Page 69 of Ensnared
The woman's voice penetrated his hazy thoughts again, drawing his attention. Dr. Wagner, her name tag read—her words beginning to form some semblance of coherence in his fragmented mind.
"Good morning. I'm Dr. Wagner," she started, her tone gentle. "You were involved in an incident where you sustained injuries. You were shot just below your left shoulder and also in your left thigh."
Images flickered, distorted memories seeping through the thickness of his mind. Shouting, gunfire, chaos. A fight—a big one at that, and at his home.
Then, a sudden thought clawed through the surface of his mind and seized him, chilling Dimitri to the core. Dominic? That's who was missing.
The growing unease grew inside him, fighting Dimitri's consciousness. Where was Dominic? The man's absence gnawed at him, eclipsing his own pain and confusion. He was beginning to voice the words when a man walked into the room. A man that should not be here—Roman.
The unease bloomed even larger as his friend's normally smiling face stared back at him, grim and hardened. The unease began to prickle at Dimitri's skin like needles and he forced himself to sit fully upright despite the throbbing pain on the left side of his body. The gunshot wounds, he thought bitterly.
Think, he commanded himself.
Roman came to stand by his bed but Dimitri held up a hand to stop him as he opened his mouth.
"Wait," his voice was raspy and didn't sound like himself.
The thoughts were coming back, tearing through his mind like the bullets that had torn through his shoulder and leg. They had been at home. Smiling, laughing, celebrating something…something special. They were waiting for Andrey. She had smiled at him, silently promising more later that night. But chaos erupted. Gunfire. Armenians. And screams from…
The memory of her and Dominic falling to the ground burst through his mind like a firework banishing the haze with its unforgiving light.
Unimaginable pain sliced through his gut and Dimitri doubled over. "Eve," he choked out.
A heavy hand appeared on his shoulder. A silent gesture of comfort.
It only made the pain worse. The gesture was all but confirmation that his worst fears were right, that what he saw was true. Tears glittered in his rage-filled eyes as he looked up at his lieutenant.
Andrey flinched and took a step back until he hit the wall behind him.
"He was not involved," Roman said quietly from his side. "I made sure to interrogate him thoroughly," he added, glancing back at the bruised man's face with disgust. "I saw the footage before the power had been cut. I saw her and Dominic go down."
Each word seemed to scrape at his bones, hollowing him from the inside out.
Eve was…
Again and again, he remembered her soft body falling to the ground beside his lieutenant's. What had she felt at that moment? Dimitri closed his eyes as he imagined her terror, the confusion, or even the pain as a bullet pierced her beautiful skin.
"Dimitri," Roman's voice cracked a bit from beside his ear as the man's arm came around him to hug him.
It wasn't until that moment that Dimitri realized he was screaming. A desperate sound from deep within. A sound he had only made once before, the night he watched his wife die.
Roman was standing on the other side of the room with his arms folded across his chest watching Dimitri as he buttoned his shirt. "I know you do not care but Vladimir assigned Alexei to your hotel. He will be there until you are ready to-"
"You're right, I don't." Dimitri cut him off. They were in a room at one of his other hotels on the other side of town. Half of it was under construction and it wasn't open yet. He had been there the past few weeks recovering.
Roman nodded. "But when you are ready to return, he will-"
"I don't plan on returning," Dimitri said coldly, going over to the table where his gun and phone were lying. He was walking with a limp, but he didn't care. Technically, he should be in bed wearing an arm brace and resting but he didn't have time for that.
Roman made a noise under his breath and paced to the other side of the room before coming back. "Look, you do not know if they even have her."
"My men said they could not find her body, Dominic's, or Ricky's anywhere," Dimitri looked up at the ceiling as he placed the gun in his back waistband. The words were hard to say but he forced himself to continue. "Despite finding the bodies of four of my enforcers. That means they took them. And that means they're either dead or alive." He wouldn’t let himself think what they were doing to them either way. The madness was already threatening to take him over.
Roman sighed heavily, sat down on a chair, and scrubbed his face with one hand. He looked tired. He had been in Vegas now for nearly a month, from the moment he found out Dimitri was shot. He had left his family and his own operation under the protection of another boss in Boston, Mikhail, and flown out here to take over.
The night of the incident Andrey had been down the street when he was cut off by the Armenians. The multimillion-dollar neighborhood had got to witness their very own gunfight in the middle of the street as Andrey had fired back, eventually killing the two Armenians. By the time he made it to the house, everything was over. All of Dimitri's men that were stationed at the house that day were dead and the remaining Armenians had run off. Andrey had called the rest of the men from the hotel and called the private hospital to transport him out before the police arrived. It was Andrey who called Roman and had to explain what happened.
"I know what you need to do. You know I do. But you will come back," Roman assured him although they could both see the fearful doubt in his face. "And when it is over and you are back you can-"
