Chapter 12 #2
The car tore forward through the storm. I pressed my hand against the wound, breathing through my teeth while rainwater and blood soaked the leather beneath me. Viktor drove like hell itself was chasing us, though the truth was worse. Hell had taken Emerald, and I was going after it .
Every bump in the road sent fresh pain lancing through my chest. I kept my eyes open through sheer spite, refusing to let unconsciousness claim me. The second I closed them, I saw her.
Emerald in that room the night she had looked at me like I was a monster but refused to fear me properly. Emerald running her mouth when any other person would have begged. Emerald beneath candlelight, pretending not to care, pretending she wasn’t as affected by me as I was by her.
Emerald in the rain. Emerald reaching. Emerald gone.
My hand tightened against my chest.
“They knew,” I said.
Viktor’s eyes flicked toward me briefly before returning to the road. “Knew what?”
“Where we were.”
His silence confirmed he had already considered it.
“Someone fed them information,” I continued, each word dragged out through shallow breaths. “Or they followed us from the estate.”
“I’ll check every camera. Every guard. Every route.”
“Check phone records. Radios. Men who were late to post. Men who suddenly disappeared. ”
“I will.”
“They didn’t take her by accident.”
“No.”
The single word sat between us like a corpse. I turned my face toward the window, watching rain smear the world into streaks of black and silver.
“What do they want with her?” Viktor asked quietly.
My mouth went dry despite the rain still dripping from my hair. I didn’t answer right away, because every possibility was worse than the last.
Emerald was a Deveraux. Roman’s sister. A bloodline wrapped in power, money, secrets, and enemies. To the wrong person, she was a bargaining chip. A trophy. A way to hurt Roman. But she was also connected to me now.
People had seen enough. Malrik had seen enough. Viktor had seen too much. Anyone with eyes would eventually understand what Emerald had become, no matter how much I tried to bury it beneath cruelty and denial.
Mine. The word pulsed through me darkly.
If they knew that, they wouldn’t just use her against Roman. They would use her against me. That made her situation far more dangerous.
Roman Deveraux had enemies, but Nikolai Voss had monsters .
“Leverage,” I said finally. “Against Roman. Against me. Maybe both.”
Viktor’s hands tightened around the wheel.
“And if it’s Malrik?”
Something inside me went still.
“If it’s Malrik,” I said, voice barely above a rasp, “I’ll peel his empire apart with my hands before I let him die.”
Viktor didn’t respond. Good. There was nothing to say to that.
The estate appeared through the storm like a black shape carved out of the hillside, windows glowing faintly against the dark. By the time we reached the lower entrance, men were already waiting. Their faces shifted when they saw me. Fear. Not of my wound, of what my wound meant.
Viktor opened my door and reached for me. I shoved his hand away.
“I can stand.”
“No, you can’t.”
I got one foot onto the ground just to prove him wrong. Then nearly collapsed. Viktor caught me with a curse, slamming a hand against my uninjured side to keep me upright. Pain made the world flicker.
“Still standing,” I muttered .
“You’re a stubborn bastard.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“By me.”
“Usually.”
He dragged me inside before I could waste more blood on pride.
The corridors blurred. Marble. Shadows. Men moving aside. Someone asking if they should call a doctor. Viktor telling them to shut up before I had to.
Good. I wasn’t in the mood to kill my own men, but I wasn’t above it. Not today. Not after Emerald.
The underground medical room waited at the end of the hall, cold and sterile, smelling of antiseptic and old violence. Viktor shoved the door open and forced me toward the metal table in the center.
“I’m not lying down.”
“You are.”
“No.”
He turned on me then, eyes hard enough to almost amuse me .
“You want to save her?” he snapped. “Then stop acting like bleeding out makes you intimidating. You pass out, you’re useless. You die, she’s alone. Get on the table.”
Silence cut through the room. For half a second, all I could hear was the rain hammering against the high windows above. Then I sat. Not because he ordered me, because he was right. I hated him for it.
The moment my back hit the metal table, pain surged through me again.
My hand clamped around the edge hard enough to make the structure creak.
Viktor cut my ruined shirt open with medical shears.
The fabric peeled away from my skin wetly, dragging across the wound before falling in blood-soaked pieces to the floor.
His expression hardened.
“That bad?” I asked.
“No.”
“You’re lying.”
“Yes.”
I looked down. The wound sat high on the right side of my chest, just beneath the collarbone, ugly and swollen around the torn hole where the bullet had entered. Blood welled steadily from it, darker than it should have looked beneath the harsh overhead light.
No exit wound. The bullet was still inside me .
Viktor pressed gauze against the injury. The pain was immediate and vicious. My hand shot out and grabbed his forearm. He didn’t flinch.
“Let go,” he said.
“Stop pressing so hard.”
“Stop bleeding so much.” Despite everything, a bitter sound almost left me.
Viktor grabbed supplies from the cabinet beside him. Forceps, thread, gauze, a bottle of clear liquor because our family had always been more familiar with battlefield medicine than hospitals.
The sight should have unsettled me. It didn’t. Pain, I understood. Pain had rules. Emerald being gone had none.
Viktor poured alcohol over his hands first, then over the instruments. “You sure you don’t want anything?”
“I want Emerald.”
“I meant for pain.”
“I know what you meant.”
He looked at me for one long moment before nodding once. Then he poured the alcohol over the wound.
Agony hit so hard my body nearly came off the table.
My teeth sank into the inside of my cheek.
Blood filled my mouth instantly, but I held the sound back.
Barely. My fingers curled around the table edge while fire burned through my chest and shoulder, radiating down my arm in brutal waves.
Viktor grabbed my shoulder to hold me still.
“Don’t move.”
“ Dig it out !” I forced out.
The forceps entered the wound. Nothing in my life had prepared me for that sensation. Not beatings. Not broken bones. Not Lucien’s punishments disguised as lessons. This was different. This was invasive. Wrong. Metal searching through ruined flesh while every nerve screamed for escape.
A sound tore from me before I could stop it. Viktor’s grip tightened.
“Almost.”
“Don’t lie to me!”
“Fine. Not almost.”
“Viktor!”
“I’m trying not to tear you open worse.”
“Try faster!” His mouth flattened, but he obeyed. The pressure moved deeper. My vision flashed white.
For a second, I wasn’t in the medical room anymore. I was on the road again. Emerald’s hand stretched toward me. Rain in her hair. Terror in her eyes. Men dragging her away while my blood ran into the street .
My body went still beneath the pain. Not relaxed. Focused. Hatred poured through me with such clarity it became almost peaceful. I knew what I was going to do. I knew what I would become to get her back; and for once, I didn’t fear it.
“There,” Viktor said.
Metal clicked against something inside me.
The forceps shifted. Pain tore through my chest again, deep and blinding, then the pressure changed as he pulled.
The bullet came free covered in blood. Viktor dropped it into a metal tray with a sharp clink.
Such a small sound for something that had taken so much from me.
I stared at it. That little piece of metal had put me on my back. That little piece of metal had bought someone enough time to steal her.
Viktor moved quickly, packing the wound while fresh blood spilled around his fingers.
“Cauterizer,” I said.
“We should stitch—”
“Cauterizer.”
“You’re already pale as death.”
“Then color me back in with fire.”
He looked at me like I was insane. Maybe I was. Maybe I had been insane from the moment Emerald Deveraux looked at me with defiance instead of fear and something inside me answered.
Viktor heated the metal. The smell of it changed the air before it ever touched me. Sharp. Industrial. Violent. He reached for it, but I took it first.
His eyes narrowed. “Nikolai.”
“I’ll do it.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“Neither was getting shot.” He didn’t smile, neither did I.
My hand shook slightly around the instrument, not from fear but from blood loss.
I hated that he saw it. I hated that my body betrayed me in any way.
I hated that somewhere out there Emerald might be afraid, might be hurt, might be calling for me while I sat here unable to move without nearly collapsing.
So, I pressed the heated metal to my own flesh.
The pain was immediate. Savage. It tore through me with such force that a guttural sound ripped from my chest and slammed against the walls.
My back arched. My vision fractured. The smell of burned skin filled the room, thick and nauseating, smoke curling upward in thin gray ribbons. I kept it there long enough.
Viktor grabbed my wrist and ripped it away. “Enough! ”
For several seconds, I couldn’t speak. I could barely see.
Air dragged in and out of my lungs in ragged pulls while sweat and rainwater slid down my face.
My chest felt destroyed. My arm hung heavy and half-numb at my side, but the bleeding slowed.
Viktor bandaged me with efficient hands, wrapping gauze tightly enough that each pass stole a fraction more breath.
I let him. I didn’t argue. My mind had already left the room.
Whoever took Emerald had made a mistake. They thought the bullet would stop me. It had only removed everything civilized.
When Viktor finished, I swung my legs off the table. He stepped in front of me immediately. “No.”
“Move.”
“You need time.”
“She doesn’t have time.”
“You don’t know that.”
My eyes lifted to his. He stopped talking, because we both knew better. Men didn’t take women like Emerald gently. They didn’t take her to keep her comfortable. They took her because she mattered to someone powerful, and powerful men only valued what could be used.
Emerald was stubborn, proud. Mouthy enough to get herself killed if she decided fear was less tolerable than insult. The thought nearly broke something in me .
I gripped the edge of the table and stood. Pain slammed through me instantly. My knees threatened to fold. I didn’t let them. Viktor watched, furious and worried, though he would rather cut out his own tongue than admit the second part.
“You rip that open,” he said, “I’m not putting you back together again.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Unfortunately.”
I took one step. Then another. The room tilted slightly, but I held myself upright through pure violence of will.
“Did we get anything from the road?” I asked.
“Men are there now.”
“Shell casings?”
“Not yet.”
“Cameras?”
“Being pulled.”
“Vehicles?”
“We’re checking every route within twenty miles.”
“Double it. ”
I looked at him then. For the first time since he found me, something almost like approval moved through me. He knew me well enough to know grief wasn’t useful, action, violence, and answers were.
I reached for a clean black shirt from the cabinet, but lifting my arm sent fresh agony burning through my chest. Viktor took it from me and helped without asking permission. Smart. If he had asked, I would have refused.
The shirt slid over the bandages, dark enough to hide most of the blood already trying to seep through. Not enough. Nothing would ever be enough until Emerald was back.
Viktor handed me my gun. I checked the magazine with one hand. Full.
“What’s our move?” he asked.
I didn’t answer immediately, because every instinct in me wanted to tear through the city blind. Kick down doors. Drag men into basements. Put bullets in knees until someone gave me a name.
Emerald needed more than rage, she needed the truth, and the ugly truth was this: whoever had taken her might not have come for me first. They might have come because of her.
My pride rebelled against the thought before logic silenced it.
Roman would know enemies I didn’t. Roman would know who might risk taking his sister.
Roman would know what secrets had been buried deep enough that someone might dig them up now, and as much as I despised needing him, Emerald mattered more than my hatred.
That was the part that made my chest tighten worse than the wound.
I would walk into Roman Deveraux’s house bleeding, furious, half-broken, and I would ask the one man who had every reason to put a bullet in me to help me find the woman I had kidnapped.
Emerald was more important than pride. More important than revenge. More important than whatever war our families had been feeding for years.
Viktor studied my face carefully. He saw the decision before I said it.
His expression shifted. “You’re not going to like this.”
“No,” I said, reaching for my coat despite the pain carving through me. “I’m not.”
“Nikolai—”
“We need answers.”
“We’ll get them.”
“Not fast enough.”
The storm raged beyond the estate walls, but inside me something colder had already settled. I turned toward the door, every breath burning, every step threatening to drag me back down .
Still, I moved. For her. Only for her. Viktor followed without another word. At the threshold, I stopped and looked back at him.
“Get the car ready,” I said, voice low and lethal. “We need to go see Roman.”