36. Sloane #3
The hospital garden is on the ground floor, tucked behind the east wing like someone designed it because they knew grief needed somewhere to stand. I saw the sign earlier when one of the nurses took a wrong turn pushing an empty wheelchair.
I inhale deeply. Outside, the world feels softer.
The garden is small but well-kept, bordered by low hedges and pale stone paths that wind between benches, potted palms, and beds of white flowers glowing under discreet lamps.
Somewhere water trickles from a narrow fountain.
Beyond the walls, the city hums faintly, alive and indifferent.
I walk until I reach a bench beneath a frangipani tree, then lower myself onto it with more effort than I would like to admit.
The baby moves again.
I rest both hands over her. “I know,” I murmur. “Bad idea.”
She kicks.
I almost smile.
For a few minutes, nothing happens.
That’s what makes me relax. Not completely. I don’t think I know how to be completely relaxed anymore. But enough that my shoulders drop. Enough that the heat in my skin cools. Enough that the tears I’ve been refusing finally press behind my eyes.
I don’t let them fall. I stare at the flowers instead.
I think about Vadim on his knees in front of me. His mouth on my breast. His hand on my stomach when the baby moved. The way he looked at her without even seeing her, as if she had already wrapped something around him that even all his violence could not cut.
And then I think about the first time I saw him, silver-haired and severe in that private jet, looking at me like I was an inconvenience he intended to survive.
God, I should have poured the champagne on his head.
Behind me the side doors open and shut as staff move in and out with the dull, ordinary rhythm of a building where people keep living and dying by the hour.
I close my eyes.
Five minutes. That’s all I need.
Five minutes without doctors, without monitors, without Anton appearing around corners like a very expensive bad omen, without Vadim looking at me as though he wants to tear the world apart and hold me at the same time.
I think about Vadim’s hands, his mouth, the way he can still make me forget my own name even when everything between us is broken.
I think about the moment I almost told him. The moment when I might have told him I love him, that I never stopped, that the baby moving inside me is his and no one else’s.
Instead, I ran. Because apparently that’s what I do now.
I run from him, then ache when he doesn’t follow.
A soft sound comes from the garage entrance. My eyes open.
At first, I think it’s one of Vadim’s men.
Then the figure steps out of the shadow near the pillar, and my heart stops for an entirely different reason.
Viktor Petrov stands a few feet away, wearing a dark coat and an expression that looks too calm for a man appearing outside my brother’s hospital at dawn.
I stand immediately. “What are you doing here?”
He turns toward me as though I’m the surprising one. “Sloane.”
“No.” I take a step back, one hand going instinctively to my stomach before I force it down. “What are you doing here?”
He holds up a hand. He has a phone in his hand. The screen glows pale against his palm. “You’re the one who texted me,” he says. “Remember?”
The air changes.
“I didn’t text you.”
His brows draw together. “You asked me to come.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Sloane, the message came from your phone.”
Cold spreads through me so quickly that for a second I can’t feel my fingers.
“That’s impossible.”
He looks down at the screen, then back at me, and something more alert enters his face. “Then who did?”
I know the answer before I let myself think it.
Behind me, a door slams open. I turn to see men pouring out of the hospital entrance and the garage almost at the same time, spreading across the concrete with frightening precision, black coats and hard faces moving into place before Viktor has time to do more than shift his stance.
Anton appears first. Then Iosef.
Then two more men I don’t recognize.
My pulse turns deafening.
Viktor goes very still. “Ah,” he murmurs. “I see.”
I look toward the doors.
Vadim steps out last. He’s still in the same rolled-up shirtsleeves from the room upstairs, his face unreadable, his silver hair catching the harsh garage light like something almost unreal.
Our eyes meet.
For one second I see everything at once. The unlocked phone. The message. The kiss. The way he let me fall apart against him while already using me to pull Viktor here.
My throat tightens so hard it hurts. “You did this.”
Vadim says nothing.
He doesn’t deny it.
He doesn’t even look away.
The silence is worse than an answer.
I take one step toward him without meaning to, then stop because his men have already shifted, the circle tightening around Viktor while leaving me stranded in the middle of the thing Vadim built around me.
Viktor’s voice comes from behind me, lower now. “Sloane, step away from him.”
I don’t move. I can’t.
I’m looking only at Vadim. “You made him think I sent it.”
His jaw tightens. Still nothing.
A horrible laugh pushes out of me, breathless and broken. “Of course you did.”
“Sloane,” he says at last.
My name in his voice almost undoes me.
I hate that. I hate him for still being able to do that.
“No.” I shake my head. “Don’t say my name like you care.”
Something flickers in his eyes. Too late.
Petrov looks at Vadim over my shoulder. “So this is how you do it now?” he asks.