Chapter Forty-Four
In which on very rare occasions, time is on Andrey’s side.
Andrey…
Don't let her be dead.
The look on my brother's face, I've never seen it before. He takes me to the back.
Iris is huddled on a bank of seats, unconscious. She's tightly duct-taped in a blanket that wraps around her like a shroud. Blood streams down her temple. One shoulder looks like it's been dislocated, and a pool of violet and purple bruising is blooming angrily across the right side of her face.
"Sweet girl, I'm sorry. Please open your eyes." Frantically checking her pulse, I heave a huge gasp of relief. It's there. It's more thready than I'd like, but it's there.
Weakly opening her eyes, squinting, Iris tries to focus. "Andrey?" she croaks. She has a split lip and I gently dab at the blood oozing from the corner of her mouth. Her beautiful amber eyes fill with tears. "You're here?"
"Of course I'm here. I'll always be here." I kiss her poor, bloody forehead, and her unbruised cheek. "What did they do to you, baby?"
"I put up a fight. They took my Rose away from me." She tries to smile, but her mouth goes slack again. "They hit me a few times to knock me out, I guess." She looks down at herself. "They duct-taped me? They hit my face a lot. They knew they couldn't hit my…"
She stops, and I cup her face as gently as I can, trying to avoid her wounds. "You're pregnant. I know. I'm so sorry you didn't think you could come to me. This is a good thing, that you're pregnant. It's so good. We're having a baby."
I sound incoherent, even to my own ears, the desperate ramblings of a fool, but she seems to appreciate it. Her mouth curls up again, and I wince as it bleeds. "Perhaps you shouldn't smile for a moment, sweetheart."
"Okay," she says in a creaky little voice.
We can hear the curses and scuffling as Nikandr and the others drag people off the plane, including the pilot. Two bounce their way down the jet stairs, howling. The last one is dragged over to us. He's wearing scrubs, and Iris shudders, turning her face away.
"He's a registered nurse," Nikandr says grimly. He's playing with his knife, running the razor-sharp blade against the nurse's face, lightly scraping it up and down.
"You're going to treat my wife like spun glass," I grit out. The point of the blade twists, cutting a divot into his face.
"Sorry," Nikandr says. "Knife slipped."
"You're going to very gently check for any additional injuries," I say. The more we find, the more he's going to suffer.
"Look, it wasn't me," he whines. "It was the guards. I took a vow, man."
"Shut the fuck up. Take care of my wife."
Iris tugs at my shirt, I lean down. "Rosie," she says. "They took her away. Do you have her?"
"Yes, sweetheart, we do." I kiss her gingerly. "Roman already diverted from the wild goose chase for her tracker. He's heading to her location now. His group should be there within ten minutes."
The nurse gives her an examination, wrapping her arm in a sling after we put her dislocated shoulder back into place.
Iris screams between clenched teeth and I will make these men suffer a day for every minute of hers.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart," I whisper. "It's over.
" She keeps her grip on my shirt, shaking so hard her teeth rattle.
"She's in stable condition," the nurse says, his gaze jittering nervously between me and a stone-faced Nikandr.
"Get him out of here," I say.
Nikandr smiles unpleasantly. "My pleasure."
I wrap my arms around Iris as she closes her eyes, tears leaking from her lids. "Thank you."
"For what, sweetheart?"
"For being okay with the baby," she croaks.
Oh, malen'kiy tsvetok, my little flower…" I've never cried. Not once. Not even from pain. I do now. Tears push from my eyes, they feel violent, and unpleasant, but I can't stop them. "I want this baby so much. Because you are bringing them into the world. Part of us both."
"I love you." She sounds drowsy now. "I'm sorry I didn't say it before. I wanted to. You don't have to say it back. It's okay. I know you don't. But I do."
My eyes are red and still streaming damnable tears, and I roughly rub them. My chest hurts, like it's splitting open. "I could have lost you. I couldn't stand the thought that I would be forced to live without you."
She gives me a tender smile and winces as the split in her lip makes itself known. "I think that's probably love, Andrey style."
"It is?" Iisus Khristos, I sound like a fucking idiot. "That's... That's it. That's what this is."
She lets out a weak little chuckle. "Yeah. I think so, anyway."
"Iris," I whisper hoarsely, trying to find an unbruised part of her body to hold.
***
Iisus Khristos - Russian for Jesus Christ