Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Giovanni
Iwant to kiss her.
I woke an hour ago to Christov’s face and not hers, and for one cold moment, I thought she’d gone. I thought it had all been too much, that she’d taken her brother and her freedom and her millions and gone the way I told her to go. That I’d finally given her a door, and she’d walked through it.
So I asked for air. To see if she was still in the building. To see if she’d come.
She came.
She pulls back, and I look at her mouth, and I can’t do anything about it, weak as I am, so I look. She catches it.
“Let’s get you back inside, okay?”
I nod. Christov turns the chair and wheels me in.
My body won’t work the way I want it to. I can’t get the words out even though they’re all there, lined up behind my teeth. So when she sits beside the bed and feeds me, I open my mouth and let her, and she wipes the corner of it with her thumb, and that’s its own kind of conversation.
Kirill comes in. He takes in the scene — me being fed, her hands on my face — and something moves at the corner of his mouth.
“The doctor needs next of kin to sign some forms,” he says. “Christov, go with her. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
“Oh — okay.” She stands. She leans down close to me. “I’ll be right back.”
She goes out with her brother.
Kirill drops into the chair beside the bed. He folds his arms.
“Tired of pretending yet?”
“I’m genuinely weak,” I say.
“Don’t make me hit a hospital patient.”
I let out a breath. “Fine. Maybe I’m pretending a little.” I push myself up against the pillows.
“The nurses told me you’ve been conscious and walking the halls at night for a while now,” Kirill says. “But the second either of them is in the room, you go limp and play dead. Why?”
I try to laugh. It hurts.
“Have some spine,” he says, sharper. “You dragged that woman through hell, so you could have your win over Fabiano, and now that it’s done, you’re still making her wait on you hand and foot? You’re an ass.”
I look at the ceiling.
“I’m afraid,” I say, “that the moment she knows I’m well, she’ll leave.”
“Didn’t you want her to leave?”
I did. I built the whole long game around getting her out. I was ready to die so she could be free of me. I meant every word of that letter.
Then the bomb went, and the only thought in my head, the only one, was getting my body between her and it.
And somewhere in that half-second, I understood I’d been lying to myself in the letter.
I don’t want her free of me. I can’t part with her.
I’m not strong enough for the one noble thing I planned my whole death around.
“What about Lucia?” I ask because it’s easier than the other thing. “Why didn’t Yana fly out with her brother? Why is she here?”
“Is that a real question?” Kirill exhales. “Your sister is fine. She’s with my wife. Getting treated, getting stronger, walking better every week. Yana wanted to be here with you. Her brother wouldn’t leave her. Lucia wanted to come back too. Yana wouldn’t let her.”
I close my eyes.
“Why do I bother?” Kirill mutters. “Listen. I saved your life in exchange for your loyalty. Indefinitely. We’re allies now.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“I can stitch Fabiano’s body back together and have it haunt you.”
I lean toward him. “Pakhan. Aren’t we good friends?”
“Are we?”
I laugh.
“It’ll take work to be Don again,” I say.
“I spread the word that you were the one who wiped out Fabiano and Zaki both,” Kirill says.
“The families are being cautious. No one’s touched your routes.
Your ammunition channels and your powder batches are sitting exactly where you left them.
As far as anyone outside this room knows, you never stopped being Don. ”
I smile.
“Then we’re allies first,” I say. “And brothers-in-law next.”
Kirill rolls his eyes and stands.
“Stop playing games and just tell her,” he says. “She likes you, you idiot.”
He leaves.
Soon, two weeks pass.
She spends every day with me. Christov too.
Nothing dramatic. We talk. They argue about old Russian cartoons.
She tells me about the boy he used to be, and he goes red.
I watch the two of them fit back together after fifteen years apart, and I recognize it because it’s the same as Lucia and I made with her.
I’m discharged after a month.
My home is still a wreck; the building stands, but the courtyard and the gardens are rubble, so I stay at Kirill’s. Christov wheels me into a guest room because I let them keep wheeling me even though I can walk now, so her hands stay on the chair.
“I’ll let you two talk,” Christov says, and he goes.
Yana helps me onto the bed.
I take her hand.
“Yana.” My voice is shaky. “I’m sorry. For all of it. Every part.”
She kisses me. It stops me cold, the hunger in it, her mouth coming to mine like she’d been waiting weeks to do it. She pulls back, reaches into her jacket, and takes out the small red sculpture. The one I had in my pocket the day of the blast.
“I found this on you,” she says. “It’s a sculpture I made.”
She sits on the edge of the bed.
“When did you fall in love with me?”
“The moment I met you,” I say.
“And when did you fall in love with me?” I ask back.
She opens her mouth, and I lean in and kiss her before she can answer, slow, my tongue parting her lips, and when I pull back, I say, “Let me make you fall in love with me. Give me the chance.”
“You don’t need to,” she says. “I already love you.”
“Then I want you to love me harder.”
She leans close to my ear and whispers, “You have to work for it.”
She smiles at my face.
“Get better,” she says, “so you can do something about it.”
I cup her face in both hands.
“I’ll make it up to you,” I say. “For everything. All of it.”
“The properties,” she says. “The money. It’s too much, Giovanni, I can’t —”
I kiss her to stop the protest, and she gives in; she tastes like cinnamon. I pull back.
“It’s okay,” I say. “We’ll figure it out. Together.”
She nods and leans into my chest, careful of the bandages, and settles there.
I press my mouth to the top of her head.
“I love you, Lupa.”
“I love you too,” she says.