Chapter 48
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
ANTON
After the doctors take her away, it’s like part of me is being shredded from the inside. I should be with her. I need to know what they’re doing.
But instead, I’m here in the waiting room, with her family and mine.
I can’t be around anyone, and I especially don’t want to hear shit from Konstantin. If anyone pushes me right now, I’ll lose it, and I won’t give a damn whose blood ends up on the floor.
After Boone called the Whitlocks, they sent men to get Charlie and keep him alive until I decide what to do with him. He can rot in their barn until she opens her eyes, and then I’ll take him apart piece by piece for what he did to her.
Fury surges through me every time the image returns: her head covered in blood, her body limp beneath him. I pace the length of the room, my hands flexing at my sides, desperate for a gun, a knife, anyone I can tear apart.
But there’s nothing here except time and the rage eating through me.
Hours crawl by before the doctors return, taking in everyone gathered in the waiting room. Harlan shoots to his feet, his wife rising beside him with one palm pressed over her mouth.
“How is she, Doctor?” he asks.
He removes his blue cap just as I step beside Harlan, and fear creeps into the doctor’s expression. They all work for us. They know what it will mean if they can’t save her.
He clears his throat. “She suffered a significant head injury from repeated blunt force trauma. There’s swelling around the brain, and right now, she’s in a coma.”
Her mother sobs and collapses into Jace’s arms.
The doctor continues talking, all the words flipping in my head.
Brain swelling. Pressure. Neurological response.
Close monitoring. Repeat scans. The next twenty-four to forty-eight hours matter.
They’re hopeful because she’s young and strong and her pupils are reacting, but there’s no guarantee she’ll wake up or come back the same.
Cole’s fist slams into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster, while Nash sits with one foot bouncing against the floor.
Theo paces behind him, both hands locked behind his head, and Greer stands near the corner with her arms crossed, eyes flat and furious. She looks exactly how I feel inside. Like she needs something to shoot.
“Blyat!” I throw a chair against the wall, the wood splintering into pieces.
A metal vase with flowers comes next, and it’s a shame that doesn’t break like the rest of me is.
I stand there in an empty hospital room minutes after the doctor left, my chest heaving, Thora’s blood still dried beneath my nails. I refuse to wash it off. I need to see it. I want to feel this all-consuming wrath.
This is my fault. I let her leave and took too long to go after her. I did this to her.
A roar rips out of me as I yank the lamp from the side table and hurl it across the room until it explodes against the wall.
I don’t know what else I can do. I’m useless. I don’t know if she will wake up or if she’ll even want me when she does.
What if she forgets me? What do I do then?
The door opens behind me, and I turn, ready to kill whoever was stupid enough to come in here. But it’s Konstantin standing in the doorway, surveying the destruction.
“Well…” He steps inside. “This is quite the damage.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.” He studies me as his mouth curves before he grows serious again. “Were you ever going to tell me that you fell in love with her, or did you want to continue this charade until I confronted you?”
All the air leaves my lungs and I slump down the wall, gripping my face, exhaustion and fear replacing the anger beneath.
“If this is what love feels like…” My eyes meet his. “Then I don’t want it.”
He sighs and sits beside me, a palm against my shoulder. “Unfortunately for you, that’s not how love works.”
“As though I would know.”
He squeezes. “You know more than you think, brother. It’s inside you, the parts buried under everything he did to you. But I know it’s there. She has shown you that it’s there.”
I don’t know if what he’s saying is true, but maybe there’s still hope for me. I want there to be.
My hands curl at my sides, and a humorless laugh escapes me. “I’m sure you know by now that I can’t kill her.”
“I already figured that out.” A knowing slant touches his mouth. “I was waiting for you to admit it instead of hiding behind your mai tais.”
“Did you know the whole time?”
“Net.” He shakes his head. “But I grew suspicious early on when you kept her alive far longer than anyone else. The mai tais confirmed it.” He slaps me across my back. “I’m happy for you, Anton. I mean it.”
“I can’t lose her.” My fingers close over my chest as the pressure beneath my ribs grows unbearable. “If she dies…”
“She won’t.” The certainty in his face makes me want to believe him.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” He nods. “She’s yours, and she’ll stay that way.”
I look away, fixing my gaze on the wall. “Everything good gets taken from me.”
“When have we ever had anything good?” A dry chuckle leaves him.
“Our mother. Whatever little we had of her.”
“You remember her?” There’s surprise in his tone.
“Not really.” My throat works around the answer as I face him again. “But she comes to me in my dreams sometimes.”
He drops his head against the wall behind him. “Tell her I said hello, will you? Tell her I miss her.”
We stay in the quiet for a long stretch of time.
As Konstantin starts to rise, he says, “When you’re done destroying the room, go be with Thora. She will want to know you’re there, guiding her out of the darkness.”
A bitter laugh slices its way out of me. “I am the darkness.”
“Net.” He shakes his head. “That is not how she sees you, and maybe it’s time you finally see what she does.”
The hospital bed is too narrow for both of us, but I stay beside her anyway, one arm tucked under her shoulders while my knuckles move over her cold forehead and down the side of her face.
Her eyes remain closed, her skin so pale that if not for the steady beeping of the machines, I could almost believe she was already gone. That thought alone makes my grip stiffen around her.
“Wherever you are, detka, you wait for me. I will find you. I will tear through every wall and bring you back.”
I wait for her to flinch, to give me any sign that she hears me, but nothing comes.
“I’m sorry.” My thumb moves over her wrist, over the bruises left behind by rope. “I should’ve come after you, but I promise I will never leave you unprotected again.” I kiss her forehead, breathing her in. “You just have to come back to me.”
A creak comes from the doorway, and I snap my head in that direction, not seeing anyone.
“Who’s there?”
Greer strides into the room, her hair piled into a haphazard bun.
“If you’re planning to ask me to leave, don’t bother.”
“I wasn’t going to.” She assesses me before taking the chair on the other side of the bed, her attention passing over the arm I have wrapped around Thora before landing on her sister’s condition.
“How long were you there spying?”
She shrugs. “Long enough to know you’re in love with my sister and she can do better than you.”
Exhaustion has hollowed me out so completely that all I can manage is a flat laugh. “What else is new?”
A smile flickers on her face and dies just as fast. “I also know she could do a hell of a lot worse.”
“Thank you for the vote of confidence.”
Greer peers at Thora. “She’s going to wake up, right?”
“Yes,” I tell her, giving her the answer we both desperately need.