29. Thea
THEA
“Rappaport,” Maxim says, and the name’s an order. “The cottage. Now, run,” and two men are gone out the ruined door before the sentence finishes leaving him.
Klaus blinks back into existence. “Dad, I’m fine.”
He’s not fine.
Klaus is on the floor where he slid, propped against the desk leg. One hand is pressed to the red spreading across his shirt. He’s doing the most Klaus thing I’ve ever seen him do, which is lie about it.
“It went through, it’s fine, check on—” He nods at Pasha, and his voice is thinner than he wants it. “Check on him first. He’s worse.”
Just a blink, one long slow blink, and Max’s face absorbs that the son who sold him out took a bullet meant for me.
No time for sentiment, though. I’m already past both of them, on my knees in the blood at Pasha. Galina has both hands stacked on his stomach, pressing with all her weight, and the blood’s coming up between her fingers anyway.
Her voice trembles. “I cannot stop.”
His face has gone grayish. His eyes are open and moving but slow, like a man underwater looking up at the light.
“It’s not even slowing with pressure,” Galina says, and her voice cracks. The crack in it scares me worse than all the blood on the rug, because I trust her instincts. “I press and I press, and it does not slow. Thea, it does not slow.”
Lev drops down across from me. He shrugs off his suit jacket, balls it, and shoves it under Galina’s hands for more pressure. His movements have a competence that surprises me, fast and certain, checking Pasha’s pulse at the throat with two fingers. Then he tilts his chin to open the airway.
Lev has done this before.
“Entry low, no exit,” Lev says, flat and rapid. “He’s bleeding inside where I cannot press. Rappaport has to stop it. We only have to keep him breathing until he gets here.”
“How can I help?”
Lev looks at me. “Talk to him. Keep him with us. His body wants to leave, and your job is to give it a reason to stay.”
“How—what do I do—”
“His head. Off the cold floor. Now.”
I get my thighs under Pasha’s head and lift it into my lap, out of the blood, and his skull is heavy. His hair’s damp with what I tell myself is sweat.
I push it back off his forehead the way I would a child’s, both hands, over and over, and I bend down close to his gray face and start talking. “Hey. Hey, Pasha, look at me. It’s me, it’s your worst chess student.”
He almost smiles at that.
“You don’t get to leave, okay? We have a rematch scheduled.”
“Rematch? But I just won.”
“Not yet. You still owe me a real explanation of the Sicilian thing. You can’t just die owing me the Sicilian thing. It’s bad luck and incredibly rude—”
His eyes drift and find me. Something in them warms, way down, under the fear and the fading. “Thea. You are terrible at chess. I try to teach, but…” He almost shakes his head.
“I know,” I say, half laugh, half sob. “I know I am. That’s why you have to stay, to keep teaching me. Nobody else has the patience.”
“I try…”
I keep stroking his hair, my tears falling on his face, and I don’t care. “Stay with me, okay? Doctor’s coming right now.”
“Can I tell you something?” His voice has gone strange, scratchy and far away. His eyes are on my face but also somewhere past it. Somewhere I can’t see. “I’ve to tell you something, and you cannot tell anyone, alright? A secret. Just for you.”
“Okay. Okay, tell me. But you have to keep talking to tell me, so keep talking. If you stay here, I won’t tell anyone your secret. Deal?”
“The chess.” A small breath. “Our games. The garden. That’s the most fun I’ve ever had with a woman. In my whole life, Thea.”
I can’t believe this is what he’s talking about now. “Your big secret is that you’re a virgin?”
His mouth moves toward a smile. “I’m no virgin, Thea—”
“I didn’t mean it as an insult. It’s fine, no judgment from me—”
“But I’ve never been with a woman.”
He’s not making any sense. But I’m not arguing with a dying man. “Whatever you are, it’s okay, Pasha. You’ve been—”
“I like men.” He says it to the ceiling like he has forgotten the study is full of people. “I’ve always liked men. I could say it never. Not to anyone, not in the bratva, so I never did. Thirty-nine years, and I never said it out loud one time.”
My heart rends. I don’t even know what to say. All that lost time, all for nothing. “Pasha, I’m sure it’s okay—”
His eyes float back to me, unfocused. “But you are my friend. That was real.”
“Yes, I am. It is real, and I need you to fight to stay with me. Please, Pasha.” I don’t have room for what he’s telling me.
Not now. Some part of me takes it in whole, because right now every ounce of me is aimed at one thing.
Keeping his eyes open and his voice going, and the confession is proof the voice is still working, even if mine beats against my throat.
“You have to stay, because I need to fix you up with the cute baker I know on my old street. What’s your type? Tell me everything.”
Another near smile. “Can’t date. Maxim would hate me.”
“Oh, bullshit!”
Rappaport rushes through the door, coat over pajamas, with his bag already open. He quickly surveys the room, then kneels by Pasha, his hands moving as he drops to his knees. “Keep him talking,” he snaps at me, not looking up, cutting Pasha’s shirt away. “Whatever you are doing, do not stop.”
I nod. “Remember the river? The Susquehanna? We’re going to go fishing there. Maybe you can bring your baker boyfriend, too. What do you think?”
He winces when Rappaport does something to him, then sighs like the pain faded fast. “No boyfriend. I fish with you.”
“Fine, fine. But when you get a boyfriend, we’ll all go fishing together. And target practice on my sister’s fence.”
“It’s… it’s so bright in here.”
It’s not. Not at all. I’m not even sure how Rappaport is seeing what he’s doing.
“I’m going to beat you at chess one day soon, you know?”
He tries to laugh, but then he winces, and his eyes go back to seeing nothing. But he still breathes.
I gently brush his damp hair away from his forehead, glancing out of the corner of my eye to see Rappaport hurriedly and grimly working on him—packing something and calling for assistance. Meanwhile, Pasha’s eyes remain fixed on me. Keep my gaze steady. Stay—
His body suddenly jerks, arching forcefully, producing a sound felt in my spine. His back lifts off the floor against Rappaport’s grip.
And then he goes still.
Still like a dropped thing. His eyes are open, and they are not looking at me anymore. The hand I didn’t even know I was holding goes loose and heavy in mine.
“No,” I hear myself say, from very far away. “No, no, Pasha, no—”
“Move your hands.” Rappaport pushes me back, tearing off the last piece of shirt. His palms slam onto Pasha’s chest as he starts, forceful and relentless, pressing down with all his weight.
I stumble back on my heels, both bloody hands covering my mouth, while Galina’s arm wraps around me tightly. We cling to each other on the bloody rug as a man tries to force another man back into himself.
Compressions. A breath. Compressions.
Pasha’s body jerks, a helpless doll flopping at Rappaport’s demands. Then he coughs, wet and enormous, taking in a breath of a horrible, beautiful rattling sound. His eyes flutter and roll, searching for something, and he is breathing.
Rappaport briefly sinks to his heels for a moment and exhales as if lifting a burden. “There you are. Stay.”
My lungs stretch my ribs to full. My first breath in years.
Suddenly, the room floods back—the sounds, firelight, and the scent of blood. I find myself sobbing into Galina’s shoulder, her firm hand resting on my head. Pasha is alive, breathing. He’ll stay my patient and sweet friend.
I refuse to let go of that tonight, no matter what. I bark, “Do not scare me like that again, do you hear me?”
Then, the EMTs rush in, forming a wall of readiness with radios, stretchers, and a professional air, transforming the study into a scene of straps, shouted numbers, and lifting.
They prioritize Pasha first, Rappaport quickly communicating the handoff with concise, practiced language, an IV inserted even before he’s fully lifted.
Klaus, still conscious and gray, finds his father’s face as they lift the stretcher and whispers something to him—an exchange I don’t catch, but Maxim does. Whatever was said changes Maxim’s expression.
As I follow out, red and white lights flood the house through the windows, casting alternating hues over the walls. In the courtyard, it’s chaos and cold air and two ambulances. And if I’m not mistaken, another body.
A squishy one.
Maxim has my hand, gripping it, pulling me toward the one they’re loading Klaus into. “Come with me. Both of them, we go together—”
“Only one extra per unit,” an EMT says, flat, already moving. “One rides with each. That’s it, we’re rolling.”
Maxim stops, and I watch the tear happen in him, his son in one ambulance and me at his side but only one seat in each.
I make it simple for him. “Go with Klaus. He stepped in front of a bullet for me, Max. Go be with your son. I’ve got Pasha, I promise you, I won’t leave him for one second.”
Something breaks and steadies in his face at the same time, grief and gratitude at once.
And a love so naked I can’t look away. He cups my jaw, his thumb rough along my cheekbone, and everything he cannot say pours through his eyes instead.
I kiss his palm, and then he lets me go, and he climbs up into the ambulance beside his son.
I climb up beside Pasha and take his cold hand in both of mine. Galina and Lev are already peeling off toward the cars to follow. Maxim’s men move with them.
“You’re doing so well,” I tell Pasha, over the EMT’s shoulder, as I climb in after them. “You’re doing so well, and I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
The doors pull shut, and the last thing I see through the narrowing gap is Klaus’s ambulance, driving away with my savior and the man I love. I don’t want to watch them drive ahead of us, but I can’t look away. Not yet.
What if the driver is on Alexei’s payroll? What if both ambulance drivers are? What if—