Chapter 30
My ex
Dina
Iwake up groggy, in a room with dim, soothing lights. The headache starts pounding at my temples almost immediately. It takes me a moment to orient myself. The smell of cleaning supplies and the sound of a monitor help me realize I’m in a room in the hospital.
Memories rush at me. Is Connor still under the rubble? Did they really leave him there? Or worse, did they use a crane to bury him even more? What time is it?
There should be a clock on the wall opposite the bed, but there isn’t one.
Someone clears their throat. I think it’s a man.
“Hello?” I call out.
Sergei walks up from in front of me. He’s wearing a nice dark suit and smells as fine as always. Not even his five-hundred-dollar haircut paired with his dark blue eyes can make me look at him with anything more than distaste.
“I’m here, Dina.”
“What?” I clear my throat. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m your emergency contact. I was worried you were in the salon when it exploded.”
I snort, unlike a lady. “You came to see if I’m dead?”
“Believe it or not, I want you alive for our daughter.”
“Since that never stopped you from cheating or being an asshole to me, you’ll have to excuse me for not buying into your concerned ex-husband act.”
“I’m not here to argue with you. How are you feeling?”
“Fine. Great. My salon is in rubble, and there’s a man trapped under there.”
“What man?” Sergei asks, a tic in his jaw.
He’s jealous. Even when he doesn’t want me, he wants to control me. He told me it’s because he was my first. Fuck him. I want more than just a few lovers in my life. After Declan ate me out, I’m never going back to non-eaters. If a guy isn’t an eater, I don’t want him.
“Declan Crossbow,” I say. “He’s trapped under the rubble.”
“They said nobody else is under there. The crews stopped working.”
“Oh no,” I cry out, the sound strangled and pained.
“Maybe he crawled out from under there like the cockroach he is.”
“He didn’t.” He couldn’t have. He was with me, and he went under like I did. “Wait. How do you know nobody is under there?”
Sergei points at the TV, which isn’t on. “It was on the news. You’re the only person they dug up. Now they’ll just secure the site and keep people away in case something else collapses.”
Oh no.
“Yeah.” Sergei continues. “They pulled back the rescue teams. By the way, Chi-chi and your dad are coming.”
“No!” I scream.
Sergei’s eyebrows shoot up. “What do you mean, no?”
“No. Tell them to…tell them to pack up and leave the city. Go get a motel and don’t tell anybody where they are.
” Before their cruise trip, but I don’t want to mention the cruise to Sergei.
Anyone offering something he wants could buy information on us from this man.
He’d sell his own child for cash, I’m sure of it.
I don’t want him to know Chi-chi and Dad are departing for a cruise tomorrow. There’s a reason why Declan wants my family out of the city. I understand how he thinks now.
I’m skeptical of Sergei’s presence here. While he is my emergency contact, we’re not together anymore, and he’s being oddly attentive, standing there, holding vigil over me.
Sergei can’t be trusted. If the chief of police can threaten me as they wheel my injured ass into the hospital for treatment, he could bribe Sergei, put him in the room with me to feel me out. For what purpose? They think I know Crossbow secrets. I don’t.
“How are you feeling?” Sergei asks.
See? He’s being oddly attentive. He doesn’t care about how I feel. I know this like I know how to shave my legs. “Can you please call my dad and Chi-chi and put them on speaker?”
Sergei sighs as if I’m asking him to wash my car. That’s labor intensive for this asshole. He didn’t need a wife. He needed a damn maid, which his cheap ass can now afford since he made partner at a big law firm. Who needs Dina anymore, right?
My dad’s and Chi-chi’s faces pop up on the video screen.
“Oh my God, Mom.” Chi-chi starts to cry. My dad’s driving, and Chi-chi is in the passenger seat.
My left eye is swollen. Cuts mar my face. “I’m okay, I promise. They cleaned me up, and I didn’t need surgery or intensive care. I’m in a regular hospital room.”
“We’re on our way,” my dad says from the driver’s seat. The phone is on the dash mount.
“Dad, don’t come and don’t bring Chi-chi here.”
“What?” My dad glances at the phone, then back at the road. “Why not?”
“Because I’m not staying.”
“What do you mean?” Sergei asks.
I sit up, but the IV line hooked up to the fluid bag stings my left arm when it tugs on my skin.
“Dina, hold on. Where are you going?” Sergei folds over me and reaches the fluid cord.
I freeze in place when his body touches mine. “Get away from me.”
He sneaks a hand under my body and pinches my back. Hard.
I cry out.
“Mom!”
Sergei pretends he did nothing. “Your mother is fine. Just needs some rest. Rest, Dina.”
I sit up, place my feet on the floor, and grab the metal rod to which the IV is attached. I can bring it to me and try to figure out how to stop the flow before I remove the IV from my arm.
Sergei puts his hands on my shoulders and forces me back onto the bed. “Lie back down. Are you crazy?”
“Don’t touch me.”
“Dad, calm down,” Chi-chi says.
“Back off, Sergei,” my dad snaps.
“I’m only trying to help her. She probably has a concussion. There was blood everywhere. They took hours to patch her up.” He lifts the sheet. “Look at this.”
My right thigh is wrapped from groin to knee. “The doctor said the gash is deep, and she’s lucky it didn’t touch a major artery, or she’d have bled out.”
“I don’t feel anything,” I say.
“Because you’re medicated, Mom,” Chi-chi says.
I stand.
The bed starts beeping, and sirens go off in my room.
Sergei throws up his hands. “Always fucking drama with you, Dina. You just don’t fucking listen.”
“Fuck you.”
“Dad, sit down,” Chi-chi says. “You’re making it worse.”
“Me?” He points at his chest. “I’m making it worse?”
A pregnant nurse wearing pink teddy bear scrubs rushes into the room. Her dark brown braid hangs over her shoulder. Her large pastel-green eyes are uncommonly pretty. Momentarily, I stare.
“Do you need to use the bathroom?” she asks.
“Now that you ask, yes. Yes, I do.”
When she shows a wide smile with all her teeth, I remember I’ve seen her before.
“I’m happy to help you. Let’s take the IV along with us.”
“Mom, we’ll be there in five minutes,” Chi-chi says.
“Do not come here!” I scream. “They want you here so they can blackmail me into saying things about the Crossbow twins. But I won’t say shit, because this city is full of corrupt assholes who should be behind bars or dead.
Let me be clear: if you come here, I will never speak to either of you again.
I swear it. You will put me in a position where I will have to choose between you two.
They will use the two of you, and I’ll have to make choices I don’t want to make.
We will all die, baby.” Tears stream down my cheeks.
“Baby girl, my sweet girl, please. I’m begging you, stay away.
The other Crossbow twin will come, and he’ll burn the city down if his brother is under the rubble. We’ll all burn with it. Stay away.”
“Jesus, Mom.”
“I’m pulling over,” my dad says.
“I can come back in a few minutes,” the nurse says. “Just sit down and don’t try to get up on your own. I’ll help you to the bathroom.”
“You can stay,” I tell her.
“We’re almost at the hospital,” Chi-chi says.
Having pulled over, my dad looks at the video camera.
Kind brown eyes the same shape and color as my own gaze at me.
I will never understand how my mother walked away from him.
Never. And I will never understand how such a great man could end up with a woman who abandoned him, along with their child. Me.
“You can’t ask us not to come when you’re hurt,” my dad says.
“When I get better, I’ll come find you.”
“Dina, what’s gotten into you?” he asks.
I chuckle. “Life after divorce has gotten into me after I lived a life married to a leech and a bully. So please respect my wishes. For once, I want to do something for me. And if that something is fucking one of the Crossbow twins, then that’s what I’ll do.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m a grown woman, and I want to go pee before I walk out of here.
I don’t want to have to sit here with you all when there’s a man dying or dead under the rubble and nobody is moving a finger to help him.
” I take a deep breath. “Dad, get a hotel for the night. Stay away from here. People will use you to get to the other Crossbow twin because those two men give a fuck about me and about each other. They’re better than most people.
I’ll see you two soon. I promise. Just…just do this for me. Can you do this for me?”
Chi-chi bites her lip and wipes her face. She reminds me of myself. She cries at the drop of a hat, but she has more courage than I had at her age. If I had to go back, I would have raised her on my own. When you have to raise a man along with your child, he’s a burden you don’t need.
“We got you, Mom. We got you.”
Awww. “See what you did now?” I start to cry again. “Love you guys.”
“We love you too, Dina,” my dad says.
My family and I hang up, and I lie back down on the bed, because that was exhausting.
The nurse tucks me in. I should get up and figure out how I can help Connor, but I can’t keep my eyes open anymore.