34. Ilya
ILYA
Am I dead?
There is no light here, only a thick, heavy grey mist that feels like the bottom of the river.
I’m drifting, floating in a space where my body doesn't exist. There is no pain in my ribs, no burning in my dislocated shoulder, and no cold water filling my lungs.
It is quiet. Too quiet. For a long time, my mind is just a chaotic jumble of loose images, spinning in the dark like debris after an explosion.
Am I really dead?
The question doesn't scare me. If I’m dead, the war is over. The docks are gone. The blood is washed off my hands.
But then the panic hits my chest.
Via. My mind scrambles, trying to claw its way through the fog to find her face.
I try to remember the slipway. I try to remember the wooden pier, the sound of the automatic gunfire, and the look in her eyes as she stood over her father’s body with the smoking submachine gun in her hands.
Did I catch Mikhail? Did we go into the water?
I remember the cold. I remember the heavy, dark depth of the channel, my knife cutting through his beige trousers, the wet, bubbly shriek escaping his throat. I remember dragging him onto the concrete. I remember the blade sliding across his neck, the thick, hot rush of his blood stain the dust.
Mikhail is dead. I killed him. I put him back in the ground.
But where is my sister? Where is Via? Did the Russos take them while I was drowning in the dark? Did I fail them both?
The worry is a physical hook that grabs my chest, dragging me upward through the grey layers of mist, forcing me closer to the surface. The quiet vanishes, replaced by a low, rhythmic hum that vibrates through my skull. A steady, annoying beep is echoing near my ear, loud and persistent.
The weight of my own body returns in a sudden, crushing wave of agony.
My eyes snap open.
The light is a blinding, white-hot flash that burns straight through my retinas, making my head throb with a violent, rhythmic hammer.
I choke, my chest locking as a searing, agonizing heat drives through my left lung, my throat clicking against a dry, plastic tube.
My dislocated left shoulder is a dead, burning brick of pain, and my leg feels like it has been stitched together with rusted wire.
Everything aches. Every single muscle, bone, and tendon in my body is screaming, the pain so raw and intense, it makes my vision darken at the edges.
I try to turn my head, my jaw tight. The white walls of the room are clean, clinical, and smelling of heavy disinfectant and floor wax.
"Dmitri."
The name escapes my dry lips before I can stop it, a quiet, gravelly croak that barely carries over the hum of the heart monitor. I look toward the door, expecting him to step out of the shadows with his tablet, his face a silent, static mask as he tells me which warehouses are running late.
No one moves.
The memory of the war room hits my brain like a physical blow, the blinding white flash of the thermite, the concrete ceiling collapsing, and Dmitri lying ten feet away with a jagged piece of glass embedded deep in his chest.
He didn't make it out of the cellar. I squeeze my eyes shut, a hot, tight knot of grief rising in my throat.
Dmitri was the only brother I had left. He was the one who stood by my side when my father handed me a blade at seven years old.
He was the one who cleaned the blood off my boots, who managed the ledgers, and who kept me from turning completely into a beast.
And now he’s gone, buried in the ashes of the estate.
The door to the room creaks open, the quiet rustle of soft-soled shoes approaching my bed.
I open my eyes, my gaze locking onto Yuri, the young field medic. He’s looking down at a clipboard, his face pale and tired, his green apron gone, replaced by a clean white lab coat. He stops when he sees my open eyes, the clipboard almost slipping from his fingers.
"Pakhan," he says, his hand flying to the digital monitor to check the readouts. "You're awake. Don't try to sit up. Your ribs—"
"How long?" I rasp, my voice a dry, grating rattle.
"Two weeks," Yuri says, his fingers gently checking the IV lines on my arm.
"You’ve been in a medically induced coma since the surgery.
Your left lung was almost entirely filled with blood, and the infection from the river water nearly took you.
We had to pump you full of broad-spectrum antibiotics for ten days just to keep your heart from stopping. "
I look at the window, the grey light of the afternoon cutting through the glass. "The docks."
"Cleared," Yuri says, his voice quiet, steady. "Lev and the remaining captains took the shipyard three hours after you went into the water. The Russos retreated to the southern border. They don't have the stomach for a war without Mikhail. The northern shipping lanes are stable."
I take a slow, shallow breath, my chest tensing against the pain. "Ekaterina. Via."
Yuri lets out a short, quiet laugh, his shoulders dropping in a gesture of relief. "They’re safe, Ilya. They’re in the private wing down the hall. Ekaterina has some bruises on her wrists, but she’s already back to drawing."
"And my wife?"
"She wouldn't leave your side," Yuri says, his eyes drifting to the leather armchair near the corner of the room.
"For two weeks, she sat right there. She wouldn't eat, she wouldn't sleep, and she refused to let the nurses clean your bandages unless she was holding your hand.
In the end, we had to use Ekaterina to blackmail her.
We had to get Ekaterina to cry in the hallway just to get her to go to the cafeteria for some soup. "
A faint, warm satisfaction flares in my chest, a small crack in the cold ice of my heart. Of course she did. She’s a stubborn, sassy pain in my neck, and even when I’m half-dead, she refuses to follow the rules.
"Get me up," I grunt, my good right hand grabbing the metal railing of the bed.
"Ilya, you can't," Yuri says, his hands coming up to hold my shoulders. "Your stitches—"
"I don't care about the stitches," I growl, trying to swing my legs over the edge of the mattress.
But the moment my hips shift, my body completely fails me.
The weakness is an absolute, heavy weight that makes my muscles dissolve into water, my head spinning so violently, the white walls of the room turn into a blur of grey light.
I gasp, my back hitting the mattress, my chest heaving as the dark spots return to crowd my vision.
"I told you," Yuri says, his voice quiet as he adjusts my pillow. "You’ve lost too much strength. Let the antibiotics do their work. Sleep, Pakhan."
I want to argue. I want to tell him that the Pakhan doesn't stay in a bed while his empire is in ruins, but my eyes are already too heavy.
The darkness rushes back up from the bottom of the bed, swallowing the white ceiling and the sound of the monitor, dragging me back down into the quiet grey mist.
The next time I blink my eyes open, the room is different.
The bright, artificial light of the ceiling is turned off, the only illumination the soft, amber glow of the small lamp on the bedside table.
The window is dark, a steady, quiet rain hitting the glass in a soft, rhythmic patter that sounds like a lullaby.
My body still aches, but the sharp, blinding edge of the pain has faded into a dull, heavy throb that I can manage.
I feel stronger. My breathing is deeper, the air entering my left lung without the wet, whistling rattle from before.
I hear a soft, trembling sniffle from the side of the bed.
I turn my head slowly, my neck stiff, my eyes tracking the sound through the shadows.
Via is sitting on the edge of my mattress, her knees drawn up to her chest, her face buried in her hands.
She’s wearing a thick, oversized black sweater, mine, the sleeves falling over her knuckles.
Her hair is a loose, messy, tangled wave that spills over her shoulders, catching the amber light of the lamp.
She’s crying. Small, quiet, and completely desperate sobs are escaping her throat, her shoulders shaking under the heavy knit of the wool.
She doesn't know I’m awake. She reaches out, her small, soft hand sliding into my right palm, her fingers locking with mine with a tight, desperate strength. She holds my cold hand against her cheek, her tears wetting my skin.
"You're a brute, Ilya," she whispers, her voice a ragged, wet thread in the quiet room.
"You're a paranoid, stubborn brute who thinks he can just sleep through the most important weeks of our lives. I’ve been sitting here for fourteen days listening to this stupid monitor, and you haven't even growled at me once. "
I stay perfectly still, my chest expanding in a slow, silent breath as I listen to her voice.
"My father is dead," she says, her voice breaking, her forehead resting against my knuckles.
"They buried him yesterday in the southern cemetery.
Lev took me. It was quiet, Ilya. No guns.
No Russos. Just the rain. I wanted you there.
I needed you to hold my hand because... because I didn't know how to say goodbye to him. "
She lets out a long, shuddering sigh, her grip on my hand tightening until her fingers turn white.
"I need you to wake up, you grumpy monster," she sobs, her face burying deeper into my palm. "I’m done running. I’m not going back to my father’s house, I-I’m staying right here, with you. I love you, Ilya. I’ve been so terrified of how much I love you, but I’m done being afraid."
She pulls back slightly, her hazel eyes wide, wet, and glassy in the amber light as she stares at my still face. She wipes her nose with the sleeve of the black sweater, her chin lifting with that familiar, stubborn pride.
"And if you don't wake up in the next five seconds, Ilya Kovalevskii, I swear to God I am going to name our child after a fruit."
My hand freezes in her grip.