Chapter 25 - Julian
TWENTY-FIVE
JULIAN
PRESENT DAY
It takes us three hours to get out of Moscow city limits, driving with an unconscious Giulia and barely conscious Igor, bleeding out on the beige sofa of one of the converted trucks.
Lana isn’t fairing better, and Lisandru’s hissing every time Aleksei Dobrev removes pieces of the bullets that exploded in his shoulders.
Of course the fucking pricks would use that type of bullets.
Not even Kevlar could help us against these.
I want to pace. Energy buzzes under my skin and I have nowhere to spend it.
But I can’t let go of Igor’s hand. It’s limp in mine. Every time he closes his eyes for too long, I slap his cheek, imploring him to stay awake.
“You should have let me die,” he croaks.
“Never.”
“I don’t deserve to live. Let me die, Julian.”
I shake my head back and forth, giving myself whiplash.
Next to Igor, Giulia’s prone and unmoving body has another type of agony rising inside me. Her husband holds her in his arms, tears flowing freely on his severe face, his long brown hair curtaining their faces.
We don’t have a medic on board. Only our own shared knowledge of how to suture bleeding wounds and remove bullets from living soldiers.
The operation was too tight to bring a full medical team so we have one nurse and that’s it.
And most of the resources are on Giulia and the people Misha kept as human pets packed together in one of the trucks. They must be scared out of their minds.
People around us call for a helicopter to land close by as we exit Petrov’s territory. The man might be gone, but cockroaches always fucking survive and until we can come back with more men and take over, priority goes to our family. Giulia and Igor need to get to a hospital. Now.
My brother, too, but he’s a stubborn mule and would rather grit his teeth than see a doctor. Maybe I can take my pain on him, and lash out. He’d let me. The reason why I don’t look at her cousin with pained agony.
Lana glides a strand of Giulia’s fiery red hair behind her ear and sniffs. Time is not on our side.
I turn my back on them, refocusing my attention on the man I looked for for three years.
It’s selfish. But Giulia would forgive me if she were awake.
His words echo in my brain, slithering inside me and making me sick with worry.
How can he ask me to let him die? Not after everything I went through, after everything we went through to get him back.
I clench my teeth to the point of pain. I’ve lived in despair for long enough.
That’s how my brain is wired now, but I can change.
I have to change. For Igor. For my family who has never abandoned me.
Despite the distress at his words, I bite my nails and shake my head, banishing it to the confines of my mind.
“When’s the helicopter reaching us?” I ask through clenched teeth, only to get a vague answer about hours. Tension has my body strung up, ready to blow. I breathe in and out through my nose, but the scent of copper and sickness makes me gag.
I close my eyes like my therapist taught me and visualise the path in my brain where despair lives.
Cutting its route would make it rage, would make it louder.
I leave it where it is and imagine hope, side by side with my grief.
It’s there, a shy and thin thread. My mind has given it a swirly brown colour.
Igor’s eyes. In my mind’s eye, I create a new path for hope to flow through me.
It’s a technique my therapist taught me and though I’m always reluctant when we practice in her warm office, here, surrounded by certain death, I find that it’s the only thing I can do to keep my mind sane.
Anxiety is still present, but when I open my eyes, I focus on what brings me hope. Lana is alive. My brother is alive. Igor’s pulse thrums against my fingers at his wrists. He’s with me, not there anymore. And more importantly, Misha is dead.
An eternity goes by until we stop. The sound of multiple choppers is a godsend. Its propellers create a strong wind, making the icy snow on the ground fly in our faces. We don’t have time to shiver, despite our lack of sleep.
Summoning the last of my strength, I crouch and lift Igor into my arms. He grunts, his arms flopping uselessly by his side, his head lolling on my chest.
I deposit him on a stretcher, and our team help Andrea lay his wife on the one next to Igor’s. Then he jumps out of the helicopter. I make to take his place but a firm hand on my chest stops me.
“No civilians on board.”
“I’m not a civilian.” My voice is a growl, but the man in front of me doesn’t take my shit. Next to me, Andrea tries to pry me off the window of the helicopter.
“That’s my husband in there,” I yell.
“And that’s my fucking wife. We’re going with the van, Julian. Let them do their work. If your fucking tantrum jeopardises my wife’s life, help me God, I will rip your throat out with my teeth.”
His hard grip on my elbow, pressing at the tendons, has me looking at him. Truly looking. Past my own hurt and my fears. His eyes are wild and desperate. And if that’s not a fucking mirror right there, I don’t know what is.
“Are you going to be a difficult, entitled cunt I have to wrestle to the ground or are you coming with me?” he seethes.
I rip my arm from his hand and march to the van, at the driver’s seat.
Once Andrea, Lana and Lisandru have piled into the car with me, I take off at the highest speed, rushing through open roads with no regards for other drivers and speed limits. It’s too trivial in the face of Igor and Giulia’s potential deaths.
When I look into the rearview mirror, Lana’s gaze is fixed out in the sky, the muscles of her neck strained. She follows the trail of the helicopter until it disappears from view. My brother’s typical dark energy swirls from him in waves. Andrea is holding on by a thread.
The best of us are lying unconscious, high above our heads, their fates uncertain. If anything happens to them, I’ll never forgive myself. There’s only redemption for me if I can make amends. If we lose them, it will tear down our families, and the rift will be too wide.
Giulia deserves a friend, something I haven’t been for her in a long time.
And Igor needs me at my best. The more I think about the past three years, the more I realise I’ve let him convince me he was better off without me.
After he broke my heart to protect me in Amsterdam, my attempts at finding him were lukewarm at best. I lashed out.
I sunk. And I refuse to let that version of me win, ever again.
Nothing stops us as we ride as fast as we can to the nearest hospital, almost two hours away from the border between Russia and Latvia.
It was too dangerous for us to stay in Russia while Misha’s system isn’t fully in our hands yet.
I already know Lana will be going back in one or two days, rallying more of her army and our allies’ to weed out Misha’s partisans and establish a new order.
With the help of the Dobrev siblings, it should be easy enough.
They both have contacts and family members that will see money as their opportunity to switch allegiance.
I don’t really care for the politics of the future Moscow Bratva.
All I want is to get to that damn hospital.
We burst through the doors, demanding to see the two most important people of our lives, frightening half the staff and most patients.
The bright artificial light assaults my eyes, reminding me that I haven’t slept a wink last night.
Or was it yesterday? I glance at the clock above the reception desk.
It’s only nine fucking forty five in the morning.
“Yelling won’t get you answers,” Aleksei Dobrev declares before calmly taking over the conversation with a nurse in Russian.
None of us speak the language well enough to get the information we need, but he does. I guess having allies has benefits besides killing flesh traders and predators. They can butter up medical staff, too.
From another automatic door, a doctor in a white blouse and pink scrubs approaches our little gathering.
“If you’re done being menaces in my hospital, I can take you to your friends,” she says. “But if you don’t behave and keep your voice down, I’m not only throwing you out of here, I’m fucking deporting you, understand me?”
Despite her heavy accented English, the message is crystal clear.
I’m still frazzled but the authority of the blonde doctor who must not be older than thirty yet speaks like she owns the place sends a strange calm into me. If she wanted to deliver bad news, she would have already.
I hold on to that hope with both clenched hands.
We’re taken to the fifth floor, into a waiting room that barely contains all the apprehension building between us all. It thickens the air until I think I could choke from it. The scent of rubbing alcohol doesn’t help, permeating the very cushions of the uncomfortable grey seats in the room.
Andrea and I take turns pacing. Lisandru runs disgusting coffee errands to the machine down the corridor every few minutes.
I refuse every single cup. I’m not having the shits while my husband may or may not die on a fucking hospital bed, torn open by people I don’t know, in a country I can’t wait to get the fuck out of.
No offence to Latvia, I’m sure it’s a beautiful country and all, but I want a shower, Mammona’s cooking, my bed, my man and two weeks of sleep. Not necessarily in that order.
More comfortable in Russian than in English despite her earlier threat, the doctor explains the situation to Aleksei. He translates the entire conversation for us, patient and efficient. I wouldn’t expect anything else from the London Bratva leader.
“Igor Petrov and Giulia Capaldi are both in surgery, at the moment. While Mr Petrov’s life is not in danger and he should be out in an hour, Mrs Capaldi may not have such good odds.”
I take a sigh of relief, feeling abject for it. Igor will live. But my friend, Lana’s best friend and cousin, a woman so fierce and beloved, might not survive.
I may have gotten my husband back, but the cost might be too high.