Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
Kolya
“Noooooo!” Theo roared.
We both surged forward, but I was ahead. I anticipated the exact moment Chloe decided to jump. People who were committed to dying didn’t give you extended platitudes.
They just did it.
So I sprang before Chloe took that fatal step.
It wasn’t enough to prevent us from skidding off the edge, but by some luck, it’d sloped into a narrow ledge with jutting tree roots.
I clung to one while my feet caught purchase on slippery rocks and loose soil, my back against the wall of the cliff.
The rain made the terrain more treacherous.
There was no telling if the root would break or the ground beneath my feet would erode.
“Kolya…” Chloe cried. She wasn’t struggling. My left arm and my dogged determination to save us anchored her entire midsection against me.
“Let me go, please. I don’t want you to die.”
“Quiet a sec, princess,” I rumbled.
Theo caught my arm, clinging to the root. “Hold on!” he shouted. “Chloe, give me your hands.”
“Princess.” I pressed my mouth to the top of her head. “Reach your arms up to Theo.” I gritted my teeth as my right foot slid, but I forced my tone to be gentle. “I’ll count to three and heave you up. Help me here, baby.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
Hearing her acquiescence suppressed the panic threatening to shatter my veneer of calm.
“Three, two, one. Now.” I pulled up with the arm clinging to the root and heaved Chloe up.
It was enough for Theo to grab her wrists.
I gave her an extra boost while she climbed over my body.
When she was safely in Theo’s grasp and out of my reach, I twisted so I was facing the wall of the cliff and grabbed another root with my left hand. “I’m fine!” I shouted. “Chloe first.”
Even with hands reaching out to me, I still didn’t let go of the roots. My feet scrambled up the slope until finally, I was clear of the edge and on firmer ground.
Theo had his arms around Chloe.
She was sobbing. I approached warily.
“Chloe?”
“You should have let me go,” she croaked.
I couldn’t contain myself anymore. The fear I willed into ice melted back into the guilt that I’d driven her to suicide. I was going to fix this. Whatever she was going through, I would be with her every step of the way.
I dragged her into my arms. “I’m sorry, baby. Whatever I said that brought you to this…I’m so fucking sorry.”
I looked at Theo’s granite face over Chloe’s head as he was staring at us.
He wasn’t pleased not to be in charge, but he didn’t have the information I did about what happened.
A man in scrubs emerged from the tree line and handed him a zippered sleeve.
Before we went after Chloe, we had talked about sedation.
I mentioned she might be on a cocktail of drugs and to use the safest sedation possible.
Even with the guilt sitting in my chest, a logical part of me reasoned that her extreme reaction to our argument was unnatural.
Something sinister was at play. It almost looked like a psychotic break.
How could a mother go from fiercely protective of her kid to giving him away and committing suicide as an escape?
Chloe tried to push away, but I held her tight.
“No, you’re not,” she mumbled into my chest.
Theo handed me the syringe, ready to go. Seriously, Chloe might hate me after this, but I felt responsible for everything that was happening.
“Well, then you’ll have to forgive me for this.”
She stiffened, and before she could move, I plunged the needle into her neck.
She let out a tiny gasp before her body went limp. I caught her, swinging her up in my arms while handing off the needle.
“Now tell me what the fuck is going on,” Theo growled.
“Do you have a new gig I don’t know about?” Kirill walked into the room where Chloe was still asleep. Beside him was Lucy.
She gave me a once-over. “You look good in scrubs, Doctor.”
I gave a shake of my head and returned my attention to a sleeping Chloe. Theo put us in a room in the wellness center while we waited for the blood tests. I showered and borrowed some scrubs. No way was I leaving Chloe unattended for long.
Theo watched over Chloe while I cleaned up. Now he was barking orders left and right to get Chloe what she needed.
A doctor had already come in to check her vital signs, cuts, and bruises. He had a nurse draw blood for a toxicology report.
“Is Chloe on meds?” I asked.
Lucy slipped two bottles onto the side table. One was a typical prescription bottle, and the other was a dark brown one with a dropper.
“What are these?” I picked up the prescription bottle.
“Antidepressant. But she’s only been on it for two days.”
“And this?”
“According to Dora, it’s a homeopathic remedy. It’s for anxiety.”
“I’ve seen her use this,” I said. “She didn’t act like this.”
Theo entered the room with another doctor garbed in dark blue scrubs. She appeared to be in her late fifties with an austere manner.
“This is Doctor Wyeth.” Theo introduced us. “She’s the head of neuropsychiatry at Presbyterian Willis. She frequently consults with us.”
“Since the patient is sedated, can you give me the gist of what might have led to this?” she asked.
I was glad she didn’t waste time on niceties and launched straight into business.
I told her about fugue or dissociative states and the first time I encountered them.
I told her about her friend Dora mentioning the same, including that bit about forgetfulness.
Chloe kicking me out of the house because she thought I cheated on her—that was the safest way to explain what happened without mentioning the Vozhokari.
And finally, my accusatory words after finding Sebastian choking.
I didn’t make excuses for myself because it was critical for the doctor to have all the facts to diagnose why Chloe unraveled so spectacularly.
“We’re past the baby blues,” she said. “And from what you’re telling me, she doesn’t fit postpartum depression because it appears she has motivation for her work.
Still, we shouldn’t rule it out. A new mother faces many challenges, as I’m sure you know.
Lack of sleep. Anxiety about raising a child. Chloe is a single mother, correct?”
“Yes. But I’m helping.”
“You weren’t present on the day of the birth.”
“No. I was in jail.”
“I see,” she stated baldly. “Theo told me about her complicated parentage and the media storm over several incidents.” She gave Chloe an assessing gaze before addressing me. “The Chloe that you saw today, did you recognize her?”
I squeezed my eyes shut briefly as I replayed her stricken face after I raged at her about her carelessness.
“I was an asshole. I couldn’t see past my anger after I found Sebastian…
” I broke off, pulled in a breath before continuing, “Chloe is frightened of storms and when she left at the peak of one, that was when it hit me I’d gone too far.
But that woman on the cliff who was about to kill herself? That wasn’t Chloe.”
“Wait,” Theo said. “Before she tried to step off the cliff, Chloe said, ‘She said it was the only way.’”
My head whipped to Theo. “You’re right. I remember that now.”
“Huh,” the doctor said in a contemplative tone.
“Did she mean…Marena, or her psychiatrist, or…” I hissed a breath, almost afraid to say it. “…an alter ego? What if in her disassociation she is someone else?”
“A split personality?” Lucy asked.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” the doctor said. “I don’t like speculating into specifics until I’ve talked to the patient. This episode seemed to have sharply escalated from what you’ve described—”
“I reacted badly to the choking incident. That might have triggered what’s already there.”
“Maybe, but we have to make sure this isn’t chemically induced.” Her eyes fell on the pill bottles. “Is this what she’s on?”
“Yes,” Lucy answered. “That we know of.”
“I don’t recognize the prescriber,” she mused. She twisted the cap open and poured out the capsules. “These do not match the label.”
“What?” I rasped while everyone in the room uttered varying shocked reactions.
“Who’s her therapist?” Dr. Wyeth asked.
“Dora said Marena recommended her.”
“And who is Marena?”
“She’s the child welfare liaison with the women’s shelter. She’s also a counselor,” I said slowly and turned to Lucy. “Has Dora checked on Marena?”
“She tried to call her, but got voicemail.”
I slipped out my phone to call Marena.
A message of a disconnected line sounded in my ear. I checked the number, dread skittering down my spine as realization dawned.
“What is it?” Theo asked.
“Marena.” Fury hazed the edges of my vision. “She did this.”
A few hours later, Dora called me to say that Marena had cleared out her office. At this point, she was suspect number one, and I had Ilya dig into her background. Dr. Wyeth collected the pills and the homeopathic remedy. The chamomile tea was also sent to the lab for testing.
Lucy said that Chloe had shared the tea with her recently, and she had a weird reaction afterwards.
“I saw multicolored prisms,” Lucy said. “I thought it was just the effects of the sun on the window. Maybe it was. I don’t know. It freaked me out enough that I remember how that happened, but the effects didn’t last.”
But I remembered Chloe’s tea. I’d seen it on the counter several times. She even mentioned she ran out of it, and I tried to recall how she acted. Come to think of it, her behavior was erratic.
Kirill and Lucy had left. My pakhan promised he’d assign Sorcha as Sebastian’s nanny while I dealt with Chloe. Lucy was going to handle Margo Winthrop, putting an urgency to our request about the blood covenant.
I got off the phone with Dimitri. I sent him an image of Marena in case she looked familiar.
Something about her didn’t add up with me from the start.
Call it instinct. I never warmed up to her, and neither did I feel like kissing her ass even when I knew she could make my life difficult for Sebastian’s custody.
But if the Vozhokari indeed sent her, then I owed Chloe an apology for complicating her life. But no way was I backing off and letting her decide whether she wanted my protection.
Agitation was an uncommon feeling I experienced. Irritability maybe, but this angst, this unsettling weight squatting on my chest, was a byproduct of my inability to claim my woman.
My woman.
She was not only my woman but the mother of my son.
Chloe stirred. I tensed.
She wanted nothing to do with me before I sedated her. Would she remember her psychotic break?
Chloe was hooked up to an IV to rebalance her electrolytes and hydration. Whatever was in her system should clear out soon. We wouldn’t know what we were facing until the blood test and chemistry on the substances came back.
Her eyelids slowly lifted.
“Chloshka,” I murmured and held her bandaged hand. She had scratches everywhere and bruises on her knees and ribs. The ones on her ribs might have come from the iron grip I had around her waist when we were hanging off the bluff.
“Kolya,” she whispered.
“How are you feeling, princess?”
Her eyes were still groggy, but a hitched sob caught in her throat. She turned her head away and pulled her hand out of mine.
“Where am I?” she asked the wall.
“The Astorian.”
A louder sob escaped her, and tears spilled down her cheeks.
“I’m going crazy,” she whispered.
“No, you’re not.” I clasped her hand again. “No, you’re not, baby.”
“How can you say that?” she cried. “After I nearly killed our baby, I almost killed you!”
“Marena is missing,” I cut in.
“What does she have to do with what I’ve done?”
“We’re having the tea, the prescription, and the homeopathic remedy tested. I don’t want to speculate anymore or give you unsubstantiated information until we get the lab report.”
Her eyes looked everywhere as if she were trying to piece together memories with the information I gave her.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. I could see a conclusion forming on her face. The same conclusion I had about that bitch Marena.
“Were you on anything else?” I asked.
She could only shake her head.
“We’ll sort this out, okay?” I stroked her forehead. I wanted to apologize directly, but Chloe was just waking up from sedation. The unknown substance clearly tampered with her cognitive abilities and I didn’t want her brain to be processing more.
My apology could wait.
“Rest. We should have results soon.”