Chapter 50
CHAPTER
FIFTY
DINARA
Pain hauls me back to consciousness like a riptide, dragging me under and spitting me out gasping. Everything hurts. My side is on fire, my head feels stuffed with cotton, and I can’t quite piece together where I am or what’s happening.
The world is moving. I’m lying across something soft, my head pillowed on fabric that smells expensive and floral. An engine hums beneath me, tires eating up asphalt fast enough that I can feel the vibration in my bones.
I try to open my eyes but my lids feel like they’re weighted down. When I finally manage to crack them open, everything’s blurred, shadows and light bleeding together in ways that don’t make sense.
But even through the fog, only one thought stands out.
“Kirill.” My voice comes out desperate, raw with fear. “Where is he? Is he okay?”
“I’m right here, milaya.” His voice comes from somewhere close, rough and wrecked. “You took a fucking bullet for me. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to die saving me. Never.”
I want to tell him I’d do it again without hesitation, that watching him die would destroy me worse than any wound, but I can’t make my mouth form the words.
“She’s losing too much blood.” Another voice cuts in, trembling with emotion I’ve never heard from her before. It takes me a second to recognize it as Marina.
“Five minutes.” Kirill. Of course he’s the one driving—even now, even with me bleeding out in the back seat, he wouldn’t trust anyone else behind the wheel.
A weak laugh tries to escape my chest but it comes out as more of a whimper.
“Five minutes is too long.” Marina’s voice cracks hard.
I force my eyes open and the world swims into fractured focus.
I’m lying across seats, my head cradled in Marina’s lap.
Her white suit is ruined, soaked dark with my blood, and when I tilt my head just enough to see her face, I catch the shimmer of tears tracking down her cheeks even though her jaw is set like stone.
“Mama,” I whisper, the word I haven’t said since I was six years old.
Her hand stills in my hair and her breath hitches.
“Please.” Each word costs me but I force them out anyway. “Don’t kill him. Don’t kill Katya. They’re not responsible for what happened to you.”
“Shh.” Her fingers curl through my hair again, gentle. “Don’t talk. Save your strength.”
“No.” I try to shake my head but pain explodes through my side and I gasp. “Please. If you ever loved me at all—” My voice breaks. “If you remember the little girl I was, don’t do this. Don’t kill him. It will break me.”
Silence except for the roar of the engine and the harsh rasp of Kirill’s breathing from the front seat.
Marina’s thumb brushes across my forehead, and when I manage to focus on her face again, I see something crack in her expression. The ice queen facade shatters and what’s left underneath is raw grief.
“I won’t,” she says quietly, her voice is thick. “But you need to live, do you understand me? You need to fight.”
“Okay,” I breathe. “Okay.”
A lightness takes over. Kirill’s safe. Katya’s safe. I can at least die knowing the man I love gets to live.
“Two minutes,” Kirill growls from the front seat.
“You’re going to live, solnyshko. You’re going to live and be my wife for real.
We’re going to do this properly. I’m going to ask your father for his blessing, we’re going to have a wedding where you choose to marry me, and then we’re going to have an army of children who are as brilliant and reckless as their mother.
You don’t get to leave me before any of that happens. ”
I want to tell them both that I’ll be fine, but I’m pretty sure that would be a lie. The pain is fading now, which some distant part of my brain knows isn’t good, and the edges of my vision are going soft and dark.
“Dinara.” My mother’s voice cuts through the fog, her tone vehement but soft. “Stay awake. Look at me.”
I try. I really do. But the darkness is inviting.
“You stay with me, Dinara. You fucking stay.” Kirill’s voice is raw, barely holding together, and the car accelerates harder, the engine screaming. “I’m not living this life without you.”
The last thing I feel is my mother’s arms tightening around me, cradling me like I’m six years old again, like she can physically keep me tethered to this world through sheer force of will.
Then the edges blur and soften, the voices fading to distant echoes, and the world fades away as I slip back under.