Chapter 12
Nikolai
Rain filled my mouth every time I tried to breathe.
Cold water poured over my face in relentless sheets, running into my eyes, sliding down my neck, soaking through what remained of my shirt until the fabric clung to my skin like a second layer of ice.
The sky above me was nothing but black clouds and violent flashes of white, thunder rolling somewhere far away, though it sounded distant beneath the ringing splitting my skull apart.
For a few seconds, I didn’t understand why I was on the ground. I didn’t understand why my body wouldn’t move. I tried to inhale, and pain ripped through my chest so violently that the world went white.
A broken sound forced its way out of me, swallowed instantly by the storm.
My back arched against the wet pavement before collapsing again, every muscle locking as something sharp and wrong burned beneath my collarbone.
I dragged my hand across the road, fingers scraping against gravel and water before reaching my chest .
Warmth. Too much warmth. My palm pressed against torn fabric and came away slick with blood.
Memory returned in pieces. The road. Emerald. Her screams. The gunshot. Her hand reaching for me as men dragged her backward. Then the vehicle disappearing into the rain with her inside it.
My body moved before my mind could catch up.
I shoved my palm against the pavement and tried to force myself upright, but pain detonated through my chest with enough force to steal every bit of air from my lungs.
My arm gave out almost instantly. I hit the road again, cheek slamming against cold asphalt, rain splashing against my mouth.
“No,” I rasped. The word barely existed.
I dug my fingers into the road and tried again.
My body refused me. Rage tore through me so savagely I almost welcomed the pain, because pain meant I was still alive, and alive meant I could still reach her.
I just had to stand. I just had to force one knee beneath me.
One hand. One breath. One fucking movement.
But the second I shifted, the bullet lodged inside my chest punished me for it. My vision blurred at the edges. I tasted blood.
Emerald.
Her name moved through my head like a curse and a prayer. I could still hear her screaming. Not the way sound existed in the world, but worse. Inside me. Repeating over and over until every part of my body wanted to tear itself apart just to answer her.
She had looked terrified. Not angry. Not defiant. Not full of that sharp little mouth she used like a weapon. Terrified. And I? I had gone down. I had fucking gone down.
Another growl tore from my throat as I dragged myself forward across the pavement.
My fingers clawed at loose gravel, nails catching against rough stone while blood smeared beneath me in dark ribbons the rain tried to wash away.
I made it maybe a foot before my strength failed again.
My chest hit the road. Agony tore through me hard enough that my lungs seized.
For one brutal moment, I couldn’t breathe at all.
The storm pressed down around me, heavy and endless, while the taillights in my memory vanished into the dark again.
Who took her? The question sank its teeth into my skull. Who had the nerve? Malrik? One of Lucien’s loyalists? Someone from the Deveraux side who had been waiting for me to weaken? Someone who knew exactly where we would be?
That thought scraped coldly through me. This hadn’t felt random. Random men didn’t appear in the middle of a storm with enough coordination to get past me, shoot me in the chest, and take Emerald before I could reach her.
They knew. They knew where she would be. They knew I would come after her. They knew I would put myself between her and anything that tried to touch her .
A bitter laugh tried to crawl out of me, but it turned into a wet cough that sent fresh pain splitting through my chest. Blood spilled over my tongue, metallic and thick. I swallowed it down.
Not yet.
I wasn’t dying here. Not in the rain. Not on the road. Not while Emerald was in the hands of men who thought taking her from me was survivable.
My fingers curled into a fist against the pavement. What did they want with her? Ransom? Leverage? Revenge? Or something worse?
A flash of Emerald’s face tore through me again. Her blue eyes wide, rain plastering blonde hair to her cheeks, her mouth open around my name. Nikolai. She had screamed for me. Not Roman. Not anyone else. Me. The sound of it carved something open in my chest deeper than the bullet had managed.
I had spent so much time telling myself she was a problem. A weapon. A spoiled Deveraux girl thrown into my hands by fate and revenge and all the rot our families had left behind. I had told myself keeping her was strategy. Punishment. Control.
Lies. Every one of them.
Because the second they took her, something inside me had gone silent. Not calm. Deadly. The kind of silence that came before slaughter .
Rain hammered harder. Time stretched strangely, seconds swelling into minutes, minutes dragging into something endless.
I didn’t know how long I lay there, half-conscious on the road, bleeding into the storm like some pathetic offering.
It felt like hours. Maybe it was only minutes.
Maybe time stopped because Emerald was gone.
My body started to shake, though I couldn’t tell if it was from blood loss, cold, or fury. Every breath came shallow now, clipped and ragged, because drawing air too deeply made the pressure in my chest unbearable.
I tried to lift my head. The road swam beneath me. A laugh came out of me then, dark and ruined.
Of course. Of fucking course.
All my life I had been built into something impossible to break.
Lucien had made sure of that. Pain was discipline.
Blood was instruction. Weakness was something beaten out of me before I’d even understood what softness was supposed to feel like.
And yet one bullet had put me on my back.
One bullet had made me watch them take her.
My hand slid to my chest again, pressing hard against the wound. Blood pulsed between my fingers with every uneven beat of my heart. I welcomed the pain when I applied pressure, let it sharpen me, let it keep the darkness from pulling me under completely.
I pictured their hands on her. That did more than pain ever could. My eyes opened.
“Emerald,” I breathed .
The rain stole her name from my mouth.
Somewhere in the distance, headlights cut through the storm. At first, I thought I was imagining them. Then the sound of an engine grew louder. Tires hissed across wet pavement before a vehicle skidded to a stop several feet away. Doors flew open. Footsteps pounded through puddles.
“Nikolai!”
Viktor. Relief should have followed. It didn’t. Only rage, because Viktor was here, and Emerald was not.
His boots splashed into my vision before he dropped beside me, hands already moving toward the wound. The moment his fingers pressed against my chest, pain tore through me and my hand shot up, gripping his wrist hard enough to make him curse.
“Don’t,” I snarled.
His face came into focus above me, wet with rain, grim in a way I rarely saw.
“You’re bleeding out.”
“I know.”
His eyes flicked over my chest. “Bullet’s still in.”
“No shit.”
“Where is she? ”
The question hit harder than his hands against the wound. My throat worked around nothing. Gone. The word didn’t come out because I refused to give it life.
“They took her,” I said instead.
Viktor’s expression changed. Not surprise but understanding. He knew exactly what that meant. He knew exactly what I would become because of it.
“Who?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be lying in the fucking road.”
I tried to push myself up again. Viktor shoved me back down before I made it halfway. Pain burned white-hot across my chest.
“Stop moving.”
“Move me, then.”
“You need a hospital.”
I laughed again, low and vicious, even as the effort nearly split me open.
“No.”
“Nikolai—”
“No. ”
My voice dropped colder than the rain around us. There were very few words that ended an argument between us. That was one of them.
Viktor stared down at me, jaw hard, water dripping from his hair. “If that bullet nicked anything important—”
“Then dig it out before it finishes the job.”
“You are not walking this off.”
“I don’t need to walk it off.” I forced my head up enough to look him in the eyes. “I need to get to her.”
Something dark moved across his face. Not pity. He knew better than that. Pity would have gotten him killed even now.
He slid one arm beneath my shoulders and another behind my back. “This is going to hurt.”
“Everything fucking hurts.”
“Good.”
Then he lifted me. The sound that ripped from my throat didn’t feel human. Pain exploded through my chest with such violent force that the storm vanished for one terrifying second. There was no rain. No road. No Viktor. Just agony and Emerald’s voice screaming my name.
My knees buckled instantly when he got me upright.
Viktor took most of my weight and dragged me toward the car while I fought the humiliation of needing him to do it.
Blood ran hot beneath my shirt despite the rain, dripping down my ribs, staining my waistband, leaving pieces of me behind on the pavement.
With every step I searched the road. The ditch. The black stretch ahead. Any sign. A piece of fabric. A shell casing. A body I could question before I killed him.
Nothing. Only rain. Only darkness. Only the emptiness they left behind.
By the time Viktor shoved me into the passenger seat, my vision had narrowed dangerously. I braced one hand against the dashboard while he rounded the car and climbed behind the wheel.
“Estate?” he asked.
I turned my head slowly toward him.
“Where else would we go?”
“Hospital.”
“Say it again and I’ll throw myself out of the car.”
He swore under his breath and slammed the vehicle into drive.