Page 28

I want to tell her she did well. I got as far as that, in the car, before the words ran out. You were amazing. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t a fraction of what I meant.

When darkness encroaches on the periphery of my consciousness, she remains at the crux of attention as I fade away.

***

Fuck, I’m fucking freezing.

Something cold spreads across my chest. The faintest inhale punishes me with the bite of strong antiseptic. I squirm in place, and my battered body registers a tugging sensation—the painkillers must have me real fucked up, I assume, on top of the line pumping IV fluids into me. Experience tells me somebody got a line in me while I was under. It’s the efficient choice, when I’d rather be fucking comatose than tough it out in the aftermath of a gunshot wound. Somehow, those never get easier to deal with. Especially not when some motherfucker shoots me right by the shoulder attached to an arm that’s already bearing a similar scar.

Fuck, I’m so tired.

The exhaustion has spilled out inside me where the bullet broke open the dam I’d built to contain it. I’m drowning from the inside-out.

Only dully do I register the low voices sounding to my right. I couldn’t open my eyes to figure out who the fuck they belong to if someone wanted to pay me for it.

“—sit,” I hear someone say, and easily identify Yulia’s warm tenor, “before you fall down. That won’t help anyone, though I appreciate how badly you want to.”

“He’s lost so much blood,” the second voice says, voice hoarse and wrecked. If I could manage words, I suspect my throat would be destroyed, too. We’d screamed enough, back in the thick of it. “We tried to tamp down on it, to use pressure to staunch the bleed but—”

“And you did enough,” Yulia says, when Meera breaks off, sounding pained. I clock the creak of a chair bracing beneath someone’s weight. I think she’s gotten Meera to sit down. “You kept pressure on a through-and-through and got both of you out of an impossible situation. It’s extremely brave, Meera.”

“There was just no other choice.”

“The only people who say that—” I hear the smile in Yulia’s voice now, “—are the ones for whom giving up isn’t an option.”

“Do you do this a lot? For their world? Why do you do it?” Meera asks one question after another.

“It’s my world, too. It’s been my world for a while now,” Yulia admits with a laugh that sounds tired, too. I forget sometimes—we all do, I think—that it isn’t just us Yuri men who are battling this situation with the mole. What we go through, so too do the people who love us. It’s one of the reasons I always kept the women I occasionally fuck around with at arm’s length.

“Are you in the… gang?” Meera picks the word carefully.

“They prefer Bratva,” Yulia says. “Russians, eh? But no, I’m not exactly a part of it. But I do run this clinic and help the people of this particular world with all the secrecy it calls for. I’m married to Trifon. I believe you’ve met him already, though I’m sorry about the circumstances under which that happened. On the bright side, I don’t think they’ll be questioning whether they can trust you or not. You saved Leo’s life today.”

“Oh, well, I didn’t—” Meera stammers.

“You did. And the next time one of those boys gets up in your face—” Jesus, Trif really does tell her fucking everything, doesn’t he? “—you should feel free to throw that fact in their faces. There’s nothing that matters more than family.”

Meera is quiet after that. For so long, I itch to force my eyes open and feast on the sight of her. I want to know where she is. I have to know what’s going through her mind.

Finally, she asks, “I’m sorry, through all of this, it didn’t even occur to me to ask your name.”

A chair creaks again. I imagine Yulia leaning forward to offer Meera her hand. She’s so proper that way. “Yulia,” she introduces herself. “And you’re Meera, right?”

“Let me guess,” Meera says, sounding wry but not weary, “you read a file on my deepest, darkest secrets, too?”

“Do you have many deep, dark secrets, Meera?” Amusement glows from Yulia’s quip. Albeit uneasily, it’s still good to hear her make Meera laugh. It’s a warm, sweet sound.

Sweeter than the dejected, “No, but I feel like I won’t be able to say that after all of this is over,” it precedes.

Yulia hums under her breath, agreeing. “You’re probably right. I felt that way, too, once upon a time. Back when I first met my husband, actually. He barreled into the hospital I worked at with Valentin, injured—”

“Oh, I can’t imagine why someone would want to injure that man,” Meera bitterly grumbles.

I can hear Yulia choke on a giggle over the sass. Despite the grade-A drugs my sister-in-law has my ass doped up on, I think I smile, too.

Still, Yulia carries on. “I thought he was a monster. Truthfully, it took me time to understand that he was scared to lose Val. That there’s always someone after them, because this gang is their birthright. It doesn’t justify everything they do. But if there’s anything I’ve learned about this world that’s become mine? It’s never black and white. And where it is, a Yuri will fight to meet you in the middle. That’s why Leonid probably took up for you, even against his own brother.”

Meera sighs. “What happened to just leaving your kid a nice house?”