Page 77 of Bloody Lace

She’s slumped in my arms, her face gone pale, her breathing shallow. It feels as if everything is happening too fast, time blurring and bending around me, a low roar in my ears. As if there’s not enough time to tell her what I feel, when I should have said it so many times already. I can hear chaos around me, shouts, someone calling my name, but it doesn’t break through until I feel a heavy hand grab my shoulder, and I lurch to try to knock it free.

“Easy there, boss.” Vik’s voice cuts through the din. “I called 911. There’s an ambulance outside. They’ll be in here in a second. You’re gonna have to let them take her, alright, boss?”

I can hear the siren, dimly, and there’s paramedics, a board, voices all around me telling me that I need to let her go. My body feels stiff, locked, as if that’s impossible. How can I let her go, when I don’t know if she heard me?

“Come on.” Vik’s hand is still on my shoulder. “We’ll get you to the hospital before the ambulance even gets there. We’ll meet her there. I’ll pay off whoever needs to be paid off. Gus will call the cleaners. We’ve got this, boss. Come on.”

I nod, standing with a jerky motion as two of the paramedics move carefully towards me, maneuvering Evelyn out of my arms and onto the board that will carry her up to the stretcher. It takes everything in me not to force them to let me go with her as the paramedics carry Evelyn out.I need to take care of her.

The fear fades. My mind snaps back into sudden clarity, and I nod again, striding after them. “Let’s fucking go.”

Vik was right about beating the ambulance there. I’m in the emergency room before the paramedics even bring her in, going straight to the front desk. “My wife is being brought here,” I snap, finding the first nurse who is sitting behind it. “Evelyn Yashkova. I want her prioritized. I want the best doctor in this fucking hospital waiting when she gets here. You make sure she’s treated immediately. Understand?”

The nurse blinks. “I—Mr…”

“Yashkov. Dimitri Yashkov. Does that name mean something to you?”

She shakes her head, her eyes widening, and I’m about to lose my fucking patience when another nurse, this one considerably older, grabs her shoulder and leans forward, whispering something in her ear.

The younger nurse’s eyes go so wide, for a moment I think they might pop out of her head. “Yes,” she gasps, her voice suddenly trembling. “I’ll get Dr. Ellis. He’s the best on the floor. We’ll get to her right away. There’s an ambulance coming in now—right away, sir.”

She scrambles away, the older nurse going with her, and I don’t realize until a moment later that my hands are curled into fists, every muscle in my body rigid.

“Dimitri.” Vik’s voice comes from behind me, and I shake my head, already walking towards where the ambulance will be coming in. “Dimitri!”

I pivot, glaring at him. “I need to see my wife.”

“You need to hear this, first.” He draws in a slow breath. “I just got a call from Pyotr. The man in charge at the mansion.”

“I know who Pyotr is,” I snap. “Why are you telling me this now?”

Vik looks at me cautiously. “Because Nicci Armand was there just now, meeting with your father.”

I frown at him. “And this matters right now because?—”

“Because he overheard her telling him that the hit on Evelyn was tonight. That she’d be dead by the morning.”

29

EVELYN

Iremember telling Dimitri that it wasn’t that bad. Somewhere, in the fog of pain, I think he told me he loved me. But when I wake up, my mind blurry with painkillers and the bright, too-clean scent of the hospital filling my senses, I feel sure that I imagined it. That it couldn’t possibly have been real.

It all happened so fast. Bits and pieces of it come back to me, as I fade in and out of consciousness, the painkillers dragging me under as fast as I wake up, and back again. I remember gunshots, and hands grabbing me, pushing me into a car. I remember those same hands sliding where they shouldn’t, jokingly groping me before the men were warned away. I remember being dragged into a room, a heavy hand cracking across my face, and more gunshots. More blood.

The painkillers come with the unfortunate side effect of turning those memories into nightmares, the scenes playing over and over again, as I feel myself struggling to wake up and being dragged back under again. I don’t know how long that goes on for, how many cycles of barely coming back to consciousness before falling asleep again that I go through, before I open myeyes and see sunlight streaming into my room, and Dimitri sitting next to my hospital bed.

For a moment, I think I’m hallucinating it. That I’m imagining this. “Are you real?” I croak, the pain in my too-dry throat making me wince, and Dimitri is on his feet in an instant, reaching for a cup at my bedside.

“Ice chips.” He fishes one out of the cup, gently pushing it between my lips, and even in my current state, the feeling of his fingers against my lips makes me shiver. “Easy. You’ve been out for almost two days.”

“Two—” My voice is a scratchy rasp. “What happened?”

“The bullet went through your shoulder. It missed anything vital, but they had to do surgery to reconstruct some of what was damaged.” Dimitri hesitates. “It might be a while before you’re able to draw or sew again. But we’re going to get you the best physical therapy money can buy. The surgeon said you’ll make a full recovery, as long as you take it slow, and stick to?—”

“And the baby?” I blurt it out as soon as I feel like I can speak, the water from the melted ice chip coating my throat and blurring the pain. Fear pounds in my chest, making me feel numb, my throat tightening. “Our baby?—”

Dimitri’s face goes momentarily blank, as if hearing me sayour babymade him briefly lose everything he was thinking. “The baby is fine,” he says quickly, recovering. “Our baby is fine.”

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