Chapter 45
IVAN
No?
“This is not the time to be fucking stubborn, Melani,” I snap, the effort of hiding my pain and fear from her grinding my patience down to nothing. We have minutes, maybe less. “I’m trapped here, but you’re not. Go!”
“Help me push this beam so we can get out together.”
She doesn’t even look at me when she says it.
Just puts her hands back on the beam, bracing, pushing.
As if I haven’t already tried to push it off me.
As if I didn’t damn near tear myself apart trying to get free the second I heard her voice, refusing to answer her calls until I could get to her.
But then she started to sound more desperate, and I couldn’t stand it anymore.
Now I wish I hadn’t answered. Would she have left the burning warehouse if she had assumed I was already dead?
Probably. Instead, she’s here, her eyes blazing with determination, her chin set stubbornly as she strains against something she can’t move.
“This isn’t something we can do together, Milani.” My voice shakes with panic and heat, sweat dripping down my face. “You leave. Go get help and come back here.”
Her lips thin, but she doesn’t bother to respond, and the panic spreads, clawing up my throat. I can’t lose her.
“Fucking leave!” I yell, grabbing her wrists and yanking them off the beam. “Leave.”
“You can yell all you want, Vanya, but I’m not going anywhere.” She looks at me earnestly. “You die here; we both die together. That’s the only option you’re getting from me, so stop wasting your breath and help me push.”
I let out a loud and long string of curses, then turn my attention back to the beam and shove at it with all my strength. It groans and moves a few measly inches.
“It’s working!” Hope lights her voice, but I see the fire behind her. To how close it is now, how much closer than it was sixty seconds ago.
We won’t get it off me in time. Real fear—worse than the time she had her panic attack—makes my hands tremble, my stomach quaking as I look at her, pleading with my eyes. But she doesn’t see it. She’s already back at the beam, hands beside mine, pushing. Fuck.
Pure, unadulterated panic joins my fear. Makes me agitated and my movements sloppy. She can’t die. She can’t die. She can’t fucking die.
Together, we push, and it moves maybe half an inch this time, pain grinding through my knees where the beam shifts over the joints. A sound bubbles up that I swallow. She can’t know how bad it is, or she’ll never leave. She won’t leave anyway.
“Goddammit…” My voice breaks, wrecked from the volatility of emotions barreling through me. Then I change tactics, begging her. “Please, Melani… go. If you even give a shit about me at all, you need to leave right now.” The words come out mangled, my nose too swollen to breathe through.
“You fucker, you think if I didn’t love you I’d still be here?
” she growls, continuing undeterred, “I would’ve left your ass behind so fast it’d give you whiplash, but…
fuck, I love you. Now, help me lift this thing,” she finishes with a grunt as she pushes at the beam.
Like she didn’t just shatter my world with that confession.
She loves me.
A fleeting joy bursts through me before it’s snuffed out by a terror that burns hotter than the fire.
Not for me. For her. The smoke is pouring in thicker, the flames climbing higher.
Very soon, the entire building will be engulfed, and the remaining structure will collapse.
Every second she stays with me, her chances of making it out shrink further.
My chest tightens, my throat clamping around the words I can’t force her to hear.
Tears sting my eyes—some from the smoke, most from the thought of her dying here next to me. I grit my teeth and grab her wrist, trying to shove her away again, but she holds the beam and won’t let go. She has decided, and there’s nothing in my power to change it. I have never felt so helpless.
“Please, Milani,” I choke, eyes burning into hers. “If you truly love me, then go. Do you have any idea what the thought of you getting hurt is doing to me?”
“Maybe not. But I know it can’t be worse than what I’m feeling right now.
Don’t ask me to go, Vanya. I won’t.” The fire pops and roars around us as she speaks, the heat pressing in, but she just grips the beam tighter, her face set, terrified but determined.
And I realize—I really, really can’t make her leave.
She’s staying by my side. No matter what.
My lips press into a hard line as I shake my head, tears falling down my cheeks from the helpless frustration. “You stubborn lunatic.”
“You love me, admit it.” And the minx smiles. “This might be your last chance before we die.”
A choked sound escapes my throat, and I squeeze my eyes shut as I shake my head again. “God help me, I do. I do love you, Milani.”
“Good.” She slides her hand into mine and holds it. Holds it like there’s no building falling around us, no fire climbing the walls, no beam across my legs. Just her hand in mine. “That’s more than enough for me.”
"Vanya!”
The voice cuts through the snapping of the fire, rough and familiar. My head jerks towards the sound, my heart seizing in my chest. Through the haze, two figures run into view—Dima and Luka, their faces blackened with soot, both armed, their eyes locked on me.
The relief that crashes through me is so sharp it nearly knocks me out.
My throat tightens, the breath tearing out of me like I’ve been holding it since that damn grenade went off.
They’re here. My brothers are here. For the first time since the blast, the terror choking me loosens, just enough to let me breathe.
My eyes squeeze shut, and when I open them, I can’t look away from them.
I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life.
“Over here!” I shout—or try to, through my hoarse and broken voice—but they’ve already seen me, and in seconds are already kneeling next to me, both doing a double take at Melani still clinging to my hand. “She refused to leave,” I explain.
Neither of them wastes time on commentary.
Luka goes to one side of the beam, Dima to the other, and Melani shifts back to give them space.
They exchange one look and push in unison.
The beam comes up with a long, grinding groan, and the pain that tears through my leg when the pressure releases is merciless, spreading up through my knees and hips in a wave that makes the world go white at the edges.
But I ignore the pain, dragging myself free, gasping as the air becomes unbearably thick with smoke and heat.
“Up!” Luka has me by the arm and is hauling me upright, Dima taking the other side.
My legs barely hold my weight, but the adrenaline drives me forward. The four of us move fast, stumbling through the haze, the flames snapping louder at our backs.
The exit comes into view, dim light bleeding in through the half-collapsed door. Each step feels endless, but then we’re out—into the night air.
I suck in a ragged breath. It burns less than the smoke inside, but my chest still feels like it’s being crushed.
Around the warehouse, men run back and forth, throwing water from buckets, shouting over each other, their efforts useless against the inferno.
We push past them towards a van parked crookedly near the lot.
My legs shake badly enough that Dima and Luka are carrying half my weight, Milani pressed close at my side.
Then a deep, unnatural groan cuts through the air, followed by panicked screams. We turn back just in time to see the warehouse collapse in on itself, the noise deafening as sparks and smoke rush skyward, blotting out the night.
I stand there and watch it, my chest squeezing so hard I can’t breathe. My eyes find Milani’s in the chaos. For a heartbeat, everything else fades—the shouting, the fire, the pain—until only her face remains. Wide-eyed, streaked with ash and tears.
If Luka and Dima had been a few minutes slower, we would both be buried under that wreckage right now. Gone.
She must feel me looking, because her arms slip around my torso, holding me tight, as if to assure me that we’re fine. That we’re alive. Barely.