Chapter 26
Nika
I pull Mom’s locket free from Max’s pocket. The chain glints in the firelight, and all the memories come tumbling back. The island, the storm, the blood…
I shove them back down before they overwhelm me.
This is why I’m here. What I’ve been fighting to obtain for the last fifteen years.
Lifting the chain over my head, I settle the locket between my breasts. Right where it belongs.
A rush of happiness envelops me like Mom’s hugs used to. Warmth spreads through my entire body. I’m whole in a way I haven’t been for over a decade.
Mom.
I could leave. If I were following the plan, I would.
Find Dimitri, regroup, and move on with my life.
Max would eventually wake, or maybe he wouldn’t. Either way, not my problem.
But my legs don’t budge.
I stare at the man before me, my hand squeezed tight around the locket. Max sprawls on the couch, defenseless, his head tipped back and his throat exposed. The cut on his forehead drips blood onto his eyelid.
The hunter brought to his knees and left bleeding in my living room because he chose to save us both instead of only himself.
What the hell am I supposed to do?
What would Mom do?
I drop to my knees and reach for the laces on Max’s boots. He doesn’t wake up, though a few soft grunts come from above me when I graze his swollen ankle.
There’s no way I can peel the snow pants off without his help. He’s too ginormous to lift. But I succeed in loosening his belt to give him some comfort and in tugging his legs around on the couch so he’s sprawled out with both feet raised.
Elevation will help the sprain.
After some finagling, I get the parka off. Smoothing my hands over his sweat-wet shirt, I slowly undo the buttons and spread the fabric wide so I can drink in the sight of his bare chest.
The scars are worse than I imagined.
I’ve seen scars before. I have plenty myself.
But his…
He has the usual. Bullet and knife wounds. Burn marks. But all those circles…they’re different from the others.
A deliberate, systematic pattern indicative of years of abuse.
The size. The shape. The way the tissue healed wrong.
I dry heave, though there’s nothing to bring up.
Cigarette burns splay across his ribs, his stomach, his sides.
Someone held lit cigarettes against his skin and kept them there until they went out, until the stench of scorched flesh permeated the room. A form of torture that had nothing to do with extracting information and everything to do with pain and breaking down a child.
I trace one with my fingertip. All these years later, the scarred skin is still rough and puckered. No one ever treated these injuries.
He was eight, and he had no one to patch him up. No one to care about him.
I at least had Dimitri to give me salves and wraps.
During training, Dimitri took care to never cut me.
Said he didn’t want me to have to deal with any permanent scars, though he gave me plenty of bruises throughout the years.
Even after I started doing jobs, Dima made sure my wounds were properly tended.
Thanks to his treatment, any residual marks I do have are faint.
But where I got bruises, Max suffered wounds that scarred from neglect.
My throat tightens as I continue my perusal.
Whip marks across his ribs. Long, thin lines of mangled flesh that crisscross and overlap. Layered by years if not location. A knife injury on his shoulder. Bullet wounds spattered all over.
A burn scar sits on the upper curve of his hip. From heated metal or maybe just directed fire? I can’t tell.
I trace my palm over it, checking the texture. It’s flat, despite the colors of his skin not lining up. Without the arctic blue eyes glaring from under his hair, he looks younger. Using just a bit of imagination, I can almost picture him as a child.
Eight years old, orphaned, and taken in by a monster who glimpsed potential. Who saw a boy already broken and decided to break him further, reshaping him into a useful tool.
Roman.
Max didn’t have the nurturing presence of someone like Dimitri to help him grow.
But now he has me.
The cut on his forehead still bleeds, sluggish but steady. I should clean it before infection sets in.
I shove to my feet and head for the kitchen sink to retrieve one of our many first aid kits. Grabbing a large basin, I fill it with hot water. On my way back to the couch, I snatch a washcloth from the bathroom.
Before anything else, he needs to be cleaned up. There’s no telling what he might have gotten covered in while dealing with the chimney and years of buildup.
After setting everything up on the coffee table beside the couch, I dunk the cloth. In the amber and gold firelight, I start to wipe him down.
Shadows dance across Max’s unconscious form, lending him a peaceful appearance. I almost feel like I’m tending to a stranger.
I only know him as Mad Max. The man underneath’s vulnerable. Exposed.
It feels…wrong to interact with him so intimately while he’s asleep.
Focus, Nika. You’ve got a job to do.
Once he’s clean, I open the med kit and pull on a pair of gloves. I cleanse the wound and wince when Max shifts in his sleep. I don’t want to hurt him, but this needs done. When finished, I retrieve a suture kit and swap gloves.
Reaching his forehead requires me to half lay myself on him, which of course reminds me of what we did today. How he felt. The woodsy smell of him as I coiled myself around him and claimed what I wanted…
Mind on the work. You’re stitching his face, and he doesn’t need any new scars.
Small, precise, focused stitches.
That’s what matters in this moment. Not thoughts that get my hands shaking.
I tie off the last stitch and cut the thread, then inspect my work. It’s good. Neat. It’ll only leave a faint scar. Not like the ones littering the rest of his body.
I can’t do much, but… I do have silicone gel and patches for his old burns.
Packing all the supplies back into the kit, I return it to the kitchen and head to the bathroom for another.
I wrap his ankle and use liniment for his bruises.
Then, unable to help myself, I spread hyaluronic acid on his discolored skin and cover the wind burns with aloe lotion.
Dimitri would do the same for me. I don’t know much about pampering someone, but I know I always felt warm and cared for after Dima patched up my injuries.
Maybe Max will feel the same.
By the time I finish, the fire’s low again.
I add a few more logs and fetch a thick quilted blanket from the linen closet. Draping the soft material over Max’s body, I tuck it around his shoulders.
The gesture is automatic, though I don’t remember ever learning it. Dimitri never tucked me in.
Maybe…my mother did.
Before Roman killed her. Before everything narrowed down to my singular focus on revenge.
Relief fills me as I touch the necklace. After so long, I finally have what I’ve wanted for fifteen years.
So I sit in my armchair and wait, keeping vigil to ensure the gentle rise and fall of Max’s chest never stops. The storm finally dies to nothing more than wind, and I watch this unconscious man who should be my enemy but…isn’t.
Not in the simple way he was before.