Page 168 of Ivory Ashes

“Have you found anything?” I ask the second Raoul answers his phone.

“I’m looking. Everyone is looking,” he says. “There’s nothing yet.”

“The security cameras?—”

“Off,” he growls, every bit as frustrated about yet another setback as I am. “Someone turned every single camera between Viviana’s room and the garage to standby. The one at the gate showed Anatoly’s car leaving, but it’s too dark to see inside it.”

Could that have been Viviana? I wouldn’t have thought she knew where the security cameras were or how to work the system. Then again, I also wouldn’t have thought she’d be capable of killing Trofim and lying about it, or shooting Stella and Anatoly in the chest.

That’ll teach me to underestimate people.

My hand tightens around the phone until I’m sure I’ll crush it like a can. “Keep looking. We need to find them.”

“How’s Anatoly?” Raoul asks.

“Unconscious, but stable.”

When he wakes up, he’ll be thrilled to know the surgeon credits his barrel chest for why he doesn’t have an exit wound, which probably would have caused him to bleed out. The bullet will stay inside of him until the day he dies, but that day won’t be today. It’s a win.

“Call me with updates,” Raoul says. “I’ll do the same.”

I want to be out there looking for my son, but someone has to be here with Anatoly. Maybe he heard where Viviana was going before she fled. He might be able to give us some insight about what happened and where to look for her.

I just need him to fucking wake up.

I drop down into an uncomfortable plastic chair and comb my fingers through my hair. Maybe I should have let my father kill Viviana the way he wanted. Would Dante be safe in bed if I had? Would Anatoly be uninjured? Would Stella be alive?

Would any of that change my mind?

The thought of a world without Viviana makes me wonder if I don’t know what it’s like to be shot in the chest, after all. Even after everything she has done, letting her be killed would fucking hurt.

Why can’t I just let her go? I let her get inside my head even after I swore I wouldn’t. I took risks I shouldn’t have, and for what?

This entire night proves why love is the worst kind of parasite. You let it in and think it’s good for you. Somehow, you convince yourself that whatever shit comes your way because of it, it was worth it. Inevitably, though, at the end of it, you’re used up, miserable, and alone.

But I won’t make that same mistake again.

My head is still in my hands when I hear a crash from the hospital room behind me. “What in the—” Another crash echoes into the hall. “Where the fuck am I?”

I’m on my feet and in the room before any of the nurses can even get around the nurse’s station. Anatoly is standing next to his hospital bed with his IV pole on the floor. The bags are leaking across the floor—not that it matters, because he’s actively ripping the IV out of his arm.

“You better leave that in, brother. Unless you want to die.”

He looks up at me. He’s deathly pale, but his usual smile spreads across his face. “It’ll take a hell of a lot more than a shot to the chest to kill me.”

Not much more, I want to say.

The nurse in charge of Anatoly disagrees, too. “Lie down,” she barks, shoving him back into bed while simultaneously calling for a maintenance team to come take care of the mess. “You’ve been unconscious for hours and the first thing you do when you open your eyes is jump out of bed and start tugging on tubes.” She shakes her head, inserting another IV into his arm with a little more force than strictly necessary. “Stay in bed before you do something stupid and collapse your other lung.”

Anatoly isn’t scared of anything, but he looks cowed by this fierce, middle-aged nurse. He apologizes softly and dips his head in respect as she finishes her work and leaves.

Once she’s gone, he peeks up at me. “I think I’m in trouble.”

“You were almost dead. You’ve been unconscious for hours.”

His eyes go glassy. I can tell he’s deep in his head, reliving the moments before he was shot.

“Do you remember anything?” I ask.

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