Page 45 of Knocked-up Bratva Bride
From down the hallway came the heavy echo of polished Italian leather shoes clicking on the linoleum, and, by the aura accompanying those familiar footsteps, I knew it was him.
We had arrived at the hospital together, but he sent me to watch over her first, while he took care of something with the doctors. I didn’t mind; all I could think about right now was Katya.
He was all Armani suits, a shiny black coat, and thundercloud-blue eyes. His towering frame cut through the white hall like a storm rolling into a summer field as he marched past me as if I were invisible to the door of Katya’s room.
The nurses tried to stop him from going in, one reaching out with gentle insistence, but he growled something indistinctly that had them parting to the side like the Red Sea.
I remained outside. I didn’t have that much power or strength to bounce my way through, but I watched him through the glass as he stopped at the edge of the bed.
He looked so out of place in that room, like a mismatched piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
Every time I’d ever seen Damien, his broad shoulders were squared and straight with pride. He carried himself like a man who controlled the world and everything in it.
But now, his shoulders slackened just slightly, like the breath had been knocked from him by the sight of her, and for a long moment, he didn’t move.
Given their history and fractured father-daughter relationship, when I ran to him to track her down, I didn’t expect him to execute it with much fervor, and inside that room, I expected him to cross his arms, to retreat into an armor of distance and silence, but instead, he stepped closer, so close that the back of his hand brushed the edge of Katya’s sheet. Hisfingers curled inward, trembling, before he dropped them to his side again.
I pressed my fingertips to the glass, breath catching at the quick but clear display of vulnerability I witnessed. This wasn’t some wealthy mogul who cared about nothing else but money and power. No, this was a father stripped bare.
Inside, Damien bowed his head. His mouth moved slightly, but no sound passed the glass. Whatever words he said were for Katya alone. Apologies, maybe. Prayers. Regrets. Grief.
My eyes burned, and tears threatened to spill. Before I ever met him, I had detested him for the way he treated Katya, but now, watching him, I realized something that had probably been there all along: Damien didn’t just love his daughter. Like me, he didn’t know how to live without her.
And for the first time, I didn’t feel alone in my pain.
***
Damien was just exiting Katya’s room, wearing a placid expression, with lips in a firm, tight line, when the giant called Fedor breezed past me to stand in front of him, and that translated to blocking my view of Damien.
He looked at me briefly and then at Katya through the glass, and there was a flicker of softness in his eyes, so fleeting that when I blinked, I thought I had imagined it.
The man towered over most men I knew. His broad shoulders and thick arms filled doorways like a human barricade, and his build was brawny and solid, like someone carved from raw stone rather than born.
Low-cut hair hugged his scalp, drawing more attention to the hard angles of his jaw and the cold look in his ice-gray eyes.
Faded tattoos curled up the sides of his thick neck, inked symbols and some other letters I didn’t recognize.
Being close to the man intimidated me, so instinctively, I took a step further away, but not far enough to miss their conversation.
“We found him. The driver.” I eyeballed the broad expanse of his back flexing underneath the stretch of his black shirt when he waved a few papers in front of Damien’s face. “His name is Jason Monroe, 31, white, American. The cops have him locked up for drunk driving. Blood alcohol was three times the legal limit.”
I sucked in a breath. Drunk driving, seriously? My friend was battling for her life because someone was too careless with his?
A part of me wanted to scream, to run to that man’s cell and shake answers out of him. Why had he taken the wheel? Why Katya?
But Damien didn’t blink once. I sidestepped away from behind Fedor to check his reaction. To know if he was as angry as I was with that driver.
His gaze never left the floor until Fedor finished speaking. Then, he lifted his eyes, and they were steely and unreadable. He nodded once.
“Good,” he said.
Good? Was he out of his mind?
Then, calmly, like he was discussing the weather: “Release him.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What?”
Even Fedor flinched. “Boss, he—”
