44. Maksim
Maksim
I’m propped against the headboard of the narrow bed in the med room, with my ribs wrapped and a warm feeling spreading through my veins.
The doctor shot me up with a painkiller against my protests.
He apparently listens to my wife now. She is apparently more terrifying than me.
I’m apparently too injured to have a say.
And I love her even more for it, and it has zero to do with the honey sliding through my veins and dulling the pain.
Lila stands at the foot of the bed with her arms crossed over her chest, and her jaw set so hard that I see the muscle ticking in her cheek.
She’s got blood on her clothes that isn’t hers.
Her hair is wild. Her eyes are red-rimmed and blazing, and she hasn’t stopped crying since they brought me in.
She’s mad as hell and crying through it.
She looks like she went to war.
I think about my mother. She had that same quality—fury and love wound so tightly together that you couldn’t separate them. My mother loved each of us fiercely. I remember the first time that Nikolai got stabbed. She’d cried and shouted at him while she cleaned his wound.
She would have loved Lila.
“You look terrible,” Lila says.
“Feel terrible.”
Her eyes flash with anger even as another tear slides down her cheek. She doesn’t acknowledge it.
“You knew they were coming,” she says.
“I made a call.”
“You let me walk out of there thinking there was a big rescue, and they told me there wasn’t. I left you to die. Do you know what that did to me?”
“I’m sorry.” I mean it. “I needed you out.”
She makes a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “You asshole.”
“I trusted my brothers.”
“Ember?” she asks. “I assumed it was a code to go in there and save you.”
“Save you. It was code to get you back to the estate. He was supposed to keep you safe while my brothers came for me.”
“And if they didn’t?” she asks.
“Then Damien would get you to Portugal. You know that.”
She’s quiet as she processes. “You should have told me.”
I smile. “As if you would have accepted the plan.”
“Maksim.” She uncrosses her arms and moves to the side of the bed.
I can see how much she’s been holding herself together by sheer willpower.
Something in her is still shaking that her face won't show. She reaches out and then stops just short of touching my face, like she’s not sure which part of me is safe to touch. “Never do that again.”
“If you promise you’ll never come back for me.”
She stares at me. “No.”
“Lila.”
She finally touches my face, and her fingers are incredibly gentle against my tender cheek. “That’s not a promise I’m making. Don’t ask me to do it because I know you will do the same thing again and again.”
I catch her hand and hold it there. She looks at me with burning eyes as more tears fall.
“I’m sorry.”
She nods. I pull her hand. “Lie with me.”
“The bed is too small.”
“Lie with me.”
“You’re so stubborn.”
She carefully climbs onto the bed. It should probably hurt more than it does when her elbow brushes against my torso, but the drugs running through my system dull the pain. I lean my head against her shoulder and inhale.
Every hit was worth it to hold her again.
The door opens. Nikolai looks at us in the bed and shakes his head. His left side is bandaged under his open shirt. He looks pissed, but that’s not anything out of the ordinary.
“Stop getting in trouble,” he says. “I have my own shit. I don’t have time for this.”
He took a bullet tonight because I called, and he came without hesitation. The same way he’s always come. He steps forward and looks at Lila. I feel her coiled behind me. My little voinitsa will jump him if she thinks he’s going to hurt me.
She’d lose, but she’d go down swinging.
I reach out and grab his arm before he can step back. I pull him forward and put my arm around him, pressing my forehead briefly against the side of his head the way we did as boys when things were bad, and we didn’t have the words to express how bad.
He lets me.
“Thank you,” I say.
He pulls back. “Don’t thank me,” he says. “Just stop.”
He leaves without another word.
“Gee, I felt the love,” Lila murmurs.
“Nikolai isn’t known for a lot of emotion,” I tell her, “but once you get to know him, you’ll understand.”
I’m on the verge of passing out when Sergei steps into the room.
He looks composed and bored, as usual. He’s a man who could walk through hell unscathed, but I see the exhaustion. The worry has taken its toll tonight.
His gaze moves to Lila next to me, with her body slightly over mine, ready to shield me again. She holds his stare and doesn’t flinch.
I see the acceptance in Sergei’s eyes when they meet mine.
“It’s done,” he says.
Lila straightens slightly. “What’s done?”
There’s a question in his eyes.
“You can trust her,” I say. “Tell her everything.”
“The krye,” he says. “The man behind all of this. The man your father sold you to in the hopes of gaining power. He’s dead. And everyone in the succession line is gone.”
The breath goes out of her like she's been holding it for years.
“Dead?” she asks.
“Yes. It will take them years to recover. If they ever do.”
I lift my hand to touch the back of her neck. She’s processing.
“You did that?” she whispers.
Sergei looks offended. “No one fucks with my family.”
He turns and walks out.
Lila remains frozen, staring at the space where Sergei stood. I feel the tremor move through her body.
"Arlind told me something while I was in that chair."
She turns to look at me.
"Your bloodline. Your father's family carries a direct line to Albania's greatest warrior. That's what they were hunting. It was a debt, yes, but ultimately, they wanted your blood."
She's very still.
"I'm descended from a warrior," she says.
"Yes."
She looks down at her hands. The hands that clawed Arlind's face open. That threw her from a moving car and pulled horses from a burning building.
"That explains absolutely nothing about why I can't parallel park."
I laugh. It hurts like hell, but I can’t stop. "You've always been my warrior, voinitsa."
She's quiet for a moment, and I feel her slowly exhale against my shoulder.
“It’s over,” I say quietly.
She turns to look at me.
I see relief. Freedom. All of it.
“I love you,” she says.
“I love you, Lila. Always.”
I reach up and wipe her tears with my thumbs, and I watch in real time as she pulls herself together.
“You need to sleep.” She tries to move off the bed.
“Stay.”
She lays her hand over my heart. “I need to clean up. I’ll be back.”
“I want to go to our bed.”
“The doctor wants you here in case there’s a problem.”
“Come back.”
She presses her lips to mine. “Always.”
I close my eyes.
“Sleep,” she says softly. “I’ll be here.”
I want to fight the drugs, but I can’t. I feel her move away from me, but I don’t reach out. She’ll be back.