33. Vadim
VADIM
For several seconds, I can’t move. My hand is still resting against the curve of her stomach, and the shape beneath my palm is so obvious now that I know what I’m touching that I can’t understand how I failed to see it before.
The loose coats. The oversized sweaters.
The way she has been standing in photographs lately with bags held in front of herself or one arm folded across her middle.
The way she has looked more tired than she should, more careful when she moves, more protective of her body without ever appearing consciously aware of it.
Seven months, perhaps. Maybe less.
Enough that I should have noticed. Enough that I feel something very close to humiliation at the fact that I didn’t.
Sloane’s eyes are fixed on mine. She has gone pale.
I remove my hand as though I’ve touched something I’m not permitted to touch.
Then I step back. The distance between us feels wrong immediately, but I need it because there’s one question screaming through my head and I can’t bring myself to ask it.
Whose?
The answer I want is too dangerous. The answer I fear is worse.
Petrov.
The name enters my mind before I can stop it, and with it comes every photograph, every report, every piece of evidence I’ve spent months arranging around her.
What if his plan was deeper than I imagined?
What if Sloane was never merely useful to him?
What if she was his before she ever stepped onto my aircraft?
The thought is so violent that I almost laugh at myself.
No. I can’t do this here.
Not with her looking at me like that.
Not with Anton ten meters away pretending not to hear.
“Sloane.”
She says nothing. I look down at her stomach again. I hate that my eyes go there. I hate even more that something inside me responds to the sight with a primitive, irrational pull that I don’t understand.
“You’re pregnant.”
This time it’s not a question.
She swallows. “Yes.”
The word is quiet.
I nod once because I don’t trust myself to do anything else. “How far?”
Her expression changes immediately, and she becomes more guarded. I see the answer before she speaks.
“Seven months.”
Something in my chest caves inward.
Seven. I calculate without meaning to. I stop the calculation before it finishes.
I can’t ask. Not yet.
If she says Petrov, I don’t know what I will do.
If she says me, I may do something worse.
“Sloane.”
She looks at me. “What?”
I hear how tired she is now. Not just physically—not only just of me, of everything.
I force my voice lower. “You should sit down.”
She gives me a look that would almost be familiar if I didn’t feel like the ground has shifted beneath me. “I’m fine.”
“You just vomited.”
“I’ve been doing that for months.”
I stare at her. She seems to realize what she said and looks away.
Anton approaches carefully. “Vadim.”
I turn on him. “What?”
He glances at Sloane, then at the men still restrained near the alley entrance. “We should move.”
I look back at her. She’s watching me warily now.
“Where are you going?” she asks.
“The hospital.”
Her shoulders tighten. “You’re not coming with me.”
I say nothing.
She understands my silence immediately.
“No.”
“Sloane.”
“No. I mean it.”
“You were just attacked.”
“And you just found out I’m pregnant, so apparently we are both having a difficult evening.”
Anton looks away.
I almost admire her ability to remain impossible at moments when any sensible person would become quiet.
Almost.
“You are not walking anywhere alone.”
“I was not asking permission.”
There it is. The same fire. The same woman. For one second, it makes something inside me ache.
Then I remember Mila.
Petrov.
The footage.
I harden again. “You are coming with us.”
Her expression closes. “No.”
I step closer, and she steps back immediately.
That movement stops me.
Months ago, I would have closed the distance anyway. Months ago, I would have taken her by the wrist and put her in the car while she cursed me.
Now there is a child between us.
Maybe mine. Maybe not.
The thought changes everything and nothing at once.
I exhale slowly. “Fine.”
She blinks.
Anton looks at me. I ignore him.
“You can go to the hospital,” I tell her.
Her face shifts with surprise. Then suspicion.
“Just like that?”
“No,” I say, “I’m coming you.
Her expression changes from anger to disbelief. “You’re what?”
“You heard me.”
“I don’t need you at the hospital.”
“That is unfortunate.”
She stares at me, and if circumstances were different I would almost enjoy the familiar irritation gathering in her face, except nothing about tonight feels familiar anymore, not after finding her again, not after discovering the child beneath that coat, not while Mila’s absence sits between us like something neither of us can safely touch.
“You don’t get to decide this,” she says.
“I’m not asking you to agree.”
“That sounds exactly like deciding.”
I look toward Anton, who has already understood without being told and is speaking quietly into his phone, arranging for the two men on the pavement to be dealt with while keeping enough distance to give us the appearance of privacy.
Sloane follows my gaze and exhales through her nose. “This is insane.”
“Probably.”
“I have spent months trying to get my life back.”
“Go to the hospital, Sloane,” I tell her. “Your brother needs you.”
“You don’t care about my brother,” she scoffs. “So don’t act like you do.”
I do care about him, as I care about everything that concerns her, I think to myself. Despite everything that has happened, she’s still at the center of it all, and I would rather burn down the world around us then hurt her.
“Maybe, but we’re wasting time here.”
Her eyes narrow. “With you following me.”
“With me beside you.”
She looks as though she would like to refuse out of principle, but exhaustion wins before pride does, and a moment later she turns away without another word.
I fall into step beside her. The distance between us is less than a meter, but it feels enormous.
For several blocks we say nothing. Traffic moves around us, people pass on the pavement, somewhere a siren rises and fades again, and every ordinary sound makes the silence between us more obvious.
I’m aware of her constantly, of the way she walks more carefully than I remember, of how one hand occasionally moves toward the front of her coat before she catches herself and lets it drop again.
Seven months. I keep seeing the number. I keep refusing to finish the calculation.
By the time the hospital comes into view, I can’t tolerate the silence anymore.
“Where is Mila?”
Sloane’s steps slow. I watch her profile. She keeps looking ahead. “I can’t talk about that.”
My entire body goes rigid. “You can’t?”
“No.”
“That’s not an acceptable answer.”
“It’s the only one I’m giving you.”
I stop walking.
She makes it another step before realizing I’m no longer beside her. Then she turns. There are tears already threatening in her eyes, though whether they are from exhaustion, anger, fear, or everything together, I can’t tell.
“Tell me where my sister is.”
“I can’t.”
“Sloane.”
“I said I can’t.” Her voice shakes this time.
I step closer. “Is she alive?”
“Yes.”
The answer is immediate. That stops something inside me.
“Is she hurt?”
“No.”
“Is she being held somewhere?”
“No.”
“Then where is she?”
She shakes her head. “I can’t tell you that, but she’s safe.”
The word almost makes me laugh. “Safe with whom?”
“I’m not answering that.”
I study her. The old instinct rises quickly now, the one that tells me pressure works better than patience, that everyone has a point where they stop protecting information and begin protecting themselves. I know how to find that point.
With Sloane, I hate myself for even thinking about it.
“Were all three of you in on it?”
Her brows draw together. “What?”
“You. Daniel. Camille.”
She turns toward me so quickly that the movement nearly makes her lose balance. “Don’t.” The word is low.
I hold her gaze. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t talk about Camille.” The grief in her face is immediate enough that I know before she says anything else exactly where this is going. “You killed her.”
I say nothing.
“You stood there and shot her.”
“She had stabbed Iosef.”
Her eyes widen. She didn’t know about that, I dimly realize.
“She had a bloody knife in her hand and was running toward you after attacking one of my men.”
“You didn’t even hesitate.”
“No.”
That makes her flinch.
Finally she shakes her head. “I thought it was because you found out about Paris—”
Paris—where Iosef said Petrov met her for the first time.
I bristle at the sound of it but don’t tell her anything. She keeps waiting for my reaction, but I don’t give that to her.
She looks away, blinking rapidly, and when she speaks again there’s something raw beneath the anger. “She said she was sorry, like she was trying to tell me something,” she says, frowning to herself.
“It doesn’t matter. And I had no intention of waiting to discover whether the next thing she did was put that knife into you.”
Her eyes return to mine. There are tears on her face now. She doesn’t wipe them away.
“How easy would it be?”
The question is so quiet that for a second I think I misheard her.
“What?”
“To kill me.”
Something inside my chest tightens.
Sloane laughs once, but there’s nothing amused in it. “If you thought I betrayed you, if you thought I helped Petrov, if you decided I was a threat the way Camille was, how easy would it be for you to do the same thing to me?”
I should tell her never. I should say something that takes the fear out of her face. Instead, anger answers first.
“Easier than you would like to believe.”
Her expression breaks.
The regret is immediate, but I don’t take it back. Maybe cruelty is safer than hope. Maybe if she’s afraid of me, I will stop wanting things from her that I have no right to want anymore.
She looks down. A tear drops from her jaw.
I hate myself.
My hand nearly lifts, but I stop it. I can’t comfort her. Not while I don’t know whose child she’s carrying. Not while I don’t know what she did. Not while she’s still withholding my sister from me.
So I stand there and let her cry.
Eventually she wipes her face with the heel of her hand and looks toward the hospital entrance. “My brother is waiting.”
I nod. We go inside.
The hospital is too bright after the street, all polished floors and quiet voices and people moving with the exhausted efficiency of those who have forgotten what time means.
Sloane knows exactly where she’s going, turning through corridors without looking at signs until we reach a ward where the air feels different.
Quieter. Heavier.
She slows outside one room. I see him through the glass before she says anything.
Ethan.
He looks younger than I expected and much sicker than the photographs in the file I reviewed months ago. There are tubes running beneath the blanket and a monitor beside him showing numbers I don’t understand well enough to like.
Sloane’s entire expression changes when she sees him. Everything she was fighting with me disappears. She opens the door and goes inside.
I stay outside. I don’t belong in that room.
She sits beside him and takes his hand.
Ethan’s eyes open after a moment. He says something, and she answers.
Then his gaze moves past her. To me.
Sloane turns.
I expect her to ignore me. Instead, Ethan says something else, and her shoulders tighten.
She comes back toward the door. “He wants to know who you are.”
I raise one eyebrow. “What are you telling him?”
“That you’re a friend.”
The word almost makes me smile. “A friend.”
“Don’t enjoy this.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I have been called worse.”
She gives me a murderous look and returns to his bedside. A moment later Ethan gestures weakly toward me. Apparently I’m being summoned.
Sloane looks like she would rather disconnect one of the machines herself.
I enter.
Ethan watches me approach with surprising focus. “So,” he says, voice faint but still carrying amusement, “you’re Vadim.”
Sloane goes very still. She looks horrified.
I look back at Ethan. “That appears to be me.”
He smiles. “My sister hasn’t been able to stop talking about you.”
Sloane’s mouth falls open. “Ethan.”
“She has a huge crush, I think.”
For the first time tonight, something genuinely amused breaks through me.
I smile.
Sloane looks betrayed. “You are literally in a hospital bed and somehow still finding ways to humiliate me.”
“I’m sick, not dead.”
“Ethan.”
He looks at me again.
“How did you know it was me?” I ask.
Sloane turns sharply. “He didn’t. I told him—”
“No, you didn’t.”
She stops.
I look at Ethan. “She never said my name.”
His smile widens faintly. “I can tell.”
“From what?”
“The way you look at her.”
Silence.
Sloane’s face changes. So does mine, though I hope less obviously. Ethan closes his eyes again as if he has used up enough energy embarrassing his sister for one evening.
“You look exactly the way she described,” Ethan murmurs.
“Really?” I say.
“But I didn’t expect something,” he says, “and now that I know you feel it too, I’ll be able to have my rest soon.”
“Ethan,” she sobs. “Don’t say something like that. You’re well, you’ll be fine. We’ll grow old together, you and me.”
I look at her, and then at her brother. They look a lot alike. I can’t stop myself from asking. “What did you mean by that?”
He holds my gaze. “You look like you’d kill someone for her.”
Sloane makes a strangled sound.
I look at her. “I have.”
Her eyes flash. “Not helping.”
Ethan laughs weakly, then coughs, and the humor disappears from Sloane’s face instantly as she leans toward him.
I step back. For the next several minutes, I watch her adjust his blanket, speak to the nurse, check the water beside his bed and touch his forehead with the familiarity of someone who has done all of this too many times.
I understand now, why she stayed. I understand more than I want to.
When Ethan falls asleep again, Sloane settles into the chair beside him. She doesn’t look at me.
I leave the room quietly. Anton is waiting farther down the corridor. He sees my face and straightens.
I take out my phone. “Get me everything on Ethan Mercer’s current medical team.”
Anton pauses. “Everything?”
“Doctors. Consultants. Treatment history. Current medications. Every specialist who has reviewed his case.”
He studies me. “And then?”
I look through the glass at Sloane sitting beside her brother, and then I dial a number.