26. Sienna
SIENNA
T he soft golden light of the lamps in the Abramovs’ living room should be soothing, as should the sound of Adam’s soft “vroom” noises as he plays with his toy cars and the clink of Valentina’s teacup as she sips and reads, but it’s not. None of it is.
Valentina said that she didn’t have much information on where Damian and Konstantin went, but we both know that they went after Russo.
And all I can think, sitting on the couch and unable to concentrate on anything else, is that the last conversation Damian and I had could be the last one we ever have, if he doesn’t come home.
And even if he does, it will be one of the last ones, all the same. Because once he comes back, once Russo is gone, our marriage will be over.
Just thinking it makes me feel as if my heart is being torn in half all over again.
I keep replaying the conversation in my head, over and over again. Trying to think what I could have said differently—but I didn’t want to beg him to let me stay, to keep me. I wanted him to want that too, so badly that there was no other choice for him.
I understand why he’s afraid. Why peace can seem so much scarier than the violence he’s lived with all his life. But he let that fear win.
Even though I know he feels differently.
He looked me in the eye and told me he couldn't be with me, that our marriage was temporary, that I deserved better than him.
I watched the man I love disappear down the hallway like I meant nothing to him.
But I know better. I've seen the way he looks at me when he thinks I'm not watching.
I've felt the reverence in his touch, heard the way his breath catches when I say his name.
Damian Kutnezsov is many things—brutal, dangerous, closed off—but he's not a good liar.
At least not when it comes to his feelings for me.
“You’re thinking very loudly.” Valentina looks over at me. “They’ll come home. They always do.”
I swallow hard. “And then I’ll have to leave,” I say it quietly enough that Adam can’t hear me over the vrooming of the cars. I haven’t said anything to him yet—I’m not sure how. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
“You don’t know that for sure,” Valentina says quietly, but I can hear the doubt in her voice. It pokes at the already bleeding wound in my heart.
“He thinks he’s not good enough for me. That he’s too old, too damaged, too violent. He thinks that I care that we couldn’t have more children.” I bite my lip. “I don’t care about any of it. He’s not like that with me .”
Valentina lets out a soft huff. “Men are idiots.”
I look at her with surprise. “What about Konstantin?”
She shrugs elegantly. “He can be an idiot too, sometimes. Do you know how long it took me to get him into my bed, even after we were married? Far too long. They have their own ideas about things. Their own stubborn patterns. It’s up to us to show them why they’re wrong.”
“Konstantin realized he was wrong.”
“He did,” Valentina affirms. “But it took a long time and a lot of… other things. Complications.” She laughs softly, giving me a sympathetic look. "Damian is scared, Sienna. Men like our husbands... th ey're not used to softness. They don't know how to handle it when someone sees past their walls."
I watch Adam carefully arrange his cars in a line, his tongue poking out in concentration.
He's been happy here, I’ve seen it. He hasn’t seemed to pick up on the tension, and he loves the attention that the staff shower him with, how much extra time I have to spend with him.
It’s been like a vacation for him, and I know life wouldn’t always be that way if we stayed, but it would be…
better. Having Damian there for him would be better, even if Damian doesn’t believe it.
“He’s good with Adam, too,” I say softly.
“I wouldn’t have thought it, but he is.”
“Of course he is. I think he wanted a family, once upon a time. He just convinced himself it was impossible. He's running scared," Valentina continues. "The question is, what are you going to do about it?"
"What can I do? He made it clear that he doesn't want this marriage to continue." I turn my hands palms up on my knees, frustrated. “What am I supposed to do about that?”
“You can let him know how you feel. You can keep saying it until he’s willing to hear it, until?—”
“I tried.” My jaw tightens, hurt flooding me again. “I don’t want to beg him for something he doesn’t want to give?—”
Before I can finish, the front door slams open with enough force to rattle the windows.
Both Adam and I jump, but Valentina immediately tenses, her hand moving protectively to her belly.
The look on her face makes my blood run cold.
I hear boots in the hallway outside, security moving to see what the racket is.
Heavy footsteps echo through the foyer, and then Konstantin appears in the doorway. His usually pristine suit is torn and bloodstained, his face grim. Behind him, several of his men file in, all of them looking like they've been through hell.
"Konstantin?" Valentina rises quickly, rushing to his side. "What happened? Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine," he says, but his eyes find mine over her head. The expression in them makes my heart stop. "Sienna, we need to talk. "
"No." The word comes out as a whisper, but the certainty in my chest is deafening. "No, no, no. Where is he? Where's Damian?"
Konstantin's jaw tightens. "He's alive."
"Where is he?" My voice cracks, and I realize I'm shaking. My heart is racing painfully in my chest, all of my worst nightmares coming true in an instant. I should have said it. I should have told him …
I’m afraid it’s going to be too late.
"He’s at the hospital. He's in surgery."
The room tilts sideways, and I have to grab the back of the sofa to stay upright. Surgery. Damian is in surgery, which means he's hurt, which means he might… he might…
"I need to go to him." I'm already moving toward the door, but Konstantin steps in front of me.
"Sienna, listen to me?—"
"No!" The word comes out as a scream, and Adam looks up from his toys with wide, frightened eyes. I take a deep breath, forcing myself to speak more quietly. The last thing I want is my son scared. "No, I need to see him. I need to be there when he wakes up."
"The surgery could take hours. The doctors said?—"
"I don't care what the doctors said!" Tears are streaming down my cheeks now, but I don't care. "He's my husband, Konstantin. He's my husband, and I need to be there."
Something in my voice must convince him, because his expression softens. "Alright. Valentina, can you?—"
"I'll stay with Adam," she says immediately, already moving toward my son. "Go. Be with him."
I kiss Adam's forehead, promising him I'll be back soon, and then I'm following Konstantin out to his car. The drive to the hospital passes in a blur of city lights, my thoughts racing and my heart beating so hard it hurts, as if it’s trying to beat for both me and Damian.
Konstantin tries to explain what happened—something about the Russos, a final confrontation, Damian being shot by a surviving member of the Russo men who snuck up on them—but I can barely process the words.
All I can think about is our last conversation, the look on his face when he walked away. What if those are the last words we ever exchange? What if he dies not knowing that I love him?
The emergency department is a chaos of bright lights and hurrying medical staff. Konstantin's name and no-nonsense demands get us through the bureaucracy faster than it should, and soon we're being led to a small waiting room outside the surgical wing.
"The bullet nicked his lung and did some damage to his ribs," the surgeon explains when she comes to update us, after a too-long wait marked by me pacing and Konstantin trying to calm me, even bringing me juice at one point from a vending machine, like a worried older brother.
"But he's stable. We were able to remove the bullet and repair the damage. He's being moved to recovery now."
"Can I see him?" The words tumble out before she's even finished speaking. It’s all I can do not to rush past her and find his room myself, my every nerve jangling and raw.
"He's still unconscious from the anesthesia, but yes. One visitor at a time."
I don't wait for permission to be the first. I know Konstantin won’t argue. I follow the nurse down a hallway that smells like antiseptic, my heart hammering against my ribs. She stops outside a room with a glass door, and through it, I can see him.
Damian looks smaller somehow, lying in the hospital bed surrounded by machines. His skin is pale, his tattoos standing out in stark relief on his ashen arms and upper chest. Bandages cover his chest, and his hands rest motionless on the white sheets.
"You’re his wife? You can go in," the nurse says gently. "Talk to him. Sometimes they can hear us, even when they're unconscious."
I slip into the room on unsteady legs, the sound of the machines beeping a steady rhythm that only serves to make my heartbeat feel more erratic.
There's a chair beside the bed, and I sink into it, reaching out to touch his hand.
His skin is warm, which somehow makes everything feel a little less terrifying.
"Hi," I whisper, my voice barely audible. "I'm here. I'm right here, and I'm not going anywhere. You can’t make me. "
His fingers don't move, but I squeeze them anyway, hoping he can feel me.
"The doctors say you're going to be okay," I continue, tears making my voice thick. "You're too stubborn to die, right? That's what you'd say if you were awake. You'd probably growl at me for crying and tell me you've had worse."
I wipe my eyes with my free hand, but more tears just take their place.
I feel like I haven’t cried enough over everything that’s happened.
I needed to be strong for Adam. I wanted Damian to think I was tough enough to take it all and come back for more.
But now, faced with him lying here helpless, taken down by some asshole’s bullet, I can’t seem to stop the steady flow of tears.
"I need you to wake up, Damian. I need you to wake up because I have things to say to you, and you're going to listen this time. No walking away, no shutting down. You're going to lie there and listen to every word."
I lean closer, bringing his hand to my cheek.
"You're such a fool," I whisper. "Such a stubborn, impossible fool. Do you really think I care that you're older than me? Do you think I care about your past, about the things you've done? You saved me, Damian. You saved me and Adam, and you've been protecting us ever since."
The machines continue their steady beeping, the only sound in the room besides my voice.
"You think you're not good enough for me, but you're wrong. You're everything I never knew I needed. You make me feel safe in a way I've never felt safe before. When you hold me, when you look at me like I'm something precious… God, Damian, don't you see what you do to me?"
I press a kiss to his knuckles, tasting salt from my own tears.
“And Adam… he’s never had anyone like you in his life.
He’s never had a father to teach him how to dive, or be the big scary man who protects him, or had someone like you to look up to.
He loves you, too. We both do. I don’t care that we can’t have more children, because I have a perfect, precious child, and he’d be yours too.
Blood doesn’t matter—who raises you does. And I know you’d be great at it.”
My voice breaks on the last word, and I have to take a shaky breath before I can continue.
"I have Adam, and if you'll let us, we can be a family. The three of us. Isn't that enough? Isn't that everything?"
I'm crying harder now, but I don't care. I need to get this out, need him to hear it.
"I know you love me," I whisper fiercely. "I know you do, even if you won't say it. I see it in the way you protect me, the way you touch me, even in the way you walk away, because you truly believe it’s what I need. But it isn’t." I lean down, pressing my forehead to his. “What I need is you.”
"You love me, and I love you. I love your strength and your rough edges.
I love that you kill to protect the people you care about, and I love that you're gentle with me and with Adam.
I love your tattoos and your scars and the way you make me feel like I'm the only woman in the world when you look at me, even if you don’t mean to. "
The heart monitor next to me seems to skip a beat, and I look up hopefully, but his eyes remain closed.
"I love you, Damian Kutnezsov," I whisper against his skin. "I love you, and I'm not going anywhere. When you wake up—not if, when—we're going to figure this out together. No more running, no more pushing me away. You're going to have to accept that you deserve to be loved."
I settle back in the chair, keeping hold of his hand.
The nurses come and go, checking his vitals, adjusting his IV.
Konstantin stops by to check on Damian, to let me know that Giovanni Russo and his men are dead, to reassure me that Damian will wake up, but I barely hear any of it.
My world has narrowed to this room, this bed, this man who holds my heart and doesn’t know it yet.
He can’t die without knowing it. It’s not right.
That’s not how this ends.
Hours pass. The sun rises and sets outside the window, painting the room in shades of orange and pink. I doze fitfully in the chair, my hand never leaving his, waking every time a machine beeps differently or a nurse comes in.
It's nearly midnight, the following evening, when I feel it… the slightest pressure against my fingers. My eyes snap open, and I lean forward eagerly.
"Damian? Can you hear me?"