Page 1 of White Rabbit
Chapter 1
Valariy Kloboucnik
My footsteps echo on the white tiles of the hospital, this ward not getting the memo to make the place warmer and less sterile for visitors and patients. I supposed the patients didn’t care. My fingers tightened around the glass vase in my fist, the neck of the thing the only thing that kept the daisy stems from being crushed.
Dinah loved daisies.
Blyat!
The six-year old wouldn’t appreciate them any more than the other patients here. They were more a gesture for mysovetnikand his wife after their daughter had been caught in the attack that had left her in a coma. The flowers weren’t much, a small gesture for my understandably shaken second in command and his spouse. But he had no other worries. His small daughter was protected at all time, every person entering her room vetted to the point we knew every detail of their lineage back to their grandparents. Dinah’s every need would be met, paid for by theIron Claws.
The least I could do.
I’d been the target, not their little flaxen haired first grader.
Rage burned in my veins again, just considering it.
“Mr. Kloboucnik?” Ivan, one of the twobykiwho trailed me, asked when my staccato steps stowed. His tone was so quiet noone outside our small circle would have heard him. I was hispakhan, but I wasn’t addressed as such in public. In public, I was the enigmatic billionaire, Valariy Kloboucnik, one of the most powerful men in the world. Away from prying eyes, I was far more dangerous.
My head gave the smallest of shakes to stop his inquiry.
“News?” I demanded.
“Nii,” he said, giving me the negative I didn’t want to hear.
It was the single word, the no, that caused me to turn my head, to avert my face to the side to mask the anger that likely blazed in my eyes. I saw her.
As if she were a magnet, my whole body changed—my whole body except the hand holding the vase I blindly thrust toward mybyki. I didn’t know whether it was Ivan or my other shadow, Anatoli, who relieved me of the flowers. I didn’t care.
My entire attention was fastened on the small figure beneath the snow-white blankets of the sterile room. Only the quiet, rhythmic blips from the machines hooked to her broke the stillness of the dim room.
I stepped closer. I couldn’t have stopped myself if I tried. And before I knew it, I stood at the edge of her bed, staring down at her.
Tiny. Pale. A nest of silky, black hair around her head and shoulders.
Like Snow White in her deathlike sleep.
Blyat!
I didn’t need distractions. This was a distraction.
I had enemies hunting me, hunting my family, my men andtheirfamilies. Yet here I was, standing captive in this bare, antiseptic-scented room. My harsh breathing drowned out the machine’s beeps as my fingers knotted into tense fists.
At my back, I sensed the presence of onebyki, who’d followed wordlessly, ready for anything that might endanger hispakhan. As if, as feared head of the Kloboucnik Clan, I couldn’t defend for myself in a room that was empty save for a comatose woman.
However, my guards and all my brothers would remind me I couldn’t actually see all things. I wasn’t invincible. My family members wouldn’t be so polite about it, either.
My six blood siblings were the only ones who’d dare to speak to me that way. And I was well aware when my men had something to say, they went to my brothers rather than speak directly to me.
Whatever.
Aspakhan, I didn’t bother myself with the day-to-day workings of my business. I had mysovetnikand myavtorityetfor that—those men and my brothers. I had over two hundred made men in my organization, a crew of thirty in my inner ranks, and over a thousand associates in a broad network through several states who I could tag for help or information at all times.
None of it mattered here. Staring down at the woman who’d bewitched me with out a movement, without a glance, I straightened my suit jacket and adjusting my cuffs. Not that she’d know if I was disheveled, if I’d entered in a ninetythousand dollar Alexander Amosu bespoke suit or even if I wore rags that hung from me.
“What do you know?” I demanded, expecting an answer from my man without looking. The patients here had been researched almost as deeply as the staff.
“Her name is Brecklyn Winchell. She…fell. Supposedly. And ended up here,” Anatoli responded. “Been here a month. Physically, she’s…well, but something is keeping her from waking. The doctors do not know why…but they say that is how coma is sometimes. Again, supposedly.”
