Chapter 37
ELLIE
I try to stop his fall. I barely succeed as his weight staggers me, my knees buckling under the sheer mass of him, and for one terrible second, I think we’re both going down.
Then others rush in, hands reaching from every direction, catching him before his head strikes the concrete.
“Rolan.” My voice has fractured beyond recognition. “Rolan, stay with me. Stay?—”
“He’s lost too much blood.” Alexei is beside me, materializing with the reflexes of a man who has been watching for this moment. “The shoulder wound is extensive. We need to move him. Now.”
“Then move him.” I hear myself — clear, steady, commanding in a register I don’t recognize as mine. “Right now.”
They move him. Alexei’s men produce an armored vehicle with the engine already running, and I climb in beside Rolan and press my hands against his shoulder, feeling his blood warm and persistent against my palms, watching his face for any sign of consciousness and finding none.
“We need to go to a hospital,” I tell Alexei .
“Rolan does not go to hospitals,” he says. Not unkindly. Factually. “There is a doctor. He’s managed worse than this. The only assistance you can provide at this moment is to stop talking and allow me to drive faster.”
I stop talking.
Beeping .
I open my eyes.
Monitors are clustered beside the bed across from me, their screens populated with numbers and waveforms I don’t understand.
Rolan lies in it. The hospital gown exposes his shoulders. Thick bandaging encases the left one, layers of white gauze darkened at the center where blood has seeped through.
His face carries a pallor I’ve never seen on him before. An oxygen cannula traces the line of his jaw. His hands rest at his sides, motionless.
Four rounds struck him during the warehouse assault.
The doctor came and explained the situation: two absorbed by the ballistic vest, which prevented penetration but generated sufficient force to fracture three ribs and bruise the surrounding tissue extensively.
A third grazed his left flank. The wound was superficial and easily sutured.
The fourth, the one that felled him, entered through his shoulder and exited cleanly but severed a minor artery in the process. The blood loss was substantial.
I, on the other hand, was released within an hour. I received painkillers for the bruising along my wrists and shoulder where I struck the concrete floor, a cursory examination that confirmed nothing was broken, and a recommendation for rest that I acknowledged and immediately disregarded .
They offered me a bed in an adjacent room, and I declined — as if I could lie in a separate room, behind a separate door, and listen to silence instead of the rhythmic confirmation that Rolan was still breathing.
They brought me a chair instead. I haven’t left it since.
The nights fragment into intervals.
I sleep for an hour, maybe more, then wake up to find his hand still closed in mine and the monitors sustaining their quiet, faithful percussion.
Around two in the morning, I make the journey back to the estate to check on Anya.
The hallway is dim, illuminated only by the faint glow from the baseboard lights. My footsteps brush against the floor, my body running on the fumes of adrenaline that burned out hours ago.
I push her door open gently.
She’s not asleep.
The moment she sees me, her face crumbles.
Her chin trembles, her eyes flood, and a sound escapes her that I have never heard from this child before.
She starts to get up, and I cross the room in three steps. She’s in my arms before either of us has said a word.
“I’m here,” I whisper into her hair. “I’m here, sweetheart. I’m right here.”
She cries. Her small body shakes against mine, her fingers gripping my shirt with a ferocity that would be painful if I could feel anything right now beyond the overwhelming, chest-crushing need to make this better.
“I thought” — she gasps between sobs — “I thought you weren’t… I thought you left too?—”
“No.” I pull back just enough to see her face — blotchy, tear-streaked, devastated. I take it in my hands and hold her gaze with everything I have. “No, Anya. I’m not going anywhere.” I swallow and speak around the growing lump in my throat. “I love you, Anya. I love you so much.”
“I love you too, Ellie.” She hugs me again. We stay like that for a few minutes, enjoying the moment.
“Ellie, where is Papa?” My body stiffens. I knew she was going to ask, but that doesn’t make it easier.
“He got hurt sweetie.” My voice cracks, and I feel the tears building behind my own eyes. “He was very brave, and he got hurt helping to bring me home, but the doctor fixed him up and he’s resting now. He just needs to sleep for a while so his body can heal. He’s going to be okay.”
“Like when I had the fever?”
“Exactly like when you had the fever. Remember how you slept for a long time and then you woke up and felt better? That’s what Papa is doing right now.”
“Did you see him?” she asks.
“I’ve been with him all night. I’m going right back to him after I make sure you’re okay.”
“Is he really going to be fine?”
“He is.” I hold her face tighter. “Anya, your father is the strongest person I have ever met. The doctor said he’ll be just fine.”
A tiny, wet hiccup escapes that might be the ghost of a laugh. Or it might just be a hiccup. Either way, I’ll take it.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and now my own voice betrays me, the tears I’ve been holding since the warehouse, since the car, since the moment I watched him collapse, finally breaking through. They spill down my cheeks, and I don’t wipe them away.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I’m sorry you were here alone. I’m sorry I wasn’t with you. I’m sorry this happened.”
“It’s not your fault, Ellie. ”
The words stop me. My composure disintegrates completely.
I pull her against me, and I cry. Anya holds on, her arms tight around my neck, her face pressed into my shoulder.
When the tears dry up, I ease back and wipe her cheeks with my thumbs. She lets me, her eyes still red-rimmed but steadier now, the storm having passed through and left something calmer in its wake.
“Are you staying with us, Ellie?” she asks.
“Yes,” I promise. “I’m staying, sweetheart.”
She searches my face and nods. The deal accepted. She settles back against her pillows.
“Will you tell Papa I drew him a picture?”
“I will tell him first thing.”
I sit on the edge of her bed and watch her face relax. The warmth that settles in my chest is something I’ve never felt before.
I smooth her hair back from her forehead.
She doesn’t stir. I press my lips to her temple, breathing in the strawberry shampoo and the warmth of her skin, and I make a silent vow to the quiet room that I will be here tomorrow, and the day after, and every day after that, for as long as she’ll have me.
Then I stand, and I return to Rolan.
The third day dawns, and he still hasn’t opened his eyes.
The doctor assures me this is within the expected range, that the body, when subjected to the degree of trauma Rolan sustained, occasionally elects to remain in the restorative darkness longer than anticipated.
I have my head resting on the mattress beside his hip. My hands are threaded through his.
The room is quiet .
I begin speaking.
“Anya drew a dog yesterday,” I say.
The monitor beeps. Steady. Unchanged.
“Alexei has been insufferable.”
Talking to him might be silly, but it releases the mountain of pressure in my chest. That, and talking to him brings me back to our time at the estate. Times when we were safe. Together. Happy.
I adjust my position, pressing my cheek more firmly against the mattress.
“He keeps insisting I go back to the house to eat and change clothes,” I say with a shaky exhale.
“But he’s been helpful. More than helpful.
He brought Anya here yesterday and let her sit in the hallway and draw for an hour, even though I could tell it made the security team uncomfortable.
When she fell asleep, he carried her back to the car. ”
I study his hand in mine. The IV line tracing the vein across his knuckles.
“She misses you.” My voice wavers on the second word, and I pause to steady it, pressing my lips together until the tremor passes. “She asks about you every morning. The same question. When is Papa waking up? ”
The monitor beeps. The machines breathe.
“I miss you. I miss you, and I’m terrified. I’ve been sitting in this chair telling myself you’re going to wake up because the doctor said you would, and you are the most stubborn man I have ever met in my life, and you would not — you would not — survive a warehouse full of armed men only to?—”
My throat closes. I press my forehead against the mattress and breathe.
“You can’t leave me, Rolan. Not like this. Not after everything. Not after you made me fall in love with you. You do not get to do all of that and then?—”
I stop. My jaw tightens. My eyes burn.
“I love you, Rolan. Come back. Please. ”
Silence.
The monitor beeps. The machines sustain their rhythms. The room offers nothing.
And then, so faint that I almost think it’s my own imagination, pressure. Barely perceptible. The slightest contraction of his fingers around mine, a tightening so subtle it might be involuntary, might be reflexive.
My breath catches. I lift my head, and my gaze travels from our interlaced hands to his face, and?—
His eyes are open. Not fully. Heavy-lidded, glazed with sedation and exhaustion. But they’re looking at me.
His lips part. The effort is visible.
“ Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu .” A breath. And then, with the faintest shadow of a smile, “ Moya koroleva .”
The tears I’ve been holding back for three days flood out.
“Rolan…” I can hardly believe it.
“ Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu. Moya koroleva. ”
“I don’t understand,” I start to blubber. “What are you saying?”
“I said, I love you too, my queen.”
I want to climb onto this bed and wrap myself around him. Press my face into his neck and hold on until the trembling stops. But the fear of hurting him and ruining this miracle holds me back.
So, I stand and lean over him instead, carefully pressing my lips to his.
His hand rises, slowly, trembling from the effort, and his fingers graze my jaw. The touch is featherlight and imprecise, but it’s his touch, and when I pull back, his eyes are still open and still focused on my face.
I press the call button beside his bed.
“Don’t move,” I tell him.
I keep his hand in mine as the medical team arrives. I don’t let go during the entire examination. And when the doctor asks me to step outside, I inform him as politely as possible that I will not be going fucking anywhere.
Two days later, Anya is allowed to visit.
I tell her that her Papa is improving, that the bruises look worse than they really are, that his body needs time, the way gardens need time to recover after winter, and that patience is the most important medicine she can offer him.
In the afternoon, when Rolan is upright against the headboard and the color has begun to return to his face, I bring her in.
She halts in the doorway.
“Papa,” she whispers.
“Come here, malaya .”
She lunges across the room in four rapid steps, wrapping her small arms around him tighter than I thought she could. He hugs her back.
I stay in the doorway, watching the two of them, and a piece shifts in my chest. Only then do I realize that it was ever out of place.
Rolan raises his gaze to me and carefully extends his arm.
I immediately accept the invitation, joining the group hug. I’m enveloped in their warmth.
It’s heaven.