Chapter 24 Andrej
ANDREJ
“Ivana!”
Cartier leans forward, her ear close to Ivana’s mouth.
I’ve seen people dying before. I’ve seen fatal chest wounds, enough blood to fill a fucking stream pumping out of a person’s body, and I know that she isn’t going to survive this.
“No, no, no.”
Cartier’s hands hover over Ivana’s heart. They’re slick with blood. I can taste it, the thick iron tang, can smell it in the air.
“Stay with me, Ivana.” She starts pumping, both hands on the woman’s bloody chest. Counting, sitting back, pinching Ivana’s nose and breathing into her mouth.
I want to tell her that she’s wasting her time, but that isn’t what she wants to hear. Cartier can’t walk away without trying to save her.
So, instead I drop to my knees beside them and hold Ivana’s slick hand.
I heard the conversation, enough to know that Ivana betrayed my family. She betrayed me. She betrayed the woman I love.
“Do something, Andrej. We need to get her to the hospital.”
Cartier’s eyes are dark, hollow. There are blood smears across her face.
And when she looks at me, there’s no recognition, only the panic that keeps her pumping, resting, sharing her oxygen.
She doesn’t care that Ivana sold her out to a killer.
Ivana repaid that debt when she fired the last bullet, and Cartier only sees a dying woman in need of a miracle.
We’ll never get Ivana to the hospital in time, but I don’t say this either.
I find my phone, get a message to one of our contacts in the city, knowing that it will reach the members of my security team that are still alive after Yuri Asimov’s invasion.
Within moments, the door opens, and two guards appear, guns raised. They take in the scene, the women on the floor, the gasping body of the man who got what was coming to him.
“Boss?”
Their eyes scan my wounds. Assessing. Planning their next moves. Figuring out timeframes.
“She’s alive!” Cartier speaks before I can give orders.
Her eyes are gleaming again. The relief surrounding her is a tangible thing. I want to hug her tightly and never let her go, but Ivana’s condition is too fragile.
“She’s breathing, Andrej. She’s still alive.”
Ivana is motionless. Her skin is bloodless, tinged with that look of someone clinging to life by a fragile thread. Whatever Cartier used as a compress is unrecognizable, a sopping bloody rag. But Ivana isn’t giving up.
Not yet.
Not without a fight.
My brain kickstarts, bringing with it a wave of pain that threatens to swipe my legs out from under me if I give it any attention. “Hang on, Ivana.” I squeeze her hand and turn to my men. “We need to move her, but not like this.”
They nod once. They know the drill.
“Andrej?” Cartier is watching me closely. “Do you think we can save her?”
She’s focused on Ivana, and I’m grateful. That’s exactly how it should be. Cartier has the most beautiful soul of anyone I ever met, and it’s only right that she should stay true to herself and devote her attention to the woman who needs her right now.
“She’s strong.” She’s fading though, her essence flowing from her through the gaping hole in her chest. “If anyone can survive this, it’s Ivana.”
Cartier’s eyes narrow then drift to the blood on my sweater. “You’re hurt.” I hear the crack in her voice, see her deflate like a punctured ball. “Andrej? Please don’t—”
I’m saved from succumbing to her scrutiny and her fear by the door bouncing open. The bodyguards have returned with a stretcher: a sheet wrapped around two strips of wood that they fetched from fuck knows where.
I pull Cartier onto her feet and stand aside to give them space to work. This is nothing they haven’t seen before. They set the makeshift stretcher down and lift Ivana onto it carefully, folding her arms across her chest as if she’s already a corpse. Then on a mutual count to three, they lift.
Cartier’s head rests against my chest, her body wracked with silent years. “Sh-she protected me, Andrej. She didn’t let him take me.”
I fold my arms around her and inhale her coconut shampoo scent.
I should be the one holding her up, supporting her, promising her that it’s all over, that nothing like this will ever happen again.
But instead, she lifts her head, places both hands on my chest, and peers at me as the world starts to blur.
“Help me!” I think she’s talking to me, but two more men enter the room, and then my feet are no longer touching the ground.
“Andrej!”
I’m flying. Not like an eagle, swooping above fields and rooftops in search of prey, but like a penguin on a slippery slope to a bottomless black hole, flapping, squawking, trying to clamber back to safety.
I follow the sound of her voice. “Andrej. Please don’t die. You can’t die; you just asked me to marry you.”
She makes me smile. Always. Although, I’m not sure if my mouth is aligned with my thoughts right now.
I reach for her hand. Warm. Wet. Blood.
“I’m here, Andrej. I’m right here.”
This shouldn’t be happening to me. I’m an Ivanov. We’re invincible. I try to latch onto my brother’s motto, something about immortality, but the words have faded over time, or I’ve forgotten them. I need to get them back. Those words, Leonid’s motto, will keep me alive.
“Cartier…” Where did my voice go? “Find them.”
“Find them? Who do you want me to find, Andrej?”
“I’m immortal…”
“Yes!” Is she crying? “You are immortal, Andrej. You’d better believe it.”
I’m smiling now…
Cool air hits my face. I’m shivering, teeth chattering, pain in my chest…
Flashing lights.
Voices.
Then nothing…
I hear voices before I’m fully awake.
My head is so foggy, my thoughts swimming in dense gray mist, that it’s hard to decipher if the voices are in my dreams or if they’re real.
Beep… Beep… Beep…
I focus on the mechanical noise, waiting for it to ground me enough to open my eyes. I haven’t slept this deeply for as long as I can remember. Since I was a kid and got a concussion falling off a motorcycle that I stole.
Then another sound penetrates the murky interior of my brain.
It makes no sense. Is someone sick?
From somewhere deep inside my consciousness, the need to get up, to get out of bed, and go protect the people closest to me, pushes through, and the name escapes my lips with a gasp that sends those steady beeps haywire.
“Cartier!”
I sit up too quickly, tugging on the tubes inserted into the back of my hands and attached to my chest. The room spins.
My chest feels tight, and I realize that it’s from the dressing and bandages wrapped around me.
I’m in a hospital room. There are monitors on either side of the bed, a drip containing clear liquid attached to my arm, and more dressings on my shoulder and thigh.
A mussed-up blanket covers the visitor’s seat next to the bed.
But I’m alone.
Then the bathroom door opens, and Cartier appears. Her face is pale. Her hair is tied back into a messy ponytail. There are dark smudges underneath her eyes, and her clothes are creased, but when she sees me sitting up in bed, her face lights up like she just stepped into the sunshine.
“Andrej, you’re awake!” She rushes to the bed and perches on the edge, reaching up and smoothing my hair away from my face.
I take her hand and press it to my cheek. Her body heat seeps into me, and I realize with a jolt that I’ve never felt so cold.
“You’re shivering.” Her eyes darken with concern. “Shall I call the nurse?”
“No.” My voice is hoarse. “I want some time alone with my baby.”
She chokes out a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a sob, tears welling in her eyes. “I was so worried about you. I didn’t realize that you…” She sniffs loudly and wipes her damp cheeks with the back of her hand. “…were so badly hurt.”
I smile. My lips are dry, but I can’t help smiling when I’m with Cartier. And she is wearing my engagement ring.
“You’re stuck with me, baby.”
She releases a deep sigh, her shoulders slumping. “You don’t know how desperate I was to hear you say that again.”
Images of the bloody scene in the library crawl across my mind, tentatively, as if gauging how much I can handle right now. I relive them all. I didn’t get to where I am today by erasing all the bad stuff that ever happened in my life.
“Ivana?”
Cartier has washed the blood from her hands and face, but her face will always reveal glimpses of that story, even though her clothes don’t.
“She’s been in surgery all night.”
I pull Cartier closer. She wriggles in my arms to avoid touching the dressing on my chest, but I hold her tightly. I need to feel her back where she belongs.
“You did everything that you could, Cartier. Without you, Ivana wouldn’t have made it down to the operating room.”
“Without me, she would still be in Chicago,” she says flatly.
“Hey.” I hold her at arm’s length and run my thumb across her bottom lip. She has never seemed so vulnerable, so unsure of herself, so beaten down by life. “Don’t ever think that. Ivana knows the risks that come with being an enforcer. She faces danger every day of her life.”
I could add that she led Yuri Asimov to Cartier, but she doesn’t need to hear this, especially from me.
“But—”
“No buts. Ivana would risk her life to save any one of us.”
“One of us?” Tears glisten on her eyelashes when she peers at me.
“You became one of us when you slid that ring onto your finger.”
Her smile is back, and my chest swells with love for her. The monitor registers it too, beeping rapidly.
“About that. You never did come back with the bottle of champagne.”
“I got waylaid.” I lean forward and kiss her on the lips. “But I haven’t forgotten.”
The door opens then, and a nurse pokes her head inside the room. She smiles when she finds me sitting up in bed and enters the room, reflexively reaching for the thermometer in her pocket to take my temperature.
“How are you feeling?”
“Never better.”
“You’ll need to convalesce for a while.” She looks at Cartier. “I’m telling you because I know that he won’t listen.”