Nina #3
For one second, his eyes move over Misha’s injuries, and I see the calculation happen. Where he is bleeding. How fast. How much time.
Then Luka tears off his jacket and presses it hard against Misha’s side.
Misha groans.
“Stay with me,” Luka says.
Misha’s eyes shift toward him. “You’re late.”
Luka’s mouth tightens. “Complain when you’re not bleeding on my floor.”
“Not your floor,” Misha breathes.
“Everything is my floor right now,” Luka says.
I would laugh if I were not shaking.
Pavel appears nearby. “Meredith is on the run.”
Across the warehouse, near a side door behind the crates, Meredith slips through the chaos. She has lost her neatness now. Her hair is falling loose, and there is blood on her sleeve. She looks back once.
Our eyes meet. Then she disappears through the door.
Luka’s hand goes to his gun.
For one second, I know he is going after her.
He wants to.
Every part of him wants to chase her down.
“Luka,” I say.
He looks at me.
Then Misha makes a weak choking sound under his hand.
The decision hits Luka’s face like pain.
He turns to Pavel. “Send men after her. Alive if possible. Dead if necessary.”
Pavel nods and runs.
Luka stays. He stays with us.
That breaks something in me.
Because I know what it costs him.
I know he wants Meredith. I know he wants answers. I know he wants revenge.
But he stays.
He presses both hands against Misha’s wound and looks at Sergei as he rushes over.
“Medical kit,” Luka says. “Now. Call Mirov. Tell him gunshot wound, severe blood loss, possible internal damage. We are not waiting for an ambulance.”
Sergei moves.
Dima shouts orders from somewhere behind us.
The remaining men are being dragged down, disarmed, zip-tied, kicked away from weapons. Someone is screaming. Someone else is begging. I hear none of it properly.
I only hear Misha breathing.
Each breath is a fight.
“Misha,” I say. “Stay awake.”
His eyes open a little. “I’m tired,” he whispers.
“No,” I say immediately. “No, you don’t get to be tired. You are not allowed.”
“Yes. And you still have to listen to me.”
Luka presses harder on the wound.
Misha groans again, then his eyes roll back slightly.
“No,” I say, panic rising. “No, no, no. Misha.”
Luka leans closer. “Hale.”
No response.
“Misha,” Luka says, louder. “Look at me.”
Misha’s eyelids move, but they don’t open.
My hands shake over Luka’s. “Do something.”
“I am,” Luka says.
“Do more.”
His eyes meet mine for one second. He does not snap. He does not tell me to calm down. He just says, “I will.”
Sergei drops the medical kit beside him.
Luka rips it open and works fast, too practiced. Gauze. Pressure wrap. Something to pack the wound. Sergei helps. Dima covers them. One of the men brings a stretcher from the SUV.
I stay by Misha’s head, touching his face with trembling fingers.
His skin is too cold.
“Misha,” I whisper. “Please.”
Luka says, “We move him now.”
They lift him.
Misha does not wake.
I stand too fast and nearly fall.
Luka catches me with one arm.
“I’m coming,” I say.
“Yes,” Luka says.
His voice is hard, immediate. No argument.
He keeps one hand around my waist as we move, but his eyes never stop scanning the warehouse. Even now, even with me shaking against him, he is looking for another threat.
Outside, the cold air hits my face.
The warehouse yard is full of movement. Cars. Men. Weapons. Someone shouting into a phone. Oleg’s men on the ground. Luka’s team clearing the edges.
They load Misha into the back of the SUV.
Sergei climbs in with him, keeping pressure on the wound.
I try to follow, but Luka stops me for one second.
“Look at me,” he says.
“I need to go with him.”
“You will,” he says. “Look at me first.”
I look at him. That’s when I really see him.
There is blood on his shirt. Some of it is not his. Some of it might be. His shoulder has reopened again. His face is hard, but his eyes are not.
His eyes are terrified. For me. For Misha.
For everything he almost lost.
My own fear breaks loose all at once.
I grab him.
He catches me against him so tightly it hurts, but I don’t care. I hold on to him like if I let go, the warehouse will take me back. My face presses into his chest. His arms close around me, one hand on the back of my head, careful of the injury even now.
“I thought I was too late,” Luka says against my hair. His voice is rough.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “I tried to text you.”
“I got it.”
I frown. “How?”
“It was just her name.”
“I was using speech to text. I said her name in shock—that must have triggered…”
He laughs in disbelief. “Fucking hell.”
“And you got everything from that one word?” I ask.
He looks at me solemnly. “Not everything, but enough, I knew something was wrong.”
My heart squeezes. “I was so scared,” I say.
His hand cups my face. “You survived,” he says.
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one I care about right now.”
I let out a broken breath.
Behind us, Sergei shouts, “We need to move.”
Luka looks toward the SUV, then back at me.
I grab his shirt. “He has to live.”
“He will,” Luka says.
“You don’t know that.”
“No,” he says. “But I’m going to behave like it is true until it becomes true.”
That sounds so much like him that I almost cry again.
I press my forehead to his chest. “I love you.”
The words come out before I can think. Luka goes completely still.
For one terrible second, I think I have said it at the worst possible time.
Then his hand slides into my hair.
He tilts my face up. “What did you say?”
I swallow. “Don’t make me repeat it while Misha is bleeding in your car.”
His mouth moves like he almost smiles, but it does not reach his eyes. He is too shaken for that.
“I love you,” he says.
My breath catches.
He says it again, lower. “I love you, Nina. I should have said it before tonight. I should have said it before you had to wonder what you were to me.”
I stare at him.
The warehouse noise fades for half a second. Not gone. Just pushed back by the one thing I did not think he would give me here, now, like this.
I touch his face. “You picked a terrible time.”
“I know.”
“Misha is going to murder you if he wakes up and hears this.”
“When he wakes up,” Luka says.
I nod quickly, because I need that correction. “When he wakes up.”
Luka kisses me once, his lips ghosting over mine as if to make sure I’m still here.
Just enough to make it real.
Then he pulls back and helps me into the SUV beside Misha. Luka climbs in after me.
The door slams.
Sergei shouts at the driver.
The vehicle tears out of the warehouse yard.
I take Misha’s cold hand in both of mine.
Luka sits beside me, one arm around my shoulders, his other hand pressing fresh gauze against Misha’s wound.
Nobody speaks for a few seconds.
Then Luka says, quietly enough that only I hear, “I have you.”
I lean into him, still shaking. “I know.”
And for the first time all night, despite the blood, despite Meredith escaping, despite Misha fighting for every breath beside us, I believe him.