28. Daniil
Daniil
My eyes crack open, and everything is white.
Too bright. Shapes blur and shift above me, voices muffled like I’m underwater.
I blink once, twice, trying to force my vision into focus, but it refuses to cooperate.
Everything hurts. My entire body feels heavy, exhausted, like someone drained every bit of energy out of me and left nothing behind.
I try to move, but my limbs won’t respond properly. Too heavy. Too slow.
“Daniil, can you hear me?” a voice cuts through the fog, clearer now.
Blinking again, a face comes into focus. A doctor, I think. She’s leaning over me, shining a light directly into my eyes. The brightness makes me want to pull away, but I can’t move enough to do it.
“Good, his pupils are responsive,” she says to someone else I can’t see.
“Don’t try to talk yet,” another voice says from my left. “You’ve had a breathing tube. Your throat is going to be sore for a while.”
My brain moves sluggishly, trying to piece together what happened.
The club. The explosions. Mikhail covered in blood. Walking through the hallway. Gunshots.
“Daniil, I need you to squeeze my hand if you can hear me,” the doctor says.
Feeling pressure in my right hand, I try to focus on it. Try to make my fingers move. It takes more effort than it should, but I manage to squeeze weakly.
“Good,” she says, sounding relieved. “That’s good. You’re doing great.”
Someone adjusts something near my arm, and I realize there are tubes attached to me. IVs. Monitors beeping steadily somewhere to my right.
“You’re in the hospital,” the doctor says gently. “You’ve been unconscious for several days. You were shot during an attack. Do you remember any of that?”
Where is he?
I try to look around, but moving my head sends a wave of dizziness through me. The room tilts slightly, and I have to close my eyes to steady myself.
“Easy,” the doctor says. “Don’t move too much yet. You’ve been through a lot.”
“Your brother is here,” someone says.
The exhaustion pulls at me again, but I force my eyes to stay open. I need to see him. Need to know he’s okay. Footsteps rush toward me, and then he’s there, his face appearing above mine. His blue eyes are red-rimmed and exhausted, dark circles underneath them like he hasn’t slept in days.
“Danya,” he breathes out, and his voice breaks on my name.
I try to smile, but I’m not sure if my face is cooperating. My hand twitches, and he grabs it immediately, holding on tight.
“You’re okay,” he says, and it sounds like he’s trying to convince himself as much as me.
I squeeze his hand weakly, and his grip tightens.
“Don’t ever do that to me again,” he says, and there are tears running down his face now. “You scared me.”
I want to tell him I’m sorry. Want to tell him I love him. But my throat hurts too much, and the exhaustion is winning. My eyelids feel heavy again, dragging down despite my efforts to keep them open.
“It’s okay,” the doctor says. “He needs to rest. His body is still recovering. This is normal.”
“Will he wake up again?” Mikhail asks, his voice tight with worry.
“Yes. He’s stable now and needs time to heal.”
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“Exhausted,” I manage to rasp out.
“Okay,” he says softly, his thumb brushing across my cheekbone. “Sleep. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”
My eyes snap open, and I stare up at the ceiling and the harsh fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. I’ve been here for over a week now, and I feel stronger every day, even if it’s only by small steps. The doctors still come in every hour to poke and prod, asking questions I can’t answer out loud.
Mikhail keeps snapping at them, telling them to back off, that they can write their questions down for me and he’ll ask me and then answer what he can.
We haven’t talked much about everything that happened, because he refuses to.
I’ve been too tired, too drained from losing so much blood. The transfusions kept me under for days, slipping in and out of consciousness. The doctors said it was a miracle I’m alive, that just a couple more minutes without getting to the hospital and I would have died.
Those hazel eyes and the burn scars on Mateo haunt me. I finally got all the answers to my lifelong questions, and they boil down to this: I’m a Nozares.
I don’t know what to do with that information. I’m too exhausted to process it anyway. Mikhail said Lina would talk to me once I’m out of the hospital because she doesn’t want to overwhelm me while I’m recovering. She’s busy keeping up appearances and handling funeral arrangements for Roman.
Everything happened so fast at the shooting that I wasn’t even able to check on Mikhail after he got stabbed. I was so focused on getting him to the hospital and making sure he stayed conscious that I didn’t ask if he was okay.
After what happened at that arena when he almost died, then the attempt after, then him getting stabbed and shot, and then watching me get shot, it’s been relentless.
I don’t understand how he managed to keep himself together through all of it.
The nurse told me he refused to leave my bedside, that he stayed next to me the entire time I was in a coma.
It hurts knowing what he went through. I just want to take him home and wrap myself around him.
He looks over at me and realizes I’m awake. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I manage back.
“There’s a nurse coming. They want you to try standing today.”
“Hell no. I’m not getting out of this bed.”
He rolls his eyes. “You have to eventually. You can’t just stay in bed forever.”
“Watch me.”
He sits on the edge of my hospital bed, his arm still wrapped in white bandages from the shooting. There are fading bruises on his jaw and around his throat, yellowish-green now instead of the dark purple. He looks better than he did, more rested.
“I’m so glad he’s dead,” he says and gives me a sad smile.
“I’m so sorry I couldn’t stop him from hurting you, I—”
He cuts me off before I can finish. “You couldn’t have done anything. It is what it is. I’m okay now.”
It hurts watching him try to play it off, like it doesn’t matter, like he’s fine when I can see he’s not. His own father stabbed him.
I’ve tried asking multiple times this past week whenever I’m awake enough to string words together, but he shuts me down every time. He changes the subject or goes quiet or tells me he’s fine when we both know that’s bullshit.
He’s always been like this though, ignoring the things that hurt and shoving them into some locked box in his head where he doesn’t have to deal with them.
I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure he knows he’s my priority, that he comes first, that taking care of him isn’t some burden I’m carrying but what I want to do.
I’ll prove it to him every single day if I have to.
“I’ve been keeping something from you. Because I was waiting for you to get better. She knows.”
My eyes narrow. “What?”
“She knows I killed him. And she knows about us.”
My pulse kicks up. “And what’s her reaction to it?”
“She understands. About us, I mean. She wants to talk to us when we get home about everything.”
“I don’t want to hear it, to be honest,” I say bitterly. “It’s Mateo’s fault both of us almost died.”
Mikhail shifts slightly, adjusting the pillows behind me. “I don’t think so, and I think Yulian called Mateo to be there. The Nozares attack happened because of him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Think about it. How convenient is it that they just happened to show up at that event right after Yulian said he would sort something out? He was supposed to handle our father’s death, and instead the Nozares attacked.
Nothing went according to our plan. That’s not a coincidence.
And I think Yulian knows Mateo personally.
Did you hear how they were talking to each other? ”
I try thinking it over, my brain still moving slower than usual from all the medication. Yeah, okay. That makes sense. A lot of sense, actually.
He waves me off. “Maybe I’m wrong. But I trust him.” A pause. “He said he’ll tell us everything soon. We just have to wait.”
As much of a dick as Yulian is, I don’t believe he’d intentionally hurt any of us.
“She just said it was okay? About us being together? She doesn’t care?”
“No, she doesn’t care that we’re together. She just wants us to keep it secret for now.”
“Secret?”
“Just to be safe while everything settles after his death. People are going to be watching the family closely, trying to see who takes over, looking for weaknesses. She thinks if anyone outside the family finds out about us right now, it could be used against us.”
I don’t want that…
“How long does she want us to keep it secret?”
“She didn’t say exactly. Just until things calm down.” He reaches over and takes my hand, lacing our fingers together. “But I don’t care what she wants. I’m not hiding you forever. Just long enough to keep you safe.”
Nodding, I bring his hands to my lips and press a soft kiss to his knuckles.
He glances at the door, then stands and leans down to kiss me. I part my lips instantly and let him in, tasting him, losing myself in the heat of his mouth. His tongue slides against mine, and I grip the back of his neck, pulling him closer.
He keeps his hand on my chin, and then he hisses when his stitches pull and has to pull back.
I bite my lip and shift over on the narrow hospital bed, making room.
He crawls in beside me, groaning as he settles against the pillows, and presses his lips to my temple.
He breathes in deep, his nose buried in my hair.
“We need to get that watermelon smell back on you immediately,” he mumbles, and I can’t help the grin that spreads across my face.
He’s lost so much weight since the shooting, since everything went down. We both have.
I still can’t believe we’re free. I’m curious to hear what Lina has to say about my past, about who I really am.
“Can I ask you a favor?” I ask.
“Anything.”
“Can we write down questions for her and you ask them when we finally talk about what happened?”
“That’s a good idea,” he says, already pulling out his phone and opening his notes app. “Tell me what you want to know.”
Taking a breath, I start listing everything I can think of. He types everything down, just letting me get it all out, and when I’m done, he pockets his phone and turns to face me properly.
He cups my chin and tilts my face up to his. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Misha,” I say, and wrap my arms around him, careful of his stitches.
He presses his mouth to mine and devours me. I pour everything I’m feeling into it, trying to show him how much he means to me, how completely he owns every part of me.
My hands come up to cradle his head, and I wrap my arms around him, pulling him as close as I can manage without making my injuries worse. When he pulls back, his hand comes up to rub my chin, his thumb gentle against my skin.
“The nurse said we can take you home in a few days,” he says and licks his lips. “They just need you to be able to walk around and handle basic stuff before they’ll let you leave.”
“Sounds good,” I murmur and run my palm over his buzzcut, the short hair rough under my hand.
“I asked for help,” he says out of nowhere.
“Help?”
“With the drugs. The benzos. You know how long I’ve been stuck on them, how many times I tried to quit and couldn’t. I finally asked for help, and they’re giving me meds to manage the withdrawals. It’s fucking awful, and I’ve been snapping at everyone who isn’t you, but I’m doing it.”
My throat tightens. “I’m proud of you.”
He looks at me with sad eyes and leans down to press his lips against my forehead.
“Can I ask you what happened during the stabbing? What Roman said to you and what he did—”
“No,” he says, cutting me off before I can finish.
Biting the inside of my cheek, I slide my hand down to lace with his and hold on tight. Pushing him won’t work, and I know it. I wish he would tell me what happened, but he thinks staying quiet protects me somehow. So I’ll be patient and wait until he’s ready, even if not knowing tears me apart.