18. Aria
ARIA
Daniel is in a coma for three days.
Three days that feel like three years. Three lifetimes of sitting beside his hospital bed and watching the machines breathe for him.
I don’t leave his side for even a moment.
The nurses bring me food and a cot, but I turn them both down.
They gently suggest that I take a break, just for an hour, just to clear my head.
But I refuse everything. What if Daniel wakes up and I’m not here? What if he opens his eyes and looks for me and I’m gone? What if the last thing he remembers before dying—my throat closes up when I think of that word—is that his mother wasn’t there?
I can’t. I won’t. So I sit in the chair beside his bed, holding his small hand in both of mine, and I talk to him.
Sometimes I tell him about the baby growing inside me and how he’s going to be the best big brother to his baby brother or sister. How his sibling is going to need him to teach them things, to protect them, and show them how much fun pirates and adventures are.
But mostly, I reminisce.
I remember Daniel as a newborn. How impossibly tiny he was, barely six pounds, with a shock of dark hair and those gray eyes that looked so much like Maksim’s even then.
He used to sleep on my chest, his small body rising and falling with my breathing.
He’d wrap his entire hand around my finger and hold on like I was his whole world.
I remember him at six months, when he first started sitting up on his own. He was so proud of his little party trick and he’d babble and laugh and reach for everything. Daniel loved banging pots and pans together, making noise that drove our neighbors in the tiny Philadelphia apartment crazy.
I remember his first birthday. Just the two of us in that cramped kitchen with a single cupcake with a candle because that’s all I could afford. He’d smashed his face into it, getting frosting everywhere, and I’d laughed until I cried because he was so perfect.
I remember him at two, when he started running everywhere. How he’d laugh this deep belly laugh when I chased him. How he called me “Mama” like it was the most important word in the world. He’d curl up in my lap for stories, his small body warm and solid on mine.
I remember every skinned knee I kissed better. Every nightmare I soothed away. Every fever I monitored through the night. Every milestone. Nearly eight years of memories. Nearly eight years of being his whole world and him being mine.
And now he’s lying in this bed, pale and still, tubes running into his small arms, a machine breathing for him because his body forgot how.
My eyes blur with tears. What if he never wakes up? What if the last conversation we had was me telling him to eat his pasta? What if I never hear his voice again, or see his smile, or get to hold him and tell him how much I love him?
How do I go on if I lose him? How do I wake up every morning knowing my son is gone? How do I raise this baby growing inside me while grieving the child I lost?
I can’t. The thought alone makes me want to stop breathing. So I hold his hand tighter and I talk to him more desperately and I beg him, please, baby, please come back to me.
Maksim is there too, on the other side of the bed.
He looks like death. There’s no other way to describe it.
His face is gaunt with hollow cheeks. The bruises from the car bomb have faded to sickly yellow-green, making his skin look jaundiced.
His gray eyes are bloodshot and shadowed with dark circles so deep they look like bruises. He’s lost weight from refusing to eat.
His dark hair is disheveled, with more gray than I remember, and he hasn’t shaved in days. The stubble on his jaw is thick and uneven, making him look older and more silver fox than anything. If this were a different time, I’d tell him how much I enjoy the scruff. But it’s not the time.
He moves like every breath hurts. I can see him wince when he shifts position, and how he braces his hand against his side when he stands.
But he refuses to rest or take the pain medication that would let him sleep. He needs to be here, just like I do.
On the second day, he breaks.
I’m telling Daniel about the time we went to the zoo when he was three years old and he got scared of the elephants. He’d hidden behind my legs and refused to look at them. I’m smiling at the memory, even though I’m crying because I don’t know if we’ll ever go to the zoo again.
Then I hear a sound from Maksim’s side of the bed. It’s a choked sob that he’s trying desperately to suppress. I look up to see him with his head in his hands, his broad shoulders shaking. His fingers are buried in his hair, gripping so hard it looks painful.
“It’s my fault.” His voice is muffled, breaking on every word.
“This is all my fault. You were safe in Philadelphia living as Sarah and Daniel Mitchell. No one knew who you were. No one could hurt you. And I—I dragged you back into this world. I found you and brought you here. I put targets on your backs.”
My heart breaks. “Maksim—” I start to say but Maksim shakes his head.
“He’s seven years old.” He looks up, devastation on his handsome face.
His eyes are red-rimmed and wet, his expression wracked with grief and guilt.
“He’s seven years old and he’s in a coma because I wanted my family back.
I was too selfish to let you go. I needed you both so badly that I didn’t care about the consequences. ”
“Stop,” I tell him as I reach across the bed, find his hand. It’s trembling. Tears pool in my eyes. “This is not your fault.”
“How is it not?” His voice rises, anguished. “If I’d just let you go and accepted that you were gone. If I’d moved on like a normal person instead of searching for eight years—”
“Alexander would have found us eventually. You know that.” I squeeze his hand hard enough to hurt, trying to ground him and make him hear me.
“He’s been planning this for eight years.
It was only a matter of time before he tracked us down, and if he’d found us without you there to protect us—” My voice breaks, the horror wrapping around me like a vice.
“We’d both be dead. At least this way we’re together and fighting back. ”
“He nearly died,” Maksim says hollowly. “Our son nearly died right in front of us, and I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t protect him. What kind of father can’t protect his own child?”
“The kind who’s fighting an enemy that’s been planning this for nearly a decade.
” I move around the bed and pull him into my arms. He resists at first, then collapses against me, his face buried in my shoulder.
I stroke his hair. “This is not your fault. It’s Alexander’s.
And when Daniel wakes up—” I have to believe it’s when, not if.
“When our son survives this, we’re going to make Alexander pay. Together.”
He nods against my shoulder, his whole body shaking with sobs he’s been holding back for days. I hold him while he breaks, one hand in his hair, the other rubbing circles on his back.
We stay like that for a long time. Two broken parents trying to hold each other together while our son lies unconscious between us.
On the second day, Nikolai visits.
He comes in quietly, almost hesitantly. I hear the door open and look up to see him standing in the doorway, and for a moment I barely recognize him.
Nikolai Sokolov is always impeccable and commanding, but right now, he looks…
diminished. His suit is rumpled, the tie loosened and askew.
His hair is mussed, like hasn’t combed it in days.
There are lines around his eyes and mouth that I’ve never noticed before, making him look older than his forty-five years.
When he looks at his nephew lying small and pale in the hospital bed, hooked up to machines, his expression cracks.
He walks to the foot of the bed slowly and stares at Daniel for a long moment, taking in the tubes running into his small arms, the ventilator breathing for him, and the rhythmic whoosh filling the silence.
Nikolai’s jaw clenches and his hands curl into fists at his sides. When he speaks, his voice is rough with an emotion I’ve never heard from him before.
“I was wrong.”
I want to tell him I told you so, but I don’t. Instead, I’m quiet.
“I was wrong about Alexander. Wrong to defend him for so long. I was wrong to doubt you, Aria.” He finally looks at me, and what I see in his cold gray eyes shocks me. It’s real, genuine guilt. “I was wrong to dismiss Maksim’s concerns and let my loyalty blind me to the truth.”
Maksim glances at me, his eyebrows knit together. “Brother—” he starts to say but Nikolai cuts him off with a wave of his arm.
“No. Let me say this.” Nikolai’s voice is hard, but there’s pain underneath, and he swallows heavily.
“I spent fifteen years trusting that man. Fifteen years believing he was loyal and I let that trust overrule what should have been obvious. Your girlfriend”—he looks at me—“tells me she witnessed him plotting treason and I called her a liar and manipulative. I all but called her a whore trying to turn you against your own organization.”
I flinch at the blunt assessment, but Nikolai doesn’t look away.
“I was wrong,” he says again. “And now an innocent child is paying the price for my arrogance.”
“He’s not just ‘an innocent child.’” I can’t keep the anger out of my voice, even though I’m too exhausted to really feel it. “He’s your nephew. Your blood. Daniel is family, and you let this happen because you couldn’t believe one of your trusted men would betray you.”
“You’re right.” Nikolai doesn’t make excuses which I appreciate. “And I’ll have to live with that every time I look at this boy for the rest of my life. I’ll know I failed to protect him when it mattered most.”
“So what now?” Maksim asks roughly, gazing at his brother sharply. “Guilt doesn’t fix this and apologies sure as hell don’t undo what happened.”