Chapter 13
Gavriil
Night falls before I finally make it home from our recon mission.
My eyes are heavy with exhaustion, but the thought of Alina keeps me moving. After all, I promised my brother that I would try harder to get her to eat and drink.
I head up the stairs to the second floor, wondering if she’s resting or if she ate any of the food that Valentin left for her before he headed out on patrol earlier.
I’m not optimistic. Not after she watched Dominik take a shot at Petrov.
I push open my bedroom door and walk through the darkness to switch on the nightstand lamp. When soft light fills the room, I glance over at the cage, expecting to see her with her knees curled up to her chest or her green eyes glaring at me through the bars.
But she isn’t doing either of those things.
“Fuck. Alina!” I exclaim at the sight of her sprawled unnaturally on the floor.
I rush around the bed to get to the cage door.
“Alina? Alina!”
She doesn’t budge or make a sound as she lies on her back, her head tilted to the side, the towel wrapped around her thin body coming undone. One of her hands rests on her stomach, while the other is outstretched, fingers splayed out.
My hands fumble with the key as I keep an eye on her, making it take longer than it should to get the damn door open.
Once it is, I hurry over, sinking down to my knees next to her. I cup her cheek, straightening her head before leaning down to place my ear over her lips. A weak exhale drifts from her, but I don’t feel any relief yet.
She’s barely breathing.
My heart pounds as my thoughts rush in a hundred different directions, paralyzing me for a few seconds. What the fuck do I do?
I brush her hair away from her face before pressing the back of my hand against her cheek. She feels cold and clammy. My eyes lower to her lips, my stomach twisting at the sight of how dry and cracked they look.
She’s dehydrated and needs help now. Probably yesterday.
I was so stupid, so certain that she would eventually drink and eat on her own.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and call Yelena, getting more and more restless and worried with every ring.
When she finally picks up the phone, a jumbled mess of Russian comes out of my mouth as I try to explain the situation.
I can barely think straight, much less speak.
The one thing I’m clear on, “You have to save her!”
“I’m on my way,” Yelena tells me.
I hang up the phone, letting it clatter on the floor next to me. My pulse quickens as I gently cup the back of Alina’s neck, my other hand moving to her wrist so that I can make sure that her heart is still beating.
If she dies…
I can’t even finish that thought.
She lets out a faint noise that borders on a whimper and a groan, and I feel a flicker of hope that she’ll be okay.
I grab the nearby untouched glass of water from the floor and press the edge to her lips and tilt it. “Drink, Alina.”
She weakly turns her head. Her lips remain sealed shut so that the water spills down her cheeks onto the floor.
“Alina, please!” I grit out as I try to pour more water into her mouth by holding her chin, only for her to keep refusing me despite being in such a diminished state.
When she coughs the liquid back up, I’m forced to stop and wait.
Every minute creeps by like an hour. I don’t even feel like I can breathe until Yelena strides into the room with her leather medical bag in her hand.
“Out of the way. I need to assess her.”
There are only a handful of people in the entire world who can talk like that to me without consequences, and she’s one of them.
I release Alina’s wrist to stand up out of the way as she walks into the cage to take my place kneeling beside Alina to check her pulse. “How did this happen?” she asks in Russian. “Isn’t she Dominik’s girl?”
“The stubborn woman…she hasn’t eaten or drank anything in days,” I tell her, shame flooding me.
Yelena’s cold eyes snap to mine. “You allowed this to go on, like some sort of punishment for your brother? Did you want her dead?”
“No. No, of course I didn’t…”
“Because this is the quickest way to kill someone without a gun.”
I frown at her harsh words, even if they’re true.
Yelena looks away from me to check over Alina. She pinches the back of Alina’s hand, and the skin remains upright for a few seconds before going back to its usual position instead of snapping back like it should. “Do you see that? She is severely dehydrated.”
All I can do is stand there and watch helplessly as Yelena pulls items out of her bag and works on Alina to bring her back from what I know is the brink of death.
I consider going to get Dominick then dismiss it. There’s nothing he could do for her now. He would only panic seeing her this way. Panic the way I’ve been doing, and never fucking forgive me.
She was under my care, my responsibility. And I failed her.
Yelena wraps a blood pressure cuff around Alina’s arm before putting on her stethoscope. Her expression remains hard and tense as it has since the moment she stepped foot in the room. She slips the disk under the cuff and starts squeezing the pump.
Alina remains still, her breathing shallow.
I went too far. I thought I could provoke her into becoming the defiant woman I admired again when she was breaking instead.
She blamed me and Dominik for Archer’s death, but she also blamed herself.
“Her blood pressure is unstable,” Yelena tells me as she yanks off her stethoscope. “She needs IV fluids, electrolytes to stabilize her heart, and glucose because you’ve also starved her nearly to death.”
“Do it. Whatever it takes, just save her.” I don’t even bother trying to defend myself, to tell her how many trays of food and glasses of water I provided went untouched.
“Take her to an actual bed and put some clothes on her. I’ll need to find a coat hanger to set up an IV drip,” Yelena says before grabbing her bag and carrying it out of the cage.
I don’t hesitate as I carefully pick up Alina, holding her against my chest as I carry her to my bed. I set her down gently and grab one of my T-shirts to slip on her before pulling the covers up to her chest.
Yelena returns and motions for me to move out of the way again, and I do, standing at the foot of the bed while she sets up the IV.
Once Yelena is finally done, she tucks everything not needed back into her bag before turning to me, glaring at me like a mother about to scold her unruly child.
“If she refuses water again, she could go into shock or kidney failure. You push her to that point, and even I can’t save her. You’re lucky she isn’t already dead.”
Her words hit me like a punch, leaving me breathless with my chest aching. As Yelena walks past me to leave, I turn back to Alina as she lays in my large bed, looking terribly small.
I thought I could break her out of this. I was wrong.
And that realization lands heavier than any threat I’ve ever faced.
“Fuck,” I whisper as I lower my head, my hands gripping the wooden footboard.
We almost lost her, and it’s my fault. I did this.
How do I rule a city if I can’t even keep one woman alive?
If she had died tonight, Dominik would’ve made good on his threat and killed me.
Not that I would’ve blamed him.
And I hate that I care this much about her wellbeing because it’s making me miserable and distracted. I don’t like all these fucking feelings, but I can’t make them go away. They’re my punishment for this mess.
I walk over to the bedside, gazing down at the IV needle piercing the top of her hand. Without thought, I take her hand and gently brush my thumb over her knuckles, wondering if she can feel my touch.
If she will ever forgive me.
It shouldn’t matter, but it does.
Too many things matter that shouldn’t, and the growing pile is crushing me under its weight, almost too much to bear.
For a few moments, all I can do is let those feelings wash over me without a fight.
And hope they don’t drown me before she wakes up.