Chapter 16 Daniil
DANIIL
Blood is hot on my hands. It slicks my palms, coats my fingers, and turns the marble beneath my knees into a treacherous mirror.
Naomi breathes in jagged pulls, her lashes wet, her lips pale, her pulse a frantic tremor under my thumb.
I press my hand harder over the wound at her side, praying to a God I do not trust.
“Stay with me,” I urge, my voice hitting the air like gravel. “Stay.”
Across the hall, Viktor staggers back, shock tearing apart his polished mask. He has a gun in his hand and triumph burning in his eyes. He thinks he has finally ripped out my heart.
I raise my gun first. The muzzle lifts from instinct. I don’t stand or shift Naomi’s body. I sight down my arm, squeeze, and watch the round punch into his abdomen. The force buckles him. His mouth opens silently in shock. Red spreads across his shirt like a blooming flower he cannot stop.
The estate erupts. Boots thunder over stone, and men scream in Russian. Lex appears from the half-lit corridor with his gun already drawn. Timur explodes from the opposite end with a first-aid kit under his arm, a length of tourniquet webbing tangled at his wrist.
“Pakhan,” Timur barks, dropping to his knees beside me. His hands move to Naomi without asking permission. He peels back my pressure and replaces it with gauze.
“Do not let her fade,” I grind out.
Viktor wheezes a laugh, clutching his stomach. He tries to level his gun. His hand shakes too much to aim. He pivots toward the west wing, toward the exit he knows will put him on the service drive. He lurches one step, then two, leaving a crooked trail of red.
Lex cuts him off at the corridor mouth. He levels his weapon on Viktor’s chest but doesn’t fire. He tilts his head, that slight soldier’s bow that reads like a verdict. This is not his kill.
Timur tightens the bandage at Naomi’s side until she gasps and claws for air. I cradle her head and press my mouth to her temple. “Breathe with me,” I coax, counting the seconds aloud. “In. Out.” My voice steadies because she needs it to. “In. Out.”
The gun skids on the marble near Viktor’s foot. He glances back at me, his lips peeling to show a mouthful of pink teeth. Even bleeding out, he performs. He lives for stages and audiences. He gives me that spoiled grin he wore as a boy when he stole things that never belonged to him.
“You should have let me win,” he croaks.
I lay Naomi’s head gently onto Timur’s thigh and rise.
The air changes around me. The noise dulls. The angle of the lamps and the shape of the corridor narrow into a line, and Viktor is the point on that line where everything ends.
I walk toward him with my gun hanging low. Viktor hobbles backward until his spine meets the glass of the west wing doors. He tilts his chin, refusing to flinch, still playing to an invisible crowd.
I don’t give a speech or exchange words with him. I bring my gun up, place the muzzle at his forehead, and pull the trigger. Viktor’s head snaps back into the glass. His body folds like an emptied coat and puddles at my feet. Everything that made him dangerous leaks away into nothing.
The silence that follows isn’t relief. It’s the space a storm leaves behind when it rips the roof off a home. Lex lowers his weapon, his jaw hard, and his eyes taking in the corpse and then me. He doesn’t ask if I am all right. He knows the answer.
I turn away from what used to be my cousin and run back to where my life lies. Timur’s hands are coated with Naomi’s blood. “Through-and-through,” he reports. “Right side. Low. Entry and exit. The bullet hit soft tissue, not bone. But she’s losing too much blood.”
I slip one arm under her knees and the other beneath her shoulders. She is light as air in my arms. Her head lolls toward my chest and her hair sticks to the dried mess on my shirt. A noise escapes me, raw and private. “Don’t you dare leave me, too,” I whisper into her hair.
Lex is already moving. He keys his radio and orders snap like wire. “Clear the corridor. Line my path. Bring the motor around. Maksim, block the south gate. Roman, sweep the drive.”
The world rushes toward the front entrance in a flurry of men and movement. Doors pop. Radios crackle. The marble glows under harsh light. I don’t look at the mess we leave behind or Viktor’s body cooling near the glass. The only thing that exists is the rise and fall of the woman I carry.
Lex shadows my left shoulder, his eyes cutting ahead for obstacles. Timur runs on my right with a hand pressed to the bandage, the other keeping Naomi stable against me so the wound does not tear further.
The cool night air strikes my face and clears my head with a slap.
A black SUV is angled at the bottom of the steps with the rear door open.
The driver leans back, his eyes wide. I climb in the back with Naomi still in my arms and settle into the leather with her body cradled against me.
Timur shoves beside us, kneeling on the floorboard, his hands finding the bandage again.
“Go,” Lex orders, sliding into the front passenger seat. The driver slams his door and drops the transmission into drive. We shoot down the lane, past the gatehouse, and go out into the city’s night.
“Call Arkady,” I rasp. “Tell him we are inbound.” I sharpen the next words until they cut. “Tell him to open every room and unleash every privilege. Tell him this is a Zorin order.”
Lex is already calling the doctor we keep for nights like this, the kind that leaves no trace in official records.
“Doctor Levin,” he intones when the line connects.
“We are coming. Prepare the OR. Blood, type O negative, four units on standby. Trauma team now. And Arkady, do not look surprised when your door nearly comes off its hinges.” He listens, nods, and gives our ETA.
Then he turns in his seat to check Naomi for himself.
His expression warps at the sight of her pallor.
He recalibrates without letting it show.
“Hold on, Naomi,” he urges, his voice a little softer. “We are minutes out.”
Her lashes flutter. The motion is small, but it hits me like a rescue rope. “Stay with me,” I murmur, bringing my mouth to her ear. “I’m here.”
Her lips tremble. The words that come out are a thread. “It hurts.”
Timur covers her hand with his and squeezes. “Pain means you are still in the fight,” he tells her.
Her breath hitches. I feel it against my throat. “Daniil.”
“I am not going anywhere,” I promise. It is an oath and a threat targeting anyone who might try to separate us.
She blinks hard, as if pulling herself up from a deep pool. “You killed him?” she whispers.
“Yes.” I don’t dress it up or hide it. “You never have to look over your shoulder for Viktor again.”
Her lashes lower. A tear spills. I push it away with my thumb and try to keep my focus on her eyes, so I don’t see my hands, slick with her blood.
The clinic sits on a street with no sign. Frosted doors, discreet cameras, and a small brass plaque that lists nothing anyone would notice. The driver sweeps the SUV into the private bay. A security team in white lab coats waits under hard lights with a gurney braced and ready.
The SUV doesn’t fully stop before I am out. I keep Naomi against my chest because handing her off now feels like cutting a cord I am not ready to sever. A nurse reaches for her, and I growl. Timur puts a firm palm on my shoulder. “Let them,” he says. “This is where our hands stop mattering.”
I lay her on the waiting gurney, but I never let go of her hand. Arkady Levin appears beside us in scrubs, his hair net tugged low, and his eyes sharp behind his glasses. He is compact, quick, and ageless in the way of men who have lived a thousand nights like this and still rise to greet the next.
“Daniil,” he greets in a clipped tone that carries genuine urgency. “How long ago?”
“Ten minutes,” Lex answers for me. “Through-and-through. She is conscious but fading.”
Arkady’s gaze darts to the bandage, then to the monitors that a nurse has already clipped to Naomi’s finger and chest. “BP dropping. Oxygen ninety-two and falling. Prep for laparotomy. Tell the lab we are bypassing queue.” He leans over Naomi, and his voice lowers with a softness I wish I could borrow.
“Naomi, it is Dr. Levin. You are safe. We are going to fix you, understand?”
Her lips move. I bend to hear her. “Cold,” she breathes.
“We will warm you,” Arkady assures her, motioning to a tech for warmed blankets and palpating the edges of the bandage with quick, expert fingers. “Do you trust me?”
Her eyes find mine, then return to Arkady. She gives the smallest nod.
“Good,” he replies. “Then give me your hand to hold and give him the other.”
I realize I never stopped holding her. My thumb traces her knuckles. The blood on our wrists dries into a bond I refuse to believe some door can sever. We move as a unit toward the double doors. The team begins to jog.
“You let me through,” I tell Arkady, my voice steady as a knife. “I won’t release her.”
Arkady meets my stare without wavering. The world around us narrows to that thin corridor of will between two men who have known each other long enough to skip pretense.
“You know the rules,” he returns. “You can walk to the line. You can hold her hand until anesthesia takes her. Then you let my people work.”
“I’ll stay in the corridor,” I insist.
“You can do that,” he agrees.
We burst through the first set of doors.
The air changes, cooled and scrubbed, the smell of antiseptic assaulting my senses.
Arkady rattles orders over his shoulder that move bodies as if by magnet.
The nurses strip the blood-soaked dressing.
The wound surfaces, angry and wet. I breathe through the urge to put my fist through the wall.