Chapter 13 #2
When I come back to the table, Dominik is on his side, his suit jacket tossed away.
She’s cut off his dress shirt, and his arm is lifted, keeping it out of the way.
The wound is a red, glistening mess on the side of his muscular, tattooed chest. It isn’t huge, maybe two inches wide. It feels like a chasm anyway.
“Ricocheted off his ribs,” she says approvingly to the bullet. Apparently, it did her the courtesy of not imbedding itself in his body and his bones did their job of deflecting it from his vital organs. “Lucky boy.”
Dominik arches one brow without humor. “Getting hit in the one spot my vest didn’t cover? I don’t feel very lucky.”
I take a breath that feels like work and accept the pad Yelena gives me, press where she tells me, hold when she orders, look away when she says not that part, that’s for me.
I don’t cry, even when the sounds Dominik makes are soft enough that they almost don’t exist. I don’t faint, even when the needle bites and the threads pull the flesh under her hands.
When she tapes the last dressing and presses it into place, the whole garage exhales. Viktor leans against a tool cabinet like his bones just remembered gravity. The driver puts his hands on his hips and looks up at the lamp as if it can fix the world if he stares at it long enough.
I step back because I’m too close. The back of my calf hits a rolling stool, and the small crash makes everyone look at me, including Dominik. His eyes are a calmer gray now, which is a relief.
“You did well today,” he says.
I shake my head. “You got shot protecting me!”
“And you didn’t receive a scratch because you followed my orders,” he says. “That’s the definition of ‘well’ today, dikaya koshka.”
I open my mouth to say something I’ll regret, to ask him why he didn’t let someone else get in front of me, why his body moved like I was something to be saved and not a cost to be paid, and close it because Yelena is looking between us like a scientist watching mice make bad decisions inside her maze.
“Home,” she says to him. “Rest. No stairs. No fighting. No… other exertion.” Her eyes flick to me with a warning and assessment that I feel in my spine as Dominik sits up slowly, like every inch is agony thanks to the threads holding his damaged skin together.
“For how long? An hour? Two?” he asks with his gaze now pinned on me. His question, in front of someone he’s been with, shouldn’t be funny; it isn’t. It lands on my skin like a brand. I retreat, turning my back on him to go wash up in the sink.
“A week,” Yelena says, as if she’s privy to our agreement and intentionally blowing it up. “No less. Two weeks is better.”
When I dry my hands and return to him, Dominik is still staring at the doctor as if he’s thinking the same thing I am, that she must be fucking with him.
He glares as if trying to convince her to modify her timeline.
When she doesn’t, he says, “I’m getting a second opinion, doc.
I’m sure one of your male colleagues would be much more reasonable. ”
She gently swats the back of his head with her open palm. “Don’t be stupid, Dom. If I have to restitch, I’ll do it using the hair from your balls.”
Holy shit, I’m not entirely sure if she’s kidding. Based on how all three of the men wince, I assume they believe she really would try to do something so damn disturbing.
I should be thanking her for this unexpected reprieve from holding up my end of the deal, but a part of me is disappointed.
Before I can shake off those unfortunate thoughts, Dominik reaches out, grabbing my chin between his thumb and finger with more strength than a man who was shot should have.
He forces me to look into his steel eyes when he says, “Did you not read the part of the contract that covered a temporary postponement?”
I shake my head as much as he’ll allow. He added in a contingency for delays? I should have read the damn thing more carefully.
“It’s time I can use to search for Archer.”
“From bed!” Yelena inserts. “Send your men out on the streets.”
“Right,” I agree. “Archer will turn up, eventually. He’ll feel guilty he left me behind.” At least that’s the lie I tell myself.
“So, you’ll wait a week?” Dominik asks me, still grasping my chin.
“Two is better,” Yelena can’t resist reminding him. “I’ll come check on you in a few days.”
“Alina?” Dominik asks, ignoring the doctor, which a small, silly part of me loves.
“I’ll wait until the doctor clears you for…exertion,” I agree.
“Smart girl,” the doctor remarks. “Keep legs closed until his wound can do the same.”
My cheeks flush in embarrassment of talking about our potential sex life in front of so many strangers, and possibly his ex.
I’m thankfully saved when Viktor opens the rear passenger door signaling that it’s time to go. Dominik swings his legs off the table and stands.
He reaches for his jacket, and I intercept it. “No,” I say. “I’ve got it.”
“All right,” he says. “You carry it.” He looks at me as if that small thing is more intimate than the week we agreed on. Or maybe everything is intimate after you’ve been covered in someone else’s blood because you wanted to stop the flow with your bare hands.
We load up into the SUV and head back to Dominik’s apartment. I sit closer to him than I should, my torn, jagged hem looking ridiculous across my thighs, the chemical smell of antiseptic riding shotgun with copper and clean linen.
“He’s not coming back from this,” I say, and I don’t know if I mean Archer’s choices or the way he stopped being a hero big brother in my head in an instant. My hands keep shaking long after the gunfire has stopped, as if the bullets are still landing somewhere my body remembers.
“He will,” Dominik says. “Fear is a good motivator.”
“I don’t mean physically.”
The brother I loved is now nothing more than a ghost wearing Archer’s face, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get the real one back.
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. We both stare out the glass at the blur of buildings and carry our separate, fragile griefs in the same box.
“Your week,” he says after a time, voice even.
I swallow. “Yes?”
“You can rescind rather than postpone if we find him sooner...”
It’s a generous offer for him to make. One I consider for a long moment.
Still, I tell him, “No.” The word shocks me even as it leaves my mouth.
“You don’t break your word. I won’t break mine,” I tell him.
“I meant what I said, my week is postponed until the doctor clears you.” I should be terrified of what I’m promising. I’m not. Maybe that’s the worst part.
Silence hums for a few breaths. Dominik finally nods once. “Then we’ll postpone.” His mouth does that half-curve as he relaxes back into the seat like he just won the jackpot.
We pull under the apartment building where the other van and men all wait.
They’re standing around, some smoking cigarettes, looking worried.
When we all cram into the elevator, Dominik stands without help but lets my hand hover near his elbow.
The doors close, the numbers climb, and I realize I’m still wearing the vest over my torn dress.
I should care. I don’t. The only thing that feels important is the steady, stubborn heat of him beside me and the echoing emptiness where my brother’s courage should have been.
When the doors open, Dominik’s men spill out into the hallway ahead of us. I follow him into the penthouse. The guards may stink of nicotine, but they’re more alert than I’ve ever seen them before, eyes sharp, shoulders squared.
Viktor disappears down the hall to the study. Petrov peels off toward the kitchen, already on the phone with a perimeter detail. The door sighs shut. It’s just us and the thrum of the air conditioning and the end of a hellish day.
Dominik turns toward me with the kind of care you use when something in your body has been threaded together again. “Go get some sleep,” he says, not as an order, as a kindness. “Lock the door.”
“You’ll—”
“I’ll be here,” he says. “Where else would I be?”
I was going to ask if he would be okay, but now it seems like a stupid question. Without another word, I walk toward the guest room on legs that barely remember how and stop at the entrance of the hallway because the weight in my chest decides to speak without my permission as I turn back.
“I’m sorry,” I say, the syllables brittle with exhaustion and something too raw to look at.
“You did nothing wrong.”
“I insisted on coming today,” I remark. If I hadn’t been there, Dominik wouldn’t have been shot trying to protect me. I couldn’t stop thinking about that while the doctor was stitching him up. Each of those pokes and all the pain is my fault. “I thought I could trust him.”
Dominik inclines his head as if he understands. It’s a small motion that makes me want to stand closer to him and somehow hurts in a way that feels good.
“I’m sorry about your nose and hands too,” I blurt out. Pain ripples through me. Not from the ambush, but from realizing the only man who bled for me today wasn’t my brother.
I slip into the bedroom and turn the lock. The metal clicks. I sink to the floor and tears fall with me. All I’ve done is hurt Dominik while he’s tried to keep me safe, comfortable.
Swiping the dampness away, I unfasten and peel the vest off, letting it fall onto the floor, and then stare at my hands in the half-light. They’re clean now. The blood is only on my dress now, but I still feel the stain on my skin.
I shower, then change into clean clothes before crawling into bed. I shed the last of my tears and listen to the pulse in my ears until it slows.
Through the door I hear nothing, and in that quiet is a man who would put his body between mine and every bullet sent to end me, and the thought of my brother who chose not to show up when the cost of choosing to be a good man was the cheapest it will ever be for him.
“Tomorrow,” I tell the ceiling, my throat growing tight. “I’ll deal with it all tomorrow.”
It sounds like a prayer as well as a promise. Both are the only things that keep me from breaking in half right now. I feel like I’m about to come apart, torn from Archer’s betrayal.
Because that’s what this is.
As more tears well up in my eyes, I close them, trying to fight them off. Maybe things aren’t as they seem. Maybe there’s a reason why Archer didn’t show up today.
As if that makes this awful situation any better.
My eyes close, but it’s impossible to fall asleep after a horrific day that ended with bloodshed on both sides.