he pain is everywhere.
It’s mostly in my stomach, but it’s also all over me, everywhere at once. Every breath is agony. The smallest movement is torture. Even the air brushing my skin makes it hurt.
It hurts so bad, I wish I were dead.
My eyes are closed and my mind is sluggish, dulled by the blunt force of the pain, but I’m still vaguely aware of my surroundings.
I smell antiseptic.
I hear words spoken low in a foreign language.
I feel a cold pinch of metal as a needle is inserted into my arm, then a faint burning in the vein.
The sharpest edge of the pain dulls within seconds. My moan of gratitude is a reflex.
A cell phone rings.
Heavy footsteps move away.
A voice I recognize says in English, “I’m within my rights. It’s not for you to question.”
It’s Malek. He sounds furious.
More silence. Then he speaks in rapid-fire sentences, biting the words off his tongue.
“I took her as repayment for Mikhail. What I do from here is none of your business. This is all the explanation you’ll get, Kazimir. She’s mine now. Don’t contact me again.”
The heavy footsteps move closer. Malek speaks again, this time in Russian.
Also in Russian, the answer comes from my right.
It’s a man’s voice. He sounds nervous. I sense there are others nearby, watching silently, just as nervous as him.
When Malek responds, I understand it, so it must be in English. But my brain is as fuzzy as a cotton ball. Whatever’s getting pumped into my arm is dragging me fast toward unconsciousness.
“Do it,” he growls. “If she dies, so do all of you.”
The words slip-slide out of my grasp even as they’re spoken, rising up on lazy drafts of air to echo against the ceiling until they fade away.
A wave of darkness crashes down and swallows me whole.
Like a tide, the darkness slowly recedes.
Dappled light filters through my closed eyelids. I smell him somewhere close by, that heady scent of a dense nighttime woods. My pulse surges. A steady mechanical beeping accelerates to match it. I must be hooked up to a monitor.
“Live, little bird,” Mal says, close to my ear, his voice low and urgent. “Fly back to me.”
I drag my eyelids open long enough to glimpse him there, hovering over me like the angel of death, beautiful and otherworldly, his pale eyes burning bright.
I understand that he believes I’m going to die.
He takes my cold hand and squeezes it. Hard. He commands gruffly, “Live.”
The tide of darkness rolls in to claim me once again.
I’m lifted in strong arms. The pain is excruciating, but I can’t cry out. I have no power over any part of my body, including my vocal cords. I’m limp, my limbs dangling lifelessly like a doll’s. I don’t have enough energy to even open my eyes.
I’m also cold. Freezing cold.
I’ve been entombed inside an iceberg.
Then there’s movement. Disorienting movement. I can’t tell what direction is up or down. The arms that were carrying me have disappeared. I’m stretched out on a comfortable surface.
I must have been placed flat but can’t remember it. I also still can’t open my eyes.
Something soft and heavy covers my body. A low hum of noise soothes my screaming nerves. A rocking motion lulls me into a trance. I’m cradled in warmth and security, and though the pain in my body is intense, I feel strangely calm. Calm and detached from myself, as if I’m floating weightlessly in the air several feet away, observing.
Maybe I’m dead already.
I thought the afterlife would be less painful than this.
The rocking slows, then stops. I inhale a breath that smells like snow.
“Good evening, sir. May I see your passport, please?”
The voice is male, friendly, and unfamiliar.
After a pause, the friendly man speaks again. “How long do you plan to stay in Canada, sir?”
“A few days.”
“Are you here for business or pleasure?”
“Pleasure. I’ve always wanted to see Niagara Falls from the other side.”
“Do you have anything to declare?”
“No.”
There’s another pause, then the friendly man wishes Mal a safe journey.
The humming noise starts up again. The rocking motion lulls me back into a trance.
I tumble back into darkness.
When I open my eyes one minute or one hundred years later, I’m lying on my back in a strange bed.
The room is cool, bright, and quiet, a comfortable blur. Without my glasses, I can’t see the details of my surroundings, but it doesn’t feel like a hospital. Doesn’t smell like one, either.
The air smells distinctly of campfire and pine needles. Of dense rain clouds and wet undergrowth. Of thick green moss climbing ancient tree trunks shrouded in fog at the tops.
Of the kind of wild outdoors where no people are.
It reminds me of a camping trip near Muir Woods my family took together when I was a kid. Gathering kindling for the fire, cold nights spent tucked into cozy sleeping bags, the sky overhead a glittering blanket of stars. Sloane and I whispering and giggling late into the night in our tent after our parents had fallen asleep in theirs.
It’s one of the last good memories I have of the two of us before our mother died.
I lie still for a moment, just breathing. Trying to stitch my ragged patchwork memory back together. Only bits and pieces of things surface, brief moments of awareness between long stretches of black. Even the things I can recall are blurry and full of static.
I have no idea much time has passed.
“Hello? Is anyone here?”
My voice is a frog’s croak. My mouth tastes like ashes.
Heavy footsteps draw closer, stopping beside me. I know it’s him even before he speaks. I’d know his step and his scent anywhere. That dark presence, as powerful as gravity.
“You’re awake.”
Surprise softens the naturally rough timbre of his voice. Surprise and something else.
Relief?
Disappointment, more likely.
I moisten my lips, swallow, cough. When my stomach muscles contract, it feels like someone rammed a white-hot poker straight through my gut. I cry out in agony.
He murmurs something in Russian, soothing nonsensical words, then supports my head with one hand and presses a glass to my lips.
Water. Ice cold and clear. It’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted.
I drink deeply until there’s nothing left. He takes the glass away and runs his thumb along my bottom lip, catching a dribble.
I whisper, “Where am I? What happened? Is Kieran okay?”
The mattress dips with his weight. He leans over me, setting his hand beside my pillow, bringing his face into focus. He gazes down into my eyes and answers my questions as succinctly as I asked them.
“You’re at my home. You were shot by your bodyguard. The blond one. I don’t know if the other one’s alive. I’ll find out if you want me to.”
“Yes, please.”
He nods. We stare at each other in silence. Somewhere outside, a crow caws three times.
It seems like a bad omen, like the flock of geese murdered by the plane as we descended into Boston.
“I…I don’t remember being shot.”
He nods again, but doesn’t respond to that.
“Will I be okay?”
“You lost a kidney. And your spleen. And a lot of blood.”
“Is that a yes or a no?”
“It’s a maybe. How do you feel?”
I think about it, searching for the perfect word to describe the sensation of extreme weakness, overwhelming exhaustion, and throbbing, bone-deep pain.
“Shitty.”
He gazes at me in unsmiling, laser-focused silence, then says suddenly, “Soup?”
I blink in confusion, not knowing if I heard him correctly because my brain is cottage cheese. “Excuse me?”
“Do you think you can eat something?”
Now I get it. “What kind of soup is it?”
He frowns. “The kind I made. Do you want it or not?”
We’re talking about soup. This is crazy. Focus, Riley. Find out what’s going on. I close my eyes and exhale slowly. “Why am I here?”
He pauses. Then his voice comes very low. “Because I want you to be.”
I’m afraid to open my eyes, but I do it anyway. He stares down at me with a million unspoken things burning in his gaze, all of them frightening.
I try to make my voice strong. “How long will I be here?”
“As long as it takes.”
I don’t have the nerve to ask him what that means or the energy to handle whatever the answer might be. I just bite my lip and nod, as if any of this makes any sense whatsoever.
He rises and leaves.
I hear sounds from another room. Pots clatter on a stove. A door opens and closes. Water runs into a sink.
Then he’s back, sitting on the edge of the bed again, a plain white ceramic bowl cradled in his hands. He sets the bowl on the small wood table beside the bed.
“I’m going to lift you. It will hurt.”
Before I can protest that I’m hurting enough already, he drags me up by my armpits to a sitting position.
He wasn’t exaggerating: it hurts. It hurts like a bitch. A thousand knives stab into my stomach and slash it apart. The pain leaves me breathless and gasping.
Steadying me with one hand, he props the pillow against the headboard with the other. Then he helps me lie back against it, shushing me gently when I groan.
He sits next to me again, picks up the bowl, ladles the spoon into it, then holds the spoon to my lips. He waits patiently until I’ve controlled my ragged breathing and open my mouth, then he slides the spoon between my lips.
The soup is hot, creamy, and delicious. I swallow greedily, licking my lips.
He grunts in satisfaction and feeds me another spoonful.
It isn’t until I’m halfway through the bowl that I speak again. “How long have I been here?”
“Since last night. You spent six days in the hospital before that.”
I’ve been unconscious for a week? Impossible.
He sees my shock and says, “You were in a trauma unit until you were stable enough to be moved.”
“Trauma unit,” I repeat, struggling to find the memory.
There’s nothing. It’s a dead end. A blank wall.
“A place we use, off the books. You had surgery. You’ve been given analgesics, antibiotics, and hydration through IV. Blood transfusions, too.” He pauses. “You shouldn’t be alive.”
My voice faint, I say, “I told you I was stubborn.”
“Yes. You did.”
He gazes at me with such searing intent, I grow self-conscious.
The self-consciousness vanishes when my fried brain synapses decide to start firing again, and I remember something Spider told me when we were fleeing from Malek at the bookstore.
“He’s the right hand of the Moscow Bratva king.”
The important part being “Moscow.”
My heartbeat surges into a thundering gallop. My voice turns hoarse. “When you said I’m at your home…where are we, exactly?”
Holding my gaze, he says a word.
It’s not in English.
My instincts suggest it’s the name of a town, but it can’t be what I’m thinking. I refuse to believe it’s true.
I whisper, “Where have you taken me? Where is this place?”
He remains silent. His eyes are full of darkness. Such deep, impenetrable darkness, it’s like looking into an abyss.
“You already know where you are. And this is where you’ll be staying.”
Then he stands and leaves the room, closing the door behind him.
