Page 43 of Crimson Curse
Lex makes a note on his phone. “Already in motion.”
Timur folds his towel, each edge meeting the next. “I will have the blood taken out of the foyer before she comes home,” he adds in a practical and protective tone.
“She is coming home,” I echo, and the promise scrapes the back of my throat.
For a moment, I close my eyes. I’m not a man who meditates or prays. But tonight, my head tilts back, and I breathe through memories that try to drown me.
Sasha’s ring sat in my palm while sirens painted long bars of blue and red on ruined concrete. Grief cracked me open and poured something black into the hole. That darkness taught me to run an empire without letting any woman near the throne. Then Naomi smiled at me. She didn’t ask for a crown. She asked for the truth. I didn’t know how to give it. So, she took it out of me, one hand on my chest, and one hand on a boundary I had drawn in blood.
If fate demands another woman from me, it will take me first.
The OR door whispers as a nurse slips through. She carries a bundle of blood-soaked gauze as if it is a newborn. She sees me, startles, masks it with training, and disposes of the bundle in a marked bin. Her eyes soften when she straightens. “We are making progress,” she informs me, her voice quiet enough that it doesn’t carry to the waiting room down the hall. “The bullet missed the iliac crest. There is no organ damage we can see. The bleeding is significant, but controllable. Dr. Levin is meticulous.”
She hesitates. I hear what she will not say. Complications are greedy. They can bloom without invitation.
“Tell him I am here,” I request.
“He knows,” she assures. “He asked me to tell you that he will not leave that table until he is certain she will wake in your bed and not in his morgue.”
The breath that leaves me is sharp. “Good.”
She nods and vanishes back into the light.
I push up from the floor and pace the length of the corridor because stillness begins to chew at the edges of my composure. The walk is not long. Ten steps down. Ten steps back. At each turn, I pass the window. At each pass, I count the monitors: heart, oxygen, blood pressure, the soft green rise of numbers that mean she still fights. I know by now how to hear bad news in the pitch of a machine. None of the tones triggers that wolf inside my ribs.
Another nurse emerges, this one in pink sneakers that squeak. “Sutures underway,” she relays. “Vitals improving. We have given two units. She is responding.”
My spine loosens a fraction. My fists unclench enough that I feel the sting where the skin cracked. The towel in my lap has dried stiff. I don’t pick it up again. I don’t want more blood on my hands than I already carry.
Arkady appears at last in the window, his shoulders straight, and his eyes above his mask, finding mine as if I am inside his field of vision as much as the table in front of him. He gives a small nod. A surgeon’s nod that says nothing extra and everything I need.
The knot in my chest loosens, not all the way but enough to permit air. I look through the glass at Naomi, the woman on the table, who made me remember that power means nothing if it doesn’t shelter those you love. Then I turn my eyes to Lex.
“We owe Arkady.”
“We will pay him,” Lex replies. “But he prefers the kind of currency that does not get audited.”
“We will pay him in continued silence and new machines.”
A nurse opens the door only as wide as her shoulder and slips out. “She is stabilized,” she reports. “Dr. Levin is closing. You can see her in recovery when we move her. She will be under for a while.”
I swallow against the stone in my throat and nod, slow once. “The baby?” I ask.
“The baby is okay, too.” The nurse gives me a small, true smile, then disappears again.
The double doors ease open at last. They roll her out on a bed that swallows her, white sheets tucked tight around her form. Her eyelashes rest like small commas on her cheeks. Her skin is warmer than it was. I place my hand over hers and release the breath I’ve been holding.
Arkady pulls down his mask and exhales in a way that lets me see his age for a moment. “It went well,” he informs, his tone precise. “No organ damage. No bone involvement. The blood loss looked dramatic because of the cut vessel, but it is under control. She needs rest, antibiotics, and monitoring. No guarantees until morning. But if I were a betting man, I would not wage against her, or the baby.”
“You always were smarter than that,” I reply, a rough edge of gratitude breaking through. “You get whatever you ask for. Equipment. Staff. A weekend on the lake where nobody knows your name.”
He snorts softly, which passes for laughter here. “All I ask is that you don’t drag another person through my doors tonight.”
“That problem is solved,” Lex notes.
“Good,” Arkady concludes. His eyes glance at the blood on my shirt. “You can shower here. I’ll have a nurse bring you clean scrubs.”
Lex angles his chin toward the staff locker room down the hall.
