Chapter 14
ALEXEI
“Are you sure he’s going to be all right? He’s still not awake.”
“He lost quite a bit of blood. Give him a little time. His vitals look good…”
Someone’s speaking Russian around me. As consciousness comes back to me, I struggle to open my eyes. They feel glued shut. I try to talk, to answer them. “I’m fine,” I say in Russian. The words come out rough, scratching my throat, which feels as dry as the desert.
I get my eyes open and immediately have to squint for the light shining in my face. I go to raise my hand, but a deep, throbbing pain stops it. I turn my head away instead.
“There he is,” I hear a familiar voice say in English. The light is turned away from me, leaving my eyes to adjust in the remaining dimness of the room. As it does, I recognize the cabinets on the walls and the pale blue counters underneath almost immediately.
I’m in Dok’s office. I look around for the window and see the sky is starting to darken. Shit. Have I been here minutes or hours? It was still dark out when I went to the restaurant.
I feel a warm hand touch my wrist on the opposite side of my sore shoulder as Dok rolls into view on his chair. He holds my wrist up as he looks at this watch. “That’s a strong pulse. Good, good.”
Pavel walks into my line of sight. He’s pacing the floor, our father’s stark blue eyes large and worried. Dok leans into me and says, “Welcome back to the living, Alexei.”
I groan and Pavel’s pacing stops as he stares at me, watching as Dok waves a penlight back and forth in front of my eyes.
“No concussion,” he says aloud. “Your brother found you on the ground in a pool of blood. He wasn’t sure if you’d hit your head when you fell unconscious. You had us worried.”
I remember the gunshots and not being able to see my attacker, but not much else beyond that. Pavel looks rattled. He’s running his hand through his hair, mussing it.
“You’re very lucky,” Dok goes on. “Pavel found you and brought you straight to me. With as much blood as you lost, I was worried the bullet hit an artery. Fortunately for you, it had not. Though, it took me a little time to dig the slug out.” He slid on his chair back to one of the counters and picked up the aforementioned slug, which was just sitting in a metal pan.
He scooted back over to me and put it in my hand.
“Keep it as a souvenir. It’ll make for a great tall tale to tell your grandchildren one day.”
I give him a short smile. “Thank you,” I say through the soreness of my throat. “I need some water. My throat—”
“Right. I’ll be right back.”
With that, Dok got up and left us. Pavel shakes his head. “I should have been there. I’m sorry. My car wouldn’t start—”
“I told you to change that battery,” I tell him in the hopes of breaking the panicked look in his eyes.
“Bah,” he says, waving me off. “I still should have been there. If I had been any later—”
“You worry too much. It’s just a flesh wound.” I push myself up to a sitting position. The table I’m on creaks a little under my weight. Dok returns with a bottle of water and I take it gratefully. He also hands me a bottle of pills.
“For the pain,” he says. “Only take them when the pain is unbearable. They are very strong.”
“Thank you.”
“Can you leave us alone for a moment, Dok?” Pavel asks him. Dok adjusts his wire rimmed glasses and nods.
“Of course.” To me, he says, “When you get home, take it easy and be careful. You’ve got a couple of stitches. You don’t want to break them.”
“Understood.”
As soon as the door closes behind him, Pavel asks me, “Who did this? Did you see them?”
I shake my head. “It was too dark.”
He clenches his jaw. That was clearly not the answer he had been hoping on. “Backstabbing bastard. This was Pecora’s doing.”
I frown at him. “Pecora? Tony Pecora?” He nods. “That’s ridiculous.”
“You were at his restaurant—”
“So? Both our families have a lot of enemies and I happen to be a very big target.”
“I’m telling you this was him. He lured us down there and he took a shot at you,” Pavel snarls. “He will pay for this.”
I blink at him. “What reason could he possibly have for doing this? Our alliance benefits him the most. It would be asinine of him to attack me.”
“I don’t know. But when I got there, I found this near your body.” He hands over a card. On it is written Abasso il re in red ink. ‘Down with the king’ in Italian.
I turn the card over in my hand. So… whoever did this was trying to send a message. If he got this close to put down the card, I wonder why he didn’t just finish the job.
“You don’t have to worry about anything,” Pavel went on. “I’ve told Father and we’re going to find whichever man from his camp did this.”
“Wait,” I tell Pavel. “You know if this was Pecora, then that will kill our alliance. It’ll mean war, Pavel.”
He scoffs. “So it will. But that’s not our fault, is it? He tried to kill you, Alex. No one tries to kill you and walks away from it clean. The one who did this will be found. And then we will make Pecora pay. All we’ve truly got is each other, big brother. No matter what happens.”
Pavel, when he gets like this, there’s no talking him out of it. His anger is like a runaway train sometimes. I hope Father will talk some sense into him about this whole thing once he’s had a chance to cool off.
Until then, however… At least Isabella will be happy that she doesn’t have to be married to me anymore.
Why does that make me sad? She’s been a pain in my ass this whole time. I should be happy to potentially be rid of her once and for all.
“I’m ready to go,” I tell him. “Take me home.”
I don’t say much to Pavel in the car on the way home. I just can’t seem to stop thinking about Isabella.
God, what is wrong with me? That girl has driven me to distraction like no one has since…
well, since Kira. I don’t really understand it either.
She’s beautiful, certainly, but beautiful women come and go.
I’ve never been very interested in just tits and ass.
What does Isabella have that has me so drawn to her?
“How are you doing over there?” Pavel asks.
I glance over at him and I want to shrug, but the dulled pain in my shoulder prevents it. “I’m sore.”
He nods. “Thank God Dok was up when I called him. I don’t know what I would have done—”
“It’s just a shoulder wound,” I say. “Dmitri gave you worse injuries when we were teenagers.”
He smirks and answers, “He wishes.” Another bit of silence falls between us, then he asks, “How are you and the alley cat doing?”
“Don’t call her that,” I say reflexively.
“Okay. How are you doing, though?”
I sigh. “As expected, I guess. She doesn’t want to be married to me and I don’t want to be married to her.”
“Well, yours will be the shortest marriage in our history soon. No need to worry about that. Once this war starts, she’ll be able to run back home to her traitorous father.”
I don’t respond to that, thinking it was better than what was on my mind. I feel his eyes on me.
“Alexei, you’re not worried about that, are you?”
I sigh. “I don’t know. I mean, you’re right. I should be happy that this farce might actually be over… but I’m not happy about it, surprisingly. I can’t stop thinking about her.”
He doesn’t say anything. I look over at him and see him frowning as he watches the road. “What are you saying?” he finally asks.
“I’m not saying anything. I’m… confused about her.
We had only one night together to consummate this marriage and ever since, she’s been on my mind.
” He opened his mouth to comment and I stopped him, already hearing the disparaging remarks about her whirring in his mind. “It’s not about the sex, Pavel.”
“How do you know? Add your four-year-long celibacy with a girl with that kind of experience—”
“It’s still just sex. By that logic, I could be swayed by any of the escorts at one of my strip clubs. Good sex is like a good steak. You might crave more of it every once in a while, but it shouldn’t dominate your thoughts constantly.”
“Wow.” Pavel’s eyebrows rise as he regards me briefly. “You know… when Kira died all those years ago, you said that you were done with love. You said you wouldn’t even bother trying again until you were healed enough from Kira. Maybe this is a sign that you’re not quite healed yet.”
I don’t respond to that, but it makes sense, I suppose. Maybe in some weird way, this could mean I’m not over Kira.
Then again… this last week has been the first in a long time where I didn’t have her on my mind as much. What does that mean, I wonder?
The sun is starting to set as we pull up to the front of the penthouse. The sky is starting to go from dark blue to orange in gradients over the skyscrapers above us.
I’ve left Isabella alone for almost a full day. I shouldn’t be surprised if I go up there and she’s gone. It’s probably better that way if she is, anyway, now that this alliance has fallen apart.
“I’ll call you after I speak with Father,” Pavel says. “In the meantime, get some rest.”
“I will.” He fist bumps me, then I get out of the car.
My shoulder starts to throb on the way up to the elevator. It hasn’t even been an hour since I took one of those pain pills and it’s already hurting again. Guess they aren’t as strong as Dok said they were.
When I get to the penthouse, I just walk in and collapse on the couch. I don’t see her, even though I can smell her perfume. Maybe she waited as long as she could and…
“Alexei?”
I open my eyes and see her standing at the end of the couch. She’s wearing a little yellow nightshirt, her pixie cut a little mussed. Her eyes are wide and electric blue as she looks at me, then at the burn hole in my shirt and the bandage underneath.
I glance down at it and see that I’m bleeding through my shirt again.