36. Andrie
Andrie
“And that’s how they should’ve done it the first time,” I heard over my screams. Irina sounded as impassive now as I’d been earlier. I’d tried to keep my responses contained, but I’d lost the battle when she’d decided to show me the right way to cut someone up with a knife.
She’d scoffed when she’d seen the healing lines on my arm, insisting only an amateur would have started off that way. Her attitude was that of a salon stylist looking at the work of a four-year-old let loose with scissors.
Using the butcher knife, she’d meticulously filleted almost the entire skin of the top of my forearm, peeling it from my body as she went. After that, she’d cut out what she declared was fat, before revealing the muscles, which I could see trembling through the blood seeping from the open wound.
Jasper won’t be happy about this, I thought sarcastically as I tried to calm my breathing through my adrenaline-induced panic. He’d insisted on scheduling a checkup for tomorrow to see how my arm had been healing.
“Now, onto the hand,” Irina said. The only emotion I saw from her was a flicker of excitement in her eyes.
“We’ll start with the fingernails,” she started to say, pulling out a pair of pliers from a drawer in the kitchen that I assumed the owners used as a junk drawer.
“After, we’ll move on to asking about those patient names. ”
Even knowing it was futile, I tried to jerk my hand from her when she reached for it, forcibly outstretching my pinky and laying an arm across my hand so I couldn’t move it away from her.
Before she could position the pliers, the sound of a door being kicked in had both of us jerking toward the door.
Xander, gun in hand, stepped into the kitchen before she could react.
“I wouldn’t do that,” he said in Russian when she began to reach to her waistband for her own weapon.
I knew he couldn’t shoot her, not with her still crouched like she was in front of me.
Irina must have already come to that conclusion because even though her hand paused, she smirked.
“Or what?” she practically purred.
Footsteps behind me echoed down the hall, telling us that Xander hadn’t come alone.
“Or one of us will shoot you.” Vik came into view as he slowly came around me, his gun drawn.
Her eyes widened when she locked in on him, ignoring her son completely as she recognized his old best friend.
“Well, well. I guess I should have assumed my son sent you after this one.” I squeaked despite myself when the pliers tightened ever so slightly.
“But I have to say, it’s pathetic to think you’ve spent all this time still following orders.
You never did have an original thought. Are you going to spend the rest of your life stuck in limbo, waiting for the next directive that will never come? ”
Vik smiled, taking a page from my earlier playbook and needling the older woman before lifting his head to Xander. “I wouldn’t say never.”
Irina couldn’t hide her surprise that time, spinning on her heel to look at Xander straight on. There was a pause, then a snort. “Who the hell are you?”
Vik chuckled then, while Xander gave her a patronizing smirk. “You don’t recognize him?” I asked, relief coursing through me at the idea that even his own mother didn’t know who he was. After all this time, all this effort, he was safe.
It hit me then. That he was truly here. After all these years and despite all our time apart and everything we’d both gone through, he still loved me as much as I loved him—both the Demi of the past and the Xander of the future.
“I love you,” I told him, ignoring Irina. The sting of tears in my eyes had nothing to do with the pounding headache or pain in my arm; it had everything to do with the emotions running through me.
For the first time since he stepped into the room, Xander’s attention came to rest on me. His expression softened, his eyes filling with a warmth that hadn’t been there a moment ago. “I love you, too, solnyshkuh.”
“You’d better,” I told him, smiling despite my situation. “Because if you didn’t, after all we’ve been through, I’d unleash Lessia on you.”
“Did someone mention me?” Alessia practically melted into view on my other side.
“Where the hell did you come from?” Vik wanted to know.
Lessia ignored him, focusing on Irina. And for good reason.
Irina, seeing she was boxed in and trying to take advantage of the surprise Lessia’s arrival had caused, spun as she reached for the gun at her back, rising as she did so.
Before I could blink, several shots rang out, seeming to come from every direction. Instinctively, I closed my eyes and tried to hunch down as best I could.
My eyes were still shut, ears ringing, when someone grabbed my hand. Unable to help myself, I let out an undignified squeak, pulling back momentarily before recognizing Xander’s touch and trying to launch myself to him.
I kept myself focused on his beautiful, blurry blue eyes, even as Vik procured a bedspread to toss around my shoulders and Xander pulled me free of the restraints and into his arms, careful of my injury.
“Xander,” I breathed into his neck. I wasn’t sure if I was shaking or he was.
“I’ve got you.” He lifted me off my feet, cradling me against him as if I were a small child. Finally feeling safe, I didn’t fight the darkness when it overtook me, knowing Xander was there.