Chapter 7
7
Ivan
U nable to sit still for very long, I paced back and forth at the foot of Adrian’s bed as the doctor checked his vitals. He’d barely been lucid when Mark and I moved him from the helicopter and into the house. The most Adrian had done since he’d gotten in that helicopter was barely come in and out of consciousness. His breathing remained shallow and labored the entire time, making me come fucking unhinged.
Because there was nothing I could fucking do to help him. I’d insisted on him having to come to Russia to “help” me figure out this problem for James, and I’d damn near gotten him killed.
One of Dr. Lebedev’s nurses stepped into the room. She ducked her head immediately upon seeing me, casting her eyes to the floor as she rushed over to the IV pole that’d been wheeled in a little while ago, hanging up a bag of saline. I had no doubt I looked on the verge of a fucking mental breakdown—and not one that involved tears.
This kind of breakdown would involve a lot of dead bodies.
“He’d dehydrated,” Dr. Lebedev spoke up as another nurse, this one a male, wheeled in some kind of machine I didn’t recognize. “That’s a fluid warmer,” he explained before I could open my mouth. “With Mr. Miller’s condition, we do not want to give him cold saline.” He hung his stethoscope around his neck and turned to give me his undivided attention. “We need to get him out of these clothes, then cover him with as many blankets as you can spare until his body temperature rises again.”
I moved forward without a word, shooting both nurses a cold look when they didn’t move out of my way fast enough. Adrian mumbled something I couldn’t even begin to make out with how slurred his speech was, his eyes barely opening to slits when I began to peel his jacket off, but then, he was out again, oblivious to what was going on around him.
Once his clothes were off and tossed to the floor, Dr. Lebedev helped me get him covered up. His toes, which we’d already checked, were already beginning to regain their right color, which helped me relax a bit.
He was going to pull through this. He fucking had to. I refused to entertain any other possibility.
“I heard something about more blankets,” Mark said, appearing in the doorway, his arms loaded down with comforters. Grateful for him taking initiative, I strode toward him as the nurses worked on hooking up Adrian up to a blood pressure monitor and a blood-oxygen sensor. “How is he?”
I took some of the comforters from him and strode back to the bed. “He’s going to pull through,” I told him since I refused to believe any-fucking-thing else. His survival was the only option. “Shouldn’t lose any fingers or toes. But I imagine he’ll feel like shit for a few days. He’s going to need some downtime to recover.”
Mark began helping me drape the comforters over Adrian’s still body. “Should we let James know about his condition?”
I grunted. I did not feel like dealing with James. He was going to be pissed that not only had we crashed but that I’d still almost gotten Adrian killed. He might even come get Adrian himself and take him home. And that wasn’t an option.
I finally had Adrian within my grasp. I just needed some time to break him. I couldn’t do that if James came for him. And if he did, I couldn’t realistically stop him without causing a fucking war neither of us needed, especially when we might have a common enemy. Because I had no fucking doubt that my pilot had been killed, which caused us to crash in the middle of fucking nowhere where our survival odds were slim to none.
“I will… eventually,” I said because I didn’t feel like dealing with it right then. I wanted Adrian conscious and lucid first so he could assure James himself that he was alive and on the mend. James and I had a good working relationship, but when it came to family—especially family like Adrian, who he’d known basically his entire life—he wouldn’t be all that amicable. Or pleasant.
I stood back, crossing my arms over my chest as I watched the female nurse insert a needle into Adrian’s inner elbow before connecting it to the saline bag. When they finally slipped from the room, Dr. Lebedev turned his attention back to me. “I would like to do an assessment on you?—”
“No,” I growled. “Quite frankly, doctor, I’m tired, and I just want to rest. I feel fine, and all of my body parts seem to be in working order. If something changes, I will call you.”
He sighed but nodded, knowing better than to argue with me. “Then please at least make sure you eat something and drink plenty of fluids.”
“Will do,” I assured him. I had no doubt in my mind Mark would push the issue anyway until I agreed to let him do whatever he wanted just so he’d leave me alone.
The doc inclined his head to me. “I will be back soon to check on Mr. Miller.” With that, he left the room, pulling the door somewhat closed to where just a crack remained.
“What do you want to eat?” Mark asked me. I opened my mouth to tell him I didn’t feel like eating anything at the moment because honestly, all I wanted to do was sit beside Adrian’s bed and protect him while he couldn’t protect himself. But I also wanted to work on finding out why the fuck my jet had crashed. Mark held up a hand, shutting me up. I scowled at him. “Boss, you need to eat.”
I knew he was going to fucking argue with me.
My scowl deepened. “I sign your paychecks,” I coldly reminded him.
He arched a brow at me. “And you can’t sign them if you’re bedridden and ill. Food, boss.”
Goddamn him.
“Have someone make me a bowl of solyanka ,” I finally said. Solyanka was a common soup in Russia and one my father used to make for me all the time when I was ill. Now, even after his death, it was still my go-to soup. “But watch them while they make it, Mark. Something is amiss, and I will not be taken out by someone poisoning my fucking food.”
“Noted,” he said, inclining his head to me respectfully before leaving the room, shutting the door completely behind him.
Sighing, I grabbed the chair in the corner of the room and dragged it to Adrian’s beside. After tucking his arm connected to the saline drip beneath the mountain of blankets piled on top of him, I settled into the chair and pulled my phone out of my pocket, making a phone call to my consigliere, Igor.
“You’re home late,” he noted, his voice gruff and raspy from smoking way too many cigarettes a day. The shit would eventually kill him, but he always hit me back with, “Well, this life will kill me, too. Might as well go out doing something that pleases me,” and honestly, I couldn’t argue with that logic.
“We hit some trouble,” I explained. “We secure?”
“We are,” he confirmed. “What’s going on, Ivan?”
I ran my eyes over Adrian’s still form. He hadn’t budged a single bit, and seeing him so still made me feel like I was crawling out of my damn skin. He was always mouthy. Always so strong and capable. A leader. A man who took no shit and didn’t falter, even when shit got rough.
And now, he was weak and practically on his fucking death bed. I knew it even if Dr. Lebedev hadn’t said it out loud. Adrian really needed a hospital, but a hospital had too many variables I refused to contend with. I couldn’t be assured it would be one hundred percent safe for him. And while, right then, I couldn’t promise we were safe in my own home, I could at least sit by and protect him. I knew who had access, and I had back-up security for my back-up security here.
“I need you to track my jet—Mark should be able to help with that—and get the pilot and the flight attendant out.”
“Dead?” Igor asked as if he were asking how the fucking weather was.
“Deader than dead,” I confirmed, remembering their bodies and how graphic it’d been. “Probably frozen by now. I want you to do an autopsy and let me know what you find. We crashed. An engine went out. When I tried to get into the cockpit, I couldn’t. Door was locked. Flight attendant was MIA, and the pilot wasn’t letting me know a fucking thing.”
“Foul play,” Igor said. But it wasn’t a question.
“That’s what I’m thinking. Someone is already going after the Jacksons, and I think, by offering them my assistance—” Igor snorted at that, making me scowl, “—I’ve dragged us into it as well.”
“You’ve got one goal in mind here, Volkov, and it’s not helping James Jackson deal with his enemies. You want to get your dick wet inside his consigliere. Hell, you’ve been drooling over him since the moment you met him.”
“I do not drool,” I growled into the phone.
He scoffed. “Ivan, the moment you laid eyes on him, it was like you were a fucking mutt, and Adrian was a bitch in heat. But yeah,” he continued before I could threaten to cut his tongue out, “I’ll get on it. Keep an ear out. I’ll let you know what I find.”
With that, he hung up. When I looked at Adrian, I was surprised to find him already watching me through slitted eyes. His face wasn’t as pale anymore, though his skin still didn’t have the color it needed, and his lips were still too bluish-looking for my comfort.
“Not a bitch in heat,” he slurred, clearly having heard Igor. And then, he was out again before I could even process what he’d said to me.
I leaned forward and toyed with a strand of his dark hair, frowning at him while his breath fanned the skin of my wrist.
“When I find who caused this, kotik , I’m going to gut them like a fucking svin’ya ,” I murmured, using the Russian word for pig because the English version just wasn’t fucking doing it for me.
I didn’t get a response from him, though I didn’t expect one. But it was a promise I vowed to keep.
I’d slaughter every single person who had almost taken him from me.