He stops at the doors. For a long moment, he says nothing. “There are no bars on the windows.” A beat. “But there are men with rifles at the wall. I’m treating you like a human, Annika. Don’t make me treat you like a prisoner.”
With that, he raps twice and a pair of men open the doors. This time when they close, a heavy lock slides into place.
Chapter Three
Maxim
The hospital reeks of antiseptic, the odor high and suffusive and inescapable.
I ignore the way the nurses avert their eyes and skitter out of my path. Once, it pissed me off. Once, it might have even been enough to keep me away. That, and the occasional black-clad officers, prowling the labyrinthine linoleum halls or the parking lots in pairs, hands on the grips of their pistols and dark eyes shadowed by berets.
Now, though, I know better than to think any of them will even consider fucking with me. I’ve run with the Bratva my entire life, but it’s been these last three years that made my name a household one, one to be feared.Maxim Volkovis now a name uttered in horror or plea by men on their knees, looking down the barrels of indifferent guns.
I find Gregor and Mikhail posted outside the door, as ordered. They give me grim nods as I brush past them. If the nurses find it strange Alexei has guards at his door round the clock, they know better than to mention it. And the cops, who after taking one look at Alexei and asking a few bland questions vanished without a trace, certainly don’t care about the protection of a known gangster.
Inside, my brother sleeps, as he has slept, unmoored and gray-faced, since Viktor Desyatova put a bullet in his back three weeks ago. That bullet lodged in his spine then and is still there now, burrowed so precariously between the vertebrae that his doctors won’t risk extracting it. I know the prognosis is grim. I know Alexei is going to die.
And like this. In here.I look around his room; papery brown roses in a vase—his ex Irina must have brought them—a thick plastic bag with his shoes and clothes, blood-crusted, and not much else. Gray walls, gray floor, dull metal machines in the dozens and even more tubes, feeding life desperately back into his veins.
His face is set and sunken. He’s a good-looking guy, six years younger than me and lither. Before the hospital he was a rubber band of energy, practically vibrating with it, always flashing a sharp-incisored smile.
Now he’s gaunt and thin, fat giving way to muscle giving way to bone. His hair, dark and wavy like mine, is lank. I’ll have to send Lilly, the housemaid at the Roza Dom, to clean him up, make him look right.
He’ll never look right.
I silence that voice and sit in the chair across from Alexei’s bed. I wish he’d wake. I wish he’d tell me what the fuck he was doing following Viktor Desyatov from his opulent old parlor downtown.Alone.What did he think he was going to accomplish? Did my over-ambitious little brother really think he could kill the Snake?
I heard a story once of a man whose wife was hit by a truck. She was in a deep coma, motionless and silent, for two years. Every day he visited, and a little more color would rise to her skin. Sometimes when he spoke, her eyes would dart beneath tired, bruised lids, as though somehow, from somewhere in that sunken place, she could hear him, and was fighting to get back.
But when I talk, Alexei doesn’t move. His skin gets grayer every day, and his lids lie still as his hands and legs and lips. The only movement in his body is the rise and fall of his chest, long shallow breaths with terrible pauses between every single one.
Alexei can’t tell me why he followed Viktor that night. But the girl at the Roza Dom might be able to find out.
I get up and leave without a word.
* * *
Back at the office, an ancient, lavishly redone brick building downtown, the men are antsy. The bar downstairs—varnished mahogany walls, sleek, bolted-leather booths, stocked end to end with the finest spirits Russia has to offer—buzzes with activity. Glasses are filled and thrown back despite the hour, the door opens and slams repeatedly as they come and go.
I consider staying down there with the men, drinking away my sorrows, drowning my rage, but I know from experience this is futile. Getting drunk won’t solve anything. I know what I want—revenge. And I know how I’m going to get it.
Sacha knocks and enters the office almost the minute I sit behind the desk.
“News?” I ask simply.
Sacha, the massive, stone-faced muscle I’ve been lucky enough to call an ally my whole life, leans against the doorframe. He shakes his head once, the subtle motion enough to quash any hope one of us had learned something about the day Alexei was shot, or possibly even heard from Viktor.
“How’s your brother?” Sacha asks. The big brute would vow he doesn’t have a soft spot for anyone. He’s cold, ruthless, and ferociously loyal. But Alexei has a way of winning more than loyalty—he’s charming, young, funny. All in all, pretty uncommon in this line of work. Even someone with a heart of steel like Sacha can’t help himself. “Any improvement?”
It’s my turn to shake my head. “Still unconscious.”
“Pity. If he woke, at least he could tell us what the fuck he was doing following Viktor Desyatov alone and barely armed.” Sacha almost subconsciously touches the nine-millimeter beneath his arm. His eyes go to the window over my shoulder. “And the girl?”
“She’s secure at the Roza Dom.”
“Secure.”
“Yes.”
