25. Timur
TIMUR
Dr. Levin works quietly at Kira's bedside while I pace the fucking floor.
I'm so furious with Morin right now, I sent him home after I bloodied his face.
Dryden had to pull me off the man so I didn't kill him myself with my bare hands.
I don't even know what came over me. When I saw him strangling her, I snapped.
No one touches what belongs to me, not even the man who saved my life.
The doctor tilts her head to one side and examines the bruising, pressing gently along the line of her jaw.
She's unconscious, but every few seconds, her eyelids flutter like she's trying to come back but can't quite get there.
I'm not sure what to even think about all of this.
I was so angry and hurt about her lying to me and the shame it made me feel, it was like my heart put my true feelings for her aside until I saw her suffocating.
Then everything inside me knew how badly I'd be hurting if she were gone, and I mentally freaked out. My knuckles still hurt from where I beat him so hard, he couldn't open his eyes.
"She fainted from shock," Dr. Levin says without looking up.
"The bruising is significant, but there's no structural damage.
Her airway is clear. She'll have pain and swelling for a week or two and her voice will be rough for a few days, but she'll recover.
" He drapes his stethoscope around his neck and straightens, turning to me. "Who did this?"
I scowl, feeling foolish over all of this.
I don't know what to do with her at all.
I can't have her—she's a Mirov. And if her family is coming for us, Roman will expect us to defend ourselves against all of them.
Morin may have had the right idea by trying to stop her from telling her uncle about our plan to surprise them, but my heart knows killing her isn't going to happen. How do you kill the woman you love?
"Thank you, Doc," I tell him, ignoring his question. He has enough dirt on our family to sustain him a lifetime. He doesn't need to know our internal drama too.
He frowns, probably because he's a mandatory reporter. Turning a blind eye to fighters who injure themselves doing illegal things is one thing. Ignoring the assault of an innocent woman is another entirely. By law, if he knows and says nothing, he can be in just as much trouble as Morin.
After a tense moment where he scowls at me, he picks up his bag and walks out of the room.
I hear his car start in the driveway a minute later.
I never got the chance to call Roman to tell him who she really is and now things are even messier.
Morin was set to remove this problem from existence, but I stopped him because my stupid heart is so fucking wound up in a mess over her that I can't think straight.
God, I'm so stupid.
I pace until I see her stirring. Her eyes flutter more and then her fingers curl and when she finally opens her eyes, I walk to her bedside, not sure what to say.
I stand over her as she wakes slowly, coughing and reaching for the cup of water, so I pick it up and help her sip.
Then I set it down and step back. Being so close to her makes me feel a wild swing of emotions between the urge to pull her into my chest where I know she'll be safe and the urge to scream at her for how bad this whole situation has gone and all her lies.
"Please," she croaks, just above a whisper. "Tim..." Her hand reaches for mine, but I don’t reach back. Doing so would send the wrong signal, or maybe the right signal—I'm not sure right now.
She pushes herself up slowly until she's leaning against the headboard, wincing with each movement.
She pulls the blanket up to her chest and wraps her arms around herself, but when she breathes, she wheezes and coughs more.
I see the recognition in her eyes and humility.
But no fear... She's never been afraid of me after that first night.
"Kira—"
"Tim, please..." She coughs again, and I can see the pain it causes as she winces.
Then as she speaks, her voice is more hoarse than I thought, and she can barely speak.
"When I called my uncle, he told me that Morin's been working for the Mirovs for years...
I think he was telling Victor how you run your fights.
It was innocent stuff at first, but Victor caught him skimming off profits. "
Her head thumps against the headboard as she rests it but her eyes stay locked on mine.
It must cost her so much energy to talk, because her eyes roll back in her head.
My fingers itch to pluck the loose strands of hair off her face and curl them around her ears and bring her lips to mine for a kiss, but my heart still feels conflicted.
"That's a hell of an accusation," I tell her calmly, resisting the urge to sit beside her.
"It's the truth and I know he has proof of it.
" Her mouth opens, and she touches the corner of her lip with her tongue, wincing and slowly closing up again.
I watch her throat work and try to decide whether I believe her.
I know Morin. I've known him for decades.
If he was doing something like that, I'd know, right?
"I don't trust the word of an enemy," I say plainly, and in doing so I realize I'm admitting I don't trust her, either. And I have every right not to. She's done nothing but lie.
It takes her several heaving breaths, but she manages to work up the strength to say, "I don't know what hold that man has over you but—"
"He saved my life." My jaw tightens and I narrow my eyes at her. She can't possibly understand why I will defend Morin to my dying breath. Without him, I'd have died.
"Well, he almost took mine." The air scrapes through her bruised trachea and it makes me grimace this time.
He did almost kill her, twice, apparently, and I'm not sure how to handle that, either.
She isn't a Kuzin, but I had claimed her, whether or not I'd told anyone else.
In my heart she was already mine. And Morin almost took that back.
After all these years of my being loyal.
Does that make us even?
"I'm asking you to consider the possibility that both things can be true. That he saved your life once and has been profiting off it ever since."
Not one person in my family has ever challenged my loyalty to Morin because they all know what he did for me. Roman has come the closest, but understandably so. He's our leader, and he watches out for us.
Kira's fingers reach for me again, then tap the mattress when I don't so much as look at them. I know she wants that connection we share. My heart feels the pull too, but who am I if I turn my back on my best friend and let our enemies wreak havoc on my family?
"Morin killed Dracon, Tim, not my brother. It wasn't a drive by. And he strapped the bomb to my cousin's chest and sent him into the club so you'd think Victor was attacking you guys. Victor has proof... You just have to call him and listen to what he says."
I close my eyes and see that man's terrified face, and I knew right then he was forced to do that.
No one willingly straps a bomb to their own chest and gets that scared to die when it's time to walk it out.
Someone forced him, but I thought it was Victor Mirov.
But if the man who died was a Mirov, why would Victor do that? She's starting to make too much sense.
"Morin was shot in that drive-by. He took a bullet in the shoulder." I feel my defenses slipping. She's chipping away at my reality and I don't like it one bit.
"A through and through in the left shoulder that missed every major artery by two centimeters. That's a very convenient wound, Tim. Just bad enough to look real, just clean enough to heal fast."
Her eyes are fixed on me now, head rising and looking steadier the longer she's awake.
But that purple ring around her neck is just more damning evidence against the man I'm trying to defend.
She's fucking right. Morin could very well have shot himself in his own shoulder to make it look like someone killed Dracon, and we cleaned that mess up before cops could even take a bullet out to run ballistics.
We don't know whose weapon fired that shot at all.
"I know you don’t trust me, but I can prove all of this to you...
" Her fingers reach up at me and I sigh.
If I touch her, all my fucking defenses will come down and I'll crash into her.
It hurts being this close, knowing she's hurting, and not comforting her.
But I don't know if she's lying or not. "Give me your phone, Tim. "
"Why?" I hate that she's using a pet name, because it makes her seem all the more believable. I don’t want to believe her. I want my world to be stable. But I won’t ignore the truth if it's presented.
And maybe that's what's wrong. Something tells me she's got the truth, and I don’t want to hear it because it means I have to do something about it.
"Because I want you to call my uncle and hear it from him..." Her eyes plead with me and she says, "He's been working with Morin for years."
I pull my phone from my pocket and hold it out to her, not sure what I'm getting myself into.
She takes it from my hand and types in a number, then hands it back.
This seems like a very bad idea. I'm about to send a strike team in to kill the leadership of this whole family based on solid intel.
I saw those images and videos. I know Victor Mirov is our enemy.
He always has been. But I sigh and look up at her again.
"Call him. Put it on speaker. Ask him whatever you want." Kira's determination never wavers. "I promise you, I’m not lying."
My thumb hovers over the call button and every instinct in my body is telling me not to do this.
Calling Victor Mirov is crossing a line I can't uncross.
It's acknowledging that the woman in my bed might be telling the truth, which means acknowledging that my best friend might be a traitor, which means acknowledging that everything I've done for the past two months has been built on a lie that Morin constructed.
But the alternative is not trusting the woman I very much love, no matter how angry I am with her. And it means her certain death when Roman finds out the lies she's spun and how utterly we've had to destroy her family. So I press the call button and wait for it to dial through.
Every cell in my body is strung tighter than a guitar string while it rings, and when he picks up, I grit my teeth. Every life this man is accused of taking flashes before my eyes as he speaks, and the simmering anger in my chest comes to a full boil.
"Kira?"
"This is Timur Kuzin," I growl, but he grows very quiet, very quickly. My eyes lock with Kira's as she speaks.
"Uncle Victor, I'm here, and I'm safe..." Her tone is so soft, almost angelic. It threatens to undo me.
And when Victor speaks again, his tone has shifted. "I was wondering when you'd call, Mr. Kuzin."
"Your niece tells me Morin Melnik has been working for you.
" I hold Kira's gaze, which is steady, but growing more compassionate.
In all of this, she just wanted to survive.
Kazimir was right. She just got scared. She wasn't trying to purposefully deceive me.
And now she wants the truth to come out, enough so that she's willing to risk my being angry with her to actually expose the facts.
"Mr. Kuzin, it appears you don't realize when you have an enemy in your own camp.
Mr. Melnik has been an informant for me within your organization for a number of years, and when I caught him stealing from me, he knew his days were numbered...
" He pauses then says, "Kira, sweetheart, are you sure you're safe? "
"Yes, dyadyushka, I'm okay."
Hearing the affection between them makes this worse. Kira is willing to put her life on the line for this man, and she trusts him too, which means maybe he'll come after us or maybe she's right, and I should be looking at Morin more skeptically.
"Do you have physical proof of all of the accusations your niece has launched against my friend?" My chest is hammering. My head is spinning. It feels like my world is unraveling.
"Most of the things Morin has done, yes.
A few of them, no... But his evil speaks for itself.
I would like the killing to stop. I have no problem with the Kuzin organization whatsoever, though I could see how my buying of your secrets would be worthy of some disdain...
" He pauses, and I hear him drag on a cigar.
"Stop the senseless violence and I will provide whatever proofs you require. We can put an end to this."
My thumb touches the end call button and I lock my phone, sliding it into my pocket while staring into the eyes of the most beautiful woman in the world. I will not take the word of my enemy, but I will not sanction more killing until I've seen his proof.
And Kira Mirov may well have just saved her own life, but she’s opened a hornet's nest in mine.