Page 75 of Vasily the Hammer

“Every time I save your lives, you try to kill me like an asshole,” he gripes.

I get back up on my feet, refusing to think about how I’m having a showdown with my villain and I’m in a hospital gown. I lean against the door frame, aiming for something more casual than the tremors that go through my body every time I move too quickly. “Save me? What—Ana, get over here!”I hiss as he reaches for her.

“Oh, you can get right out of here with that attitude,” she says, hugging him back.

I’m suddenly feeling very stabby again, and that feeling intensifies when Dima touches her forehead. “I heard you got a bad bump there, Lace. You okay?”

She nods and smiles at him, actually smiles in a way she’s never smiled at me, like she’s never known such joy before and Dima is a goddamn miracle— and where did that scalpel go— and says, “I remember you. I remember Florida.”

The weight of that hits me in stages, plates getting added to the barbell in increments.

She remembers Dima.

She remembers Dima, not me.

She remembers Dima, not me, and those memories have her glowing.

“He’syour first memory?” I screech in the wrong octave.

I swear she actually hides against him, like I’m the enemy. “Well, no thanks to you, you jerk! God, Dima, I’m so happy you’re here. And you’re okay. What happened to you?”

Blood rises to my face as Dima rubs her back. Ana’s back.My wife’sback. “Someone better explain to me what’s going on!”

They both glare at me. “I will if you stop being an ass,” Dima warns me, and I make a mental note that whatever happens here, I need to clock him good for that. “And I’m doing my best to piece it all together, so you need to chill when I tell you that I’m not going to have all the answers. This would have been a whole fucking lot easier if you answered your goddamn phone.”

“Me?” I spit out, stomping toward him. “I’ve called you every goddamn day for—”

Ana hops between us. “You stop that right now, Vasily Baranov.”

I glower at Dima, but I’m able to get a hold of Ana and tuck her into me, and that’s enough to calm me.

“Dima’s been helping me,” she promises. “Helping us. I swear. There’s stuff you don’t know. Stuff I don’t remember. So let’s hear him out.”

“And actually hear me,” Dima huffs. “What is going on with your phone? You’re the only one not answering me. If you’ve been trying to reach me, too, it’s gotta be something on your end.”

I don’t want to admit it, not when everything else is pointing at Dima so I don’t know how relevant it even is. But I obviously can’t deny it either.

Dima accepts my silence for what it is. “And when I didn’t hear anything from you, I reached out to Kostya. He said he’d talk to you about your phone.”

“No.” I shake my head. “Kostya never talked to me.”

“Yeah, I take it you didn’t tell him to let me know Lacey and Artom had been secured but—”

“Ana,” I correct.

“It’s fine,” she tells me.

“It’s not. It sounds like a whore.”

She laughs.“Thatsounds more like you. But that’s what everyone calls me.”

“I’m not calling you that.”

“I’m not asking you to. I like it when you call me Ana.”

I know she just says it to capitulate to me, considering how things went last time everyone but me was calling her Lacey, but she also tips her head up in expectation of a kiss, so it works.

Dima makes a gagging sound like a child. “Put some clothes on, man. I brought you a bag of stuff. And just so everyone’s clear here, I was acting under Kostya’s orders— which I thought were yours— when I picked up Alex and Kseniya.”

---