Chapter 23 - Yulia
The clinic smells really strange today, I think to myself. Like antiseptic … and lavender oil?
Nina, one of our new hires, must be burning it again in the waiting room diffuser—claims it keeps the tension down in Bratva wives. I’m halfway through charting vitals for a postoperative checkup when the sound of tires screeching outside cuts the air like a blade.
Seconds later, the front doors slam open.
“Help!” someone shouts, rough and frantic. “He’s bleeding out!”
I’m already up before I know it, stethoscope falling to the floor. I rush toward the noise just as Leonid barrels in, soaked in blood, wheeling a stretcher.
And on it—
My body stops before my brain catches up.
“Trifon,” I whisper.
He’s unconscious. Barely breathing. Blood saturates the entire left side of his shirt. There are lacerations along his torso, and bruises crawling across his ribs like shadows under glass.
For one terrifying second, I can’t move.
Not him. Not like this.
“Yulia!” Valentin barks. “We need to get the bullet out now or we’ll lose him!”
Bullet. He’s been shot. All that blood…he’ll bleed out if I don’t get that fucking bullet out. I snap into action.
“Get him in exam room one,” I order, my voice not sounding like my own. It sounds screechier, high-pitched, a nervous wreck.
“What happened?” I ask, as we rush Trifon in.
Leonid’s face is grim. “Ambush at the docks. He took a bullet to the shoulder.”
My heart is hammering so hard I can barely hear my own thoughts. They lay him on the table, his body limp, shirt soaked through with blood. There’s a ragged hole in his left shoulder, dark and ugly against his skin.
“Who was it?” I demand, already cutting away his shirt with trembling fingers.
“The Zakharovs,” Miron says, voice tight. “It was a trap.”
I barely hear him. All I can see is Trifon, unconscious, blood pooling beneath him. His face is ashen, lips tinged blue. The wound is still pumping blood with each heartbeat.
Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.
The world tilts and narrows, fear crushing my chest like a vise. I can’t lose him. The thought hits me with such force that I nearly stagger.
I can’t lose him.
My hands shake so badly I can barely feel for a pulse.
“Is he...” Leonid doesn’t finish the question.
“He’s alive,” I say, finding the weak, thready beat at his neck. “But he’s lost a lot of blood.”
I need to focus. I need to be a doctor right now, not a terrified woman. I force air into my lungs, willing my training to take over.
“Marina,” I call to my nurse. “Get me the trauma kit. IV fluids, wide open. And blood—O negative, two units.”
The room erupts into controlled chaos. Marina moves as fast as she can for her Pakhan, hooking up monitors that immediately scream alarms at Trifon’s dangerously low blood pressure. The bullet wound is still bleeding freely, too close to an artery.
I press gauze against it, leaning my full weight to stem the flow. “I need light. More light!”
Someone—I don’t even register who—angles the surgical lamp closer. The bullet is still in there. I can feel it, metal against bone, when I probe the wound.
“I need to get the bullet out now,” I say, more to myself than anyone else. “If it shifts, it could nick the artery.”
Marina hands me forceps, a scalpel, and retractors. My hands are steady now, the doctor in me taking over. The woman who loves him—because yes, I love him, I realize with sudden clarity—has to step aside so the doctor can save him.
I cut, probe, and widen the wound enough to see the path of destruction the bullet carved through muscle and tissue. Every time I touch the metal fragment, Trifon’s body jerks slightly. Even unconscious, he feels pain.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, continuing to work. “I’m so sorry.”
Blood wells up, obscuring my view. Marina suctions it away, her face as nervous as mine must be. The bullet has fragmented, making extraction more difficult. I carefully remove each piece, dropping them into a metal basin with tiny clinks that sound too loud in the tense room.
“BP’s dropping,” Marina warns.
“Hang another unit,” I order, not looking up from my work. “Push more fluids.”
Minutes stretch into what feels like hours as I dig deeper, finding the main fragment lodged against his scapula. If it had been half an inch to the left, it would have severed his artery. He would have bled out before they got him here.
The thought makes me work faster, more urgently.
“Got it,” I finally say, extracting the largest piece. It comes free with a sick, wet sound.
I clean the wound of debris, irrigate it with an antiseptic solution, and place sutures. My fingers move automatically, muscle memory from years of training taking over. But my heart—my heart is screaming with every beat.
Don’t die. Don’t leave me. Please.
I don’t know when I realize I’m crying.
Not loud, not shaking—just quiet tears streaming down my cheeks as I finish closing the wound. I feel Nina squeeze my shoulder once, brief and firm, before she steps away to update the others.
It’s over. He’s stable.
By the time I’m done, my scrubs are soaked with Trifon’s blood. Color is returning to his face, though he remains unconscious.
“He’s lucky,” I announce, stripping off my gloves. “The bullet missed the major vessels.”
Leonid exhales loudly.
I check the monitors again. “He’ll need time to recover. Blood loss was significant.”
Only then do I notice that the other men have gathered outside the exam room—a dozen or more of Trifon’s most trusted soldiers, waiting for news of their Pakhan. They look lost, these dangerous men, without their leader.
I understand how they feel.
“You can see him briefly,” I tell them. “One at a time. Then he needs rest.”
They file in and out, each spending only moments at his side. Some whisper to him in Russian. Others simply touch his uninjured arm, a silent pledge of loyalty.
When they’re gone, I walk back to his side like I’m tethered. Trifon’s breathing is shallow but even now. His chest rises and falls under the blanket, the monitor a steady beep in the corner. He looks… broken.
But alive.
I pull a stool close to the bed and sit. Just sit.
And then the storm catches up to me.
I bury my face in my hands and let the sobs come, quiet and raw. He could’ve died in front of me, and I wouldn’t have even known what his last words were. I wouldn’t have had time to tell him—
Tell him what?
That I can’t live without him?
God.
I can’t.
I need him. Our baby needs him.
I reach for his hand, wrapping my fingers around his. Tears spill down my cheeks, hot and relentless.
“You idiot,” I whisper, squeezing his fingers. “You absolute idiot.”
It hits me with a force that knocks the breath from my lungs. I love this man. This dangerous, difficult, complex man who held my hand when I was afraid, who defended me like I was something precious, who introduced me to the only softness he lets the world see.
And I almost lost him before I ever got to say any of it.
I don’t know when it happened, when he went from being my captor to being... everything, when his smile started to make my heart skip. When his touch became something I craved rather than tolerated. When his absence began to feel like missing a limb.
But I know now, watching his chest rise and fall, that somewhere along the way, I forgot what life was like before him.
I wipe my face with the sleeve of my scrub top, then stand to clean his wounds, recheck his IV, and adjust the bandages. It’s automatic, comforting. Something I can do with my hands while my heart tries not to fall apart again.
I stay with him through the night. Marina offers to take over, but I refuse. I need to be here when he wakes up.
When he finally stirs—his fingers twitching, a hoarse groan slipping from his throat—I’m still there. I lean forward, brushing hair off his forehead, my voice barely a whisper.
“Hey,” I say. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”
His eyes open, bloodshot and bleary. “Yulia…”
“Don’t speak,” I say, holding a straw to his lips. “Drink. Rest.”
He watches me while he sips, his eyes never leaving mine. I wonder what he sees. A doctor? The mother of his child? A liability? A responsibility?
Or something more?
He drifts off again a few minutes later. And I stay. I don’t move. I sit beside him, hold his hand lightly in mine, and stare at the man I stitched back together with shaking fingers and a breaking heart.
I don’t know what to do with these feelings. He’s never asked me to stay. Never told me he needed me. Maybe he never will.
But I know what I feel.
And I know what I want.
I want to protect him. I want to be his shield, the way he’s been mine. I want to be by his side—not because I’m trapped, but because I choose it.
Because I choose him.
I glance at his face again, softened in sleep.
And I make my decision. And when I finally stand, I know exactly what I’m going to do. I just don’t know if he’s ready for it.