17. Maksim #3
The nurse—Ludmila—is already preparing injections, her movements quick and precise. The other nurse—Yuri—is setting up an IV line in Daniel’s small arm, finding the vein on the first try despite Daniel’s thrashing.
“Heart rate is dropping,” Yuri says, his voice tight. “BP sixty over forty and falling. Respiratory rate severely depressed.”
“Push the atropine.” Dr. Petrov injects something into Daniel’s IV line. “Come on, kid. Fight this. You’re strong. Come on.”
Daniel’s convulsions are slowing as his body goes still.
That’s so much worse because that doesn’t mean the poison is losing. It means the poison is winning.
“He’s crashing!” Ludmila’s voice rises with urgency. “No pulse! I’m not getting a pulse!”
“Start CPR.” Dr. Petrov is on his knees in an instant, beginning chest compressions on my son’s small chest. His hands look huge against Daniel’s tiny ribcage. “One, two, three, four—”
I’m completely frozen, watching a stranger perform CPR on my seven-year-old son. Watching Daniel’s chest compress and release with each thrust. Watching his still chest and lifeless body.
This isn’t real. This can’t be real.
Aria is screaming. Someone is trying to hold her back—one of the guards—but she’s fighting with inhuman strength, clawing and kicking, trying to get to Daniel.
“Let me go! That’s my baby! Daniel! Danny, Mama’s here! Please wake up! Please!”
Her voice breaks into incoherent sobbing, and the sound tears something fundamental in my chest.
“Clear!” Dr. Petrov uses the portable defibrillator, pressing the paddles to Daniel’s chest. Daniel’s body jerks violently and Aria screams again. “No pulse. Continuing compressions. Ludmila, push another round of epi.”
The nurse injects something else into the IV and Dr. Petrov keeps doing compressions, counting under his breath.
“Please.” I don’t realize I’m speaking until I hear my own voice, broken and desperate. “Please, he’s seven years old. He likes pirates and dinosaurs and his stuffed rabbit. Please don’t let him die. He’s my son. He’s my little boy. Please—”
“Pulse!” Yuri’s voice cracks with relief. “We have a pulse!”
But Daniel’s not breathing on his own and Dr. Petrov starts bagging him, forcing air into his lungs manually with a mask and bag valve.
“Prepare for intubation,” Ludmila says, already pulling out equipment.
“Not yet. Let’s see if—” Dr. Petrov checks something, his fingers on Daniel’s neck. “Breathing is shallow but present. He’s fighting. Good job, kid. Come on, Daniel. Keep fighting.”
They work for what feels like hours but is probably only minutes. More injections. More IV fluids. Constant monitoring of his vitals. Dr. Petrov’s hands never stop moving, checking, adjusting, and treating.
Finally—finally—Dr. Petrov sits back on his heels. His scrubs are soaked with sweat. “He’s stabilized,” he declares. “For now.”
“For now?” Aria’s voice is hoarse from her screaming. She’s broken free from the guard holding her and is crawling toward Daniel on her hands and knees. “What does that mean? Is he going to be okay?”
“The neurotoxin is still in his system.” Dr. Petrov looks at us with compassion. “We’ve counteracted the worst of it, but his body needs time to process what’s left. His organs took a significant hit—particularly his heart and lungs. The seizures were severe.”
“Will he be okay?” I manage to ask, even though I’m terrified of the answer.
“I don’t know.” The honesty is devastating.
“We won’t know if there’s permanent damage until he wakes up.
There may be brain damage from oxygen deprivation and/or organ damage from the toxin.
We won’t know the extent until—” He stops and swallows heavily.
“I need to place him in a medically-induced coma. It’ll give his organs a chance to recover without the stress of consciousness and reduce the metabolic demand on his system. ”
“If.” Aria’s voice is barely a whisper. “You said ‘if he wakes up.’”
Dr. Petrov’s face shows his sympathy, but he doesn’t lie. “Yes. If.”
They move Daniel to the compound’s medical facility, which is a fully-equipped hospital wing in the east section of the compound that Nikolai maintains for emergencies exactly like this. It has everything: surgical suites, ICU rooms, imaging equipment, and a fully-stocked pharmacy.
Everything except a guarantee that my son will survive.
They put Daniel in a private room with glass walls so the medical staff can monitor him constantly. They hook him up to more machines than I can count—heart monitor, oxygen saturation, blood pressure, and IV pumps delivering medications I can’t pronounce.
They intubate him, threading a tube down his throat to help him breathe. The ventilator makes a rhythmic whooshing sound that will haunt my nightmares.
Daniel looks so small in the hospital bed.
So impossibly small and fragile. His face is pale except for the bluish tint that still lingers around his lips.
His chest rises and falls with mechanical precision, aided by the machine breathing for him.
There are bruises forming on his chest from the CPR.
Small, round bruises in the shape of Dr. Petrov’s fingers.
Proof that my son died and his heart stopped. We almost lost him.
Aria refuses to leave his bedside. She’s been sitting in the same chair for six hours now, holding Daniel’s small hand in both of hers, silently crying as she gazes upon our son.
She hasn’t spoken or eaten. She hasn’t moved except to occasionally stroke Daniel’s hair.
I stand on the other side of the bed, one hand resting on Daniel’s head, my fingers buried in his dark hair. My other hand is braced against the bed rail because my ribs are screaming in pain, but I don’t care.
This is my son. My solnyshko. My little sun.
And someone tried to murder him in my own brother’s compound. In the safest place we have with guards outside and vetted staff and every precaution imaginable.
Someone got to him anyway.
“Maksim.” Nikolai appears in the doorway, his face carved from stone, but I can see the fury in his eyes. The guilt. “We need to talk.”
I don’t want to leave my son for even a second, but I need to understand how this happened so I can make sure it never happens again.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Aria, pressing a kiss to her hair.
She doesn’t respond. It’s like she doesn’t even seem to hear me. She keeps staring at Daniel’s face, her lips moving in what might be prayer.
Nikolai and I step into the hallway. The medical facility is quiet except for the beeping of monitors and the soft footsteps of nurses checking on Daniel.
As soon as the door closes behind us, I grab my brother by the front of his shirt and slam him against the wall hard enough to rattle the artwork.
“How.” I snarl, my voice vibrating with barely controlled rage. “How did this happen in your fortress? You promised me this was the safest place. You promised me my family would be protected here!”
“The food was clean.” Nikolai doesn’t fight back or defend himself. He just meets my eyes with his own fury and guilt. “We tested everything before it was served. Every dish. The pasta, the sauce, the bread, the water, the plates themselves. All of it came back clean.”
I swear violently. “Then how—”
“Daniel’s plate was contaminated. Specifically his plate.
No one else’s.” Nikolai’s jaw is tight, a muscle ticking near his temple.
“Someone coated the ceramic with a contact poison that activated when it mixed with saliva and stomach acid. It’s nearly undetectable without very specific testing protocols. ”
I release Nikolai and step back. My hands are shaking. “Who had access to the plates?”
“Kitchen staff. Service staff. Guards who patrol the kitchen area. Security personnel who monitor the food preparation.” His face darkens. “Too many people. Even with the vetting and the security protocols, there were too many potential points of entry.”
I start to pace, my mind racing. “What kind of poison?”
“The lab is still analyzing samples from Daniel’s blood work. But based on the symptoms and the speed of action, Dr. Petrov thinks it’s a military-grade neurotoxin. Possibly VX or something similar. The same class of compounds Corsican assassins have used in the past.”
I freeze. Alexander.
Alexander got to my son in Nikolai’s fortress. In the place we thought was impenetrable.
“Every staff member is being detained and questioned as we speak,” Nikolai says. “I’ve locked down the entire compound. Nothing goes in or out until we find who did this.”
“I want to do the questioning,” I tell Nikolai harshly. “Personally.”
Nikolai frowns. “Maksim—”
“That’s my son in there and hooked up to machines!
” I blow up at Nikolai. “My son is maybe dying or brain-damaged beyond repair!” I’m in Nikolai’s face now and my brother doesn’t flinch at my rage.
“I want to look the person who did this in the eye before I kill them. That is non fucking negotiable.”
Nikolai studies me for a long moment. Then he nods slowly. “Basement interrogation rooms. Two hours. We’ll have the primary suspects ready.”
I shake my head, my whole body tingling with the force of my anger. “All of them,” I rasp. “I want to see all of them.”
My brother raises an eyebrow. “It’s forty-three people.”
“Then it’ll be a long night.” I turn back toward Daniel’s room. “Get them ready. I’ll be there in two hours.”
I go back inside to my son’s bedside and resume holding his small hand. I pray to the god of my childhood, the one I gave up when I was old enough to understand this was all bullshit.
I’m back to making promises I intend to keep.
Someone is going to die for this.
And I’m going to make it hurt.
The interrogation takes twelve hours.
Nikolai has them set up in the basement, which is a series of rooms that were built during Prohibition for storing illegal liquor but have since been converted into something far less innocent. They’re soundproofed and reinforced with drains in the floor and walls that can be hosed down.