Page 68 of The Den of Sin
Without any other questions, she turned her attention to my brother bleeding on the floor.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Isabella
Sasha was slumped on the grass, his face pale but he managed a smile.
“I’m good,” he muttered.
“No, you are not.” Dropping to my knees, I searched for the wound that was rapidly bleeding. Vasili was next to me, but he let me do my thing while he pulled out the phone. I assumed he was calling the police or 911.
I found the bullet hole near his collarbone. I traced my finger over it and found a lump against his skin. The bullet might have hit the bone. And judging from the amount of blood, I hope it didn’t hit an artery too.
“Adrian,” I heard Vasili’s voice. I raised my head to find him speaking on his cell phone. “Don’t bring Tatiana home. Keep her with you; keep her safe. We were hit.”
Sasha’s eyes drooped, and I pushed against the wound, to keep him from bleeding out.
“Stay with me, Sasha,” I whispered to him. “Open your eyes.”
“Just need to rest.”
I raised my eyes to Vasili. “He’s losing a lot of blood. We need to take him to the hospital.”
I peered back at Sasha, noting his color was starting to become a sickly grey. Vasili lifted his brother off the ground and called out to me. “Let’s go, malyshka. You are not staying here.”
I followed him without question. I wouldn’t want to stay here after what had just happened. I didn’t feel safe without Vasili. The last twenty minutes were the worst of my entire life and terror still shook my bones, but I refused to dwell on it. Keeping Sasha alive was more important.
“I can’t go to the hospital looking like this,” I muttered to him, although it was a stupid comment. Sasha was bleeding out and I worried about going to the hospital barefoot, wearing boxers and a man’s shirt.
“It’ll be fine,” he assured me.
Eyeing Sasha’s wound, I noted blood was seeping out too rapidly.
“Vasili, do you have a knife?” I needed to stop Sasha’s bleeding and the only thing handy right now was my shirt. He handed me his knife without question. I grabbed the hem of my shirt and cut through it, ripping part of it off, then applied it onto his wound, all the while keeping up pace with Vasili’s stride.
My hands were getting bloody, but I didn’t care. While holding one hand on his wound, with my other I checked his pulse. It was still there.
“We need blood,” I murmured to myself. In my mind I was already preparing for everything that he would need the moment we hit the hospital. “Oxygen, surgical team. Fluids.”
“Keep him alive, malyshka,” Vasili’s voice startled me. He placed Sasha’s body in the back of his big Mercedes, and I climbed right in to keep pressure on his wound. Nothing mattered right now, just to keep Sasha alive.
Vasili was behind the wheel, his tires squealing.
“Sasha, keep breathing,” I murmured to him, hoping he could hear me. “Just hang in there. We’ll be there soon.”
His breathing was shallow.
“How far is the hospital?” I asked Vasili. I was crammed down on the floor of his back seat and couldn’t see out the window, but I could tell he was speeding in the way the car swerved left and right with each turn.
“Five minutes.” That’s good. Five minutes. We could do this. Carefully, I unbuttoned his top two buttons and I pulled the shirt away. The sticky fabric was soaked with blood. I peeled it off and sucked in a breath at the sight of blood seeping from the wound.
“How is he doing?” Vasili’s speeding Mercedes swerved again, taking a sharp corner, and I held on to Sasha’s body to prevent him from tumbling onto the floor.
I pressed the cloth back against the wound. “I’m hoping it’s a flesh wound. That’s better than the alternative.” It could have hit a vital organ, which would have been a lot worse. “We really need to get that bullet out.”
He didn’t reply, but I could tell he was worried. I was too. We drove for the next five in silence when suddenly the vehicle pulled to a stop.
Before I could even move, the door to the backseat opened and Vasili helped to pull me off the floor and out, then lifted his brother without effort. Vasili started running into a large mansion that looked nothing like a hospital but I didn’t have time to question him.
