Page 77 of Sapphire Tears

I ignore her and sit up anyway. The day I let a doctor tell me what I can and can’t do is the day I put a fucking bullet in my own head.

The two women keep their distance at the foot of the bed, both wary for their own reasons. I don’t take my eyes off June. “Sara, excuse us, please.”

She glances over her shoulder at June. “Of course,” she mumbles before she clears out, leaving us alone in the suite.

Even after she leaves, June stays marooned by the foot of the bed. Her body language is stiff and uncertain, her facial expression carefully composed. She’s wearing a white shirt that’s too big for her and soft blue jeans. Her feet are bare and her hair hangs carelessly down one shoulder.

She’s a fucking angel.

“Tell me the truth,” I say, my voice chipping like ice.

“The truth?” she asks innocently.

The crazy part is that I buy the innocence on her. There’s no hint of insincerity about the woman.

The crazier part is what it does to me. Even when I want to strangle her, I still want to fuck her. Even when I hate her, I can’t help but love her.

“Did you give him our location?”

Her eyes go wide with incredulity. “What?”

“Answer the fucking question, June.”

She flinches back a half step before she gathers herself and stands tall again. “You think that the attack was my fault.”

“We lost seventeen men today,” I snarl venomously. “Seventeen men I swore to protect. Because ofhim.”

“You don’t even know that Adrian was behind the attack!”

If I could get to my feet, I would. I would walk over to her, grab her shoulders, and shake some goddamn sense into her.

“Jesus,” I growl. “You cannot be that naïve.” I rub my tired eyes. “I’ll ask you again: did you give him our location?”

“Of course not!” she practically explodes. “How can you even ask me that?”

“Because you were in contact with him this whole fucking time!”

She’s trembling like a leaf in a storm. “He was in contact with me, not the other way around. Yes, he sent me messages, but I didn’t reply to any of them. You took my phone. You can see for yourself.”

“You could have deleted the messages you didn’t want me to see.”

She stops short, the hurt mixing slowly into her eyes. “You… you really think I would have done that?”

“Adrian makes you stupid,” I say, my words as blunt as a slap. Even as I’m saying them, part of me hates what I know it’s going to do to her.

And sure enough, it does exactly as I predicted. Her face stiffens. Her shoulders slump. She hugs herself and turns to the side, rocking back and forth imperceptibly.

“Maybe,” she concedes softly. “But he does the same to you.” Then she turns and runs out of the room. She slams the door on her way out, but I still hear the sob in her throat.

It matches the sorrow in mine.

33

KOLYA

The anger I felt a moment ago seems so listless and pointless now. There’s a hollow pit at the bottom of my stomach, churning like the maw of some huge monster that won’t ever be satisfied, no matter how much grief I feed it.

It’s way too soon to be moving—even I know that. But I refuse to lie here like a fucking victim. I swing my legs off the bed and set my feet against the carpeted floors. I’m wearing so many bandages that it feels like I’m clothed despite the fact that I’m actually naked from the waist up.

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