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Yulia relinquishes her hold on her giggle at last.

I let the sound carry me back to icy, restful nothingness.

***

As I come to, awareness rushes at me and holds my head under its current. My mouth tastes like a handful of pennies. My left arm is strapped to my chest, which fucking hurts.

But there’s no shock. I’ve been in this situation before, unfortunately. It’ll be at least two months to recover fully, though the sling itself should be off in three to four weeks.

Already, I can tell, I’m less high on painkillers.

Though, I do appreciate how the lights have been turned down to something a man can stand to open his eyes under. I’ll take that as evidence that I’m no longer actively dying, since Yulia would probably need brighter lighting for an impending autopsy.

With a single glance, everything else fades into the background. My eyes forsake all else for the woman who’s sitting by my bedside. And, just like that, I feel the shock sing through my leaden limbs. Meera’s dragged a chair up to the bed. So much closer than a woman who wants me dead would bother to sit.

I almost blurt out Couldn’t trust the bullet to finish the job, Ms. Gallagher? Thankfully, my throat’s wrecked and the wit’s been squashed to the bottom of an anesthetic fog. Before I can even attempt to say something clever, Meera’s hands wrap around mine. I force my breathing to remain even and steady, even as I watch her take care not to jostle the IV.

She thinks I’m still under, it appears. Maybe I truly am. In what other world but the one in my mind would she lift the hand to her lips, and press her warm, soft mouth to my knuckles? It doesn’t matter how wrecked I am, I know that no one’s ever touched me with such tenderness. Almost like she’s handling something fragile. I could laugh in the face of it, given how I’m the very fucking opposite of fragile—but the lump in my throat doesn’t allow for it.

I close my eyes, unable to look at her. “My mouth,” I rasp, “is up here.” My voice had been aiming for humor, but all I sound is choked up and drunk.

She drops my hand like it’s scalded her. I hear the chair scrape, the sharp intake of breath, and prickle over her absence.

“You’re awake,” she accuses.

I try to smile. Fuck knows if my facial muscles cooperate. “No. I’m having a very good dream.”

Chapter 12 - Meera

“Why aren’t we going back to the church?” I ask, helping him into his jacket, despite the grouchy roll of his eyes.

“Because it’s been compromised,” Leonid answers.

“I thought they followed us from the school?” Or so he’d debriefed me yesterday, once he’d stubbornly had Yulia lower his dose of painkillers. It had astounded me how upset he’d been at the number of hours he’d lost to rest.

“Have to assume they’re from another gang. They have our plates, too. They can use traffic cam footage to trace the car back to the church. We can’t risk it,” he explains. I must wear my surprise pretty plainly, since he adds, “You saved my life. You’ve earned the truth.”

I incline my head, processing that. But—“Then, by that logic, wouldn’t they also be able to track the car here, to the clinic?”

For some reason, that elicits a faint smile from him. “If Trif hadn’t set up a false feed all throughout the path I took you down.”

I frown. “What if someone’s in an accident and needs reliable footage?”

“What if a rival gang decides to shoot up a clinic to prove a point?” he counters, raising a cocky brow.

It’s safe to say that stoned, adorable Leo has left the building. I have the abrasive, argumentative Leonid back. There’s no logical reason why it should send this ray of relief through me. Shaking the feeling away, I hold out a hand. “Keys,” I demand.

Yulia had told me to hold onto my spine, because there was no respect in buckling. No matter how unnatural it feels in front of the man who’d entrapped me, I refuse to back down.

Leonid doesn’t even hesitate before tossing them to me.

I yelp as I reach out to catch them in hastily cupped hands. Asshole, I think. Even if I do, unfortunately, grin back at him when he gestures for me to go first.

***

With the exception of two trips back to India with my mother and the occasional girl’s trip with Nia, I’ve been in Boston all my life. It’s bizarre, how it can go from being so familiar to totally different to me.

A week ago, I wouldn’t have thought twice about some douche in a shiny Escalade overtaking me on the road. But a week ago, I was in my beat-up Honda Civic instead of behind the wheel of a massive SUV myself. There was no man in my car, let alone navigating from the passenger-seat. And I would’ve definitely blinked twice upon being informed, “Those are guards. Relax. Trifon doesn’t want us to make the drive without back-up. Better safe than sorry.”