Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Ryker
If I could think past the fear, I’d hate myself.
“Stop,” I growl out, my voice harder and rougher than I meant for it to be.
Sasha doesn’t even hear me, the glass sinking deeper into the skin of her wrist.
Vomit and blood are on the floor, on the counter, the contracts for the casinos decorated with splatters of red.
But I ignore the scene, crunching over glass to pluck the shard from her fingers, tossing it across the room.
She looks at me then, confusion coloring her unfocused eyes.
“Sasha,” I say again, this time though, it’s a desperate plea. Her hands fall to her sides, covered in her own blood. “Fuck.”
Grabbing her up, I haul her out of the glass and into my arms. She doesn’t resist but she doesn’t help either. She’s limp in my arms.
Cradling her against my body, I head for the bedroom. I need to look at her, but I don’t want her to be anywhere near the glass when I do.
She’s dead weight, and looking down, I realize she’s lost consciousness, her breathing shallow, her eyes closed.
Blood rushes in my ears as one thought drives me forward. I might lose her.
“Sasha,” I roar, as I lay her on the bed and then strip off my shirt.
I have no idea how bad the cuts are, there is so much blood all over her hands, but I take off my dress shirt, wrapping it around one hand and applying pressure.
Sprinting back to the bathroom, I grab up my phone. “Call Killian,” I bark out, before tossing it on the bed. Then I tug off my T-shirt off and wrap Sasha’s other hand.
The phone rings, Killian picking up. “If you think I’m supporting you, you’ve lost your fucking mind,” he snaps, sounding more pissed than I have ever heard him. Not that I can care.
“It’s Sasha,” I say, and I can hear the fear lacing the gravel of my voice, making it as jagged as that glass. “I need help.”
Killian rumbles, “Coming.”
That is what I love about my brother. No extra words. No explanations.
Pressure is building in my chest as I hold both her hands in mine, trying to stop the bleeding.
Our bed is, once again, covered in blood but I kneel on the floor, my larger hands wrapped around her hands and wrists with all the pressure I can apply without hurting her.
“Sasha,” her name comes out broken. “Please wake up, baby.”
“Jesus Christ,” Killian utters from the doorway, his voice filled with disbelief.
My other brothers follow him in. “She won’t wake up,” I push out, my voice ripping from my throat.
Triston comes to the other side of the bed, taking her wrist from my hand so he can put pressure on it. “It’s her hand too,” I say to him. “I think.”
“You think?”
“There was so much blood.”
Triston holds her hands in both his, while Gris speaks behind me. “I need Dr. Kent. Right now. It’s an emergency.”
Rush walks into the bathroom. “Holy shit,” he calls out. “What the fuck?”
I grimace, my face freezing in lines of agony. I should be laying on this bed bleeding, not her.
I should… “I’m so sorry, baby,” I whisper the words, ready to break down. “When you wake up, you cut me to fucking pieces. You break me however you want. Just wake up, sweetheart. Please.”
Killian comes back from the kitchen with a wet towel in his hand. Standing next to me, he wipes Sasha’s face.
Her eyes jerk open.
“Baby?” I lift my head, hope rising in my chest.
“Don’t call me that,” she murmurs before her eyes slide closed again.
“Keep your eyes open,” I order. I’m not angry at her. But I need her to listen.
She opens them again, her face deathly pale and her eyes distant and unfocused.
Keeping one hand tight around her wrist and palm, I slide the other around her neck lifting her head. “How badly did you cut yourself?”
“Cut?” she asks, her brow furrowing.
“With the glass. How deep are the cuts?”
“I was tapping,” she answers, her lids drooping again.
“Tapping?” Triston asks, but I ignore him.
“Unwrap her hand, quick, and see how bad it is.” Triston does as I ask, inspecting her hand as Killian keeps wiping the cool water over her face and chest.
“She’s still bleeding. Some of them are deep but not too long. Might require stitches but she won’t bleed out.”
My shoulders slump with relief. “Put pressure back on them. I’m going to have a look at this hand.” I do and am relieved to see that only a few fingers are cut on her right hand. I wrap it back up and then, holding her hand in both of mine, I lay my head down on the bed.
The weight of my sins, of how badly I have fucked this up, make my head feel like it weighs a hundred pounds as I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Ryker,” Killian rumbles next to me.
I shake my head, the top of it brushing Sasha’s side. I can’t crumble now. My woman needs me.
That’s probably complete bullshit. She’s not my woman anymore, I know it. But I’m still her man and I always will be. I lift my head. “You still awake, Princess?”
“Call me little bird,” she says back. “That’s what I have always been.”
I understand the accusation. But I’m just relieved that she’s with it enough to be pissed. “If I do one thing, it will be to set you free,” I whisper back. The words sit like a brick in my stomach.
Gris is still talking softly on the phone, his voice low and soothing. I have no idea who he’s talking to, but I don’t care.
“I don’t need anything from you,” Sasha shakes her head, even as Killian moves to her feet, wiping away excess blood from them. “I will set myself free.”
“By hurting yourself?” I bite back and she winces. I instantly regret the harsh tone. But hurting herself is never the answer.
“I…I wasn’t trying to…” She grimaces. “The pain of the cuts just made everything else hurt less.”
I breathe through my nostrils, just trying to clear away the fog of worry. I need to be present and clear and—
Dimitri’s voice fills the room, his snarling Russian silencing every other man. I don’t need to understand the words to know that I’m about to feel his wrath.
He storms up to me, his fist catching my jaw with a force that sends me flying back, my back landing with a thud on the floor.
“I knew you were a lying piece of shit,” Dimitri spits through clenched teeth.
“Stop,” Sasha says from the bed.
He turns to his sister as I lift myself off the floor. But I hear the catch in his voice, the fears that lace his words. “What has he done to you?”
But Sasha doesn’t answer right away, instead she looks away, drawing in a deep breath. “He is the last person, in a long line of people, who I wished loved me, but who does not.”
The words cut deep into my soul.
“That’s not true.” But I say the words at the exact moment that Dimitri says the same ones.
She looks at her brother and then me, the accusation in her eyes undeniable. I’m just glad to see some color returning to her face.
I can already feel my jaw swelling, but I come to stand beside Dimitri at the edge of the bed. I want to touch her, but I don’t.
Instead, I draw in a tremulous breath. “Both casinos are yours, Sasha.” I rub a hand down my sore jaw.
Everyone is here, everyone will know how I feel, but I don’t care.
“And I am yours too, to do with whatever you wish. Use me, abuse me, throw me away. I was dead inside, until I met you. I don’t deserve another chance, I won’t ask for it.
But whatever you need, whatever I have, it’s yours. ”
I drop back down to my knees, reaching out to touch her, but stop when she flinches away from my hand.
“She doesn’t need anything from you,” Dimitri pushes my shoulder, a touch I ignore. “Our agreement is void. I’ll close my access to the tunnel and take back my casinos. This was a mistake.”
“Why would you do that?” Triston asks, still holding Sasha’s other hand. “That access makes you far more money than all of your other casinos combined.”
“You have misunderstood all along,” Dimitri grits back. “I am not in business with you to be rich. I have always wanted to protect my family. My daughter, my wife, my sisters. That is the partnership I was seeking, and you have failed.”
His words hit me harder than the uppercut to the jaw. I failed so hard. “Dimitri.”
“Don’t talk to me,” he yells back.
“Don’t blame him,” Sasha waves her hand, still wrapped in my bloody T-shirt. “I’m the one who broke the mirror.”
“I told you that she wasn’t ready for this…” Dimitri grits out as he stares at me with a deep pain that mirrors my own. “I should have…” And then Dimitri drops to his knees next to me.
Her hand slides toward her brother, and he takes it, wrapping both of his around hers. “Would you really give up the tunnel access for me?” she asks.
“You are my family, Sasha. I love you. I tried to tell you and Katarina, this was always a plan to protect you from otets.”
“But you profited. How was I supposed to know?”
He brings the back of her hand to his cheek. “Because I told you.”
“Not good enough,” she shakes her head.
“After living with him, it’s nearly impossible to trust, isn’t it?” Dimitri answers.
Tears form in her eyes, leaking down her cheeks. They cut me and I can’t help myself. I reach out and wipe one away with the pad of my thumb. She doesn’t flinch away, but when her eyes meet mine, the sadness in them breaks me to pieces. “I tried to trust. I really did.”
My eyes slide closed. She tried to trust me. Give me her heart.
“The doctor’s here,” Gris says from behind me.
I look across the bed at my brother, Triston. As head of my family here in America, and our CEO, I’ve betrayed him most of all. “Can you stay and listen to all the doctor says? I don’t trust myself to remember all the details of her care.”
He stares back at me like he’s at war with himself. Finally, he draws in a long breath. “Of course.”
“You won’t be taking care of her.” Dimitri glares at me. But he’s a problem for later. Right now, I see clearly what I haven’t for a very long time…my brothers have my back.
Already, I can hear Rush in the kitchen cleaning up the vomit. It’s a shit job that he’s doing without even being asked.
Killian nods at Triston before he steps into the bathroom, where I hear him begin collecting up all the glass.
I know two things in this moment: I’ve ruined everything, and I’m not likely to earn anyone’s trust back.
But another truth hits me square in the chest and that’s I’ve never understood what man I wanted to be until this moment.