Both Annika and Yvan look at me in shock. I’d like to take a moment to savor it, but as the shock wears off, the pain is setting in. Blood soaks my sleeve, dripping from my fingers. The snow beneath me is stippled crimson.
“Don’t show your back,” Yvan growls, slinging his assault rifle over his shoulder. He jerks open the door to the first Jeep and begins inspecting.
Annika hands me her pistol, and I take it, fully aware her eyes are on me as she wraps my good arm over her shoulder and leads me inside. We pass Gregor’s crumpled body and a pang of grief rocks me—followed instantly by rage.
In time, Viktor will pay. For all he has done, he will pay.
Inside, Annika settles me in the bathroom. She fills an old plastic bin with rubbing alcohol and cold water. “Take off your coat.”
I obey, though the action is stiff and takes me a few minutes. My shoulder is tender and throbbing, but the bleeding seems to be slowing.
“And your shirt.”
I watch her as I strip down. This, too, she is good at. The cleaning up. Did Viktor teach her this? Or did he only teach her how to kill?
Annika turns to me. I know I don’t imagine the way she freezes, only for an instant, hungry eyes taking in every inch of my body: my shoulders, my chest, my abs and arms. Her lips part, and despite the pain, the corroding fear, the endless swell of rage—I can’t help but want her, right then, as badly as I did three years ago.
Three years ago.
Annika swiftly begins cleaning the wound. I watch her, gritting my teeth against the pain, searching her face for any trace of truth or lie.You are a father. And your children are now in the hands of the Snake.My heart pounds as I hear those impossible words again.
A father.
“It’s buried in here, but just in the muscle, and not too deep.” Annika tenderly examines the bullet hole in my shoulder, just above the curve of my bicep. Her competent fingers clean away the excess blood, and she presses a clean fold of gauze against it. “I’ll have to pull it out. Do you want a drink? Vodka or something?”
I shake my head. She stares at me.
“What, Maxim?” Her brow furrows. “The pain?”
I shake my head again.
Understanding softens her face and eases her tight shoulders. She looks away. “I understand why you wouldn’t believe me. If there was a way to prove your paternity, I would. I hate that my children’s lives now rely on how much you trust me.” She gives me a rueful smile. “I know I haven’t given you much reason to.”
“No. You haven’t.” But when I first brought her back to Moscow, when I learned the ages of her children—I remember thinking that it was convenient. The timing of our night together and her decision to move to America, to forsake the Desyatov name—it all added up. It makes sense that she lied then, when I was her captor and she believed her children were safe with her mother.
Now that they’re not, isn’t it only fair she’d admit they’re mine?
Am I just being naïve? Do I justwantthem to be mine? For Annika to be mine?
“I have to pull this out,” she says. She pulls long, sharp silver tweezers from a bowl of rubbing alcohol. “It’s going to hurt.”
I look up at her, at the earnestness and bravery in her face. I nod once.
“Stay still.” She bends over me, and I grit my teeth as the cold, piercing metal enters the ragged hole in my flesh. “Try not to tense up.”
I grip the bathroom counter with my free hand, sweat prickling along my hairline and the back of my neck. Pain blasts through my skin, pulsating hot, biting from the wound in my arm over every inch of my body.Fuck.
“Almost there.”
I close my eyes, gripping the counter as tightly as I can.
“Breathe, Maxim,” she says softly.
The metal sinks deeper and a wave of nausea rocks me. I feel the pronged tips searching the viscera beneath my skin for the bullet, wherever it’s burrowed. White floods my vision and I feel my body swaying. I’m going to pass out.
“There.”
I blink stars from my vision, releasing a ragged breath.Ping!The bullet drops into the bowl of alcohol, alongside the tweezers.
