again.
“I want to see him,” I blurt out.
Even if it’ll be hard to look Dominik in the eye, I still want to see him. I want to make sure that he’s doing okay. I’m sure he’s been worried to death about me.
“You will eat and drink first,” Gavriil says, his tone firm.
But I see him differently now. I have a certain power over him, if I can just figure out how to wield it.
“After I see Dom,” I reply. “The IV fluids are enough for now.”
I no longer feel like I’m going to wither away and die, which is a massive improvement, but I’m not running a marathon or winning a fight any time soon.
Gavriil purses his lips for a moment like he wants to argue, but he eventually nods and slides away from me to get out of the bed. It’s a small victory, but it gives me hope and makes me feel…alive for the first time in days.
“You’ll return to the cage while he’s here,” he says.
“You don’t want Dom to see me in your bed? Shocking,” I mutter, my eyes watching his every move. My gaze lingers where it shouldn’t when he gets dressed.
Gavriil ignores my comment and grabs his cell phone off the nightstand to make a call, speaking in Russian so that I can’t understand a word that he’s saying.
“Come,” he says once he gets off the phone.