“No. I need to go. I have to find her.”
“I hear you,” he says in a patronizing tone. “But, sir, you had surgery. You were shot multiple times. Lie back down, and I’ll get the doc?—”
I clamp a hand to his throat, my teeth clenched. “I don’t need afuckingdoctor. I need to find her. Valentina Cain. Where is she? Is she here? Is she alive?”
“I-I just got on shift,” he stammers, eyes wide. “I don’t know.”
I toss him aside and stagger into the hall. The other nurses on the floor call out to me, then radio security. But none of that matters. Let them bring the whole goddamn Philadelphia SWAT. Nothing and no one is going to stop me from finding her.
“Sir, you’re bleeding. Please stop.”
I glance down at the growing red stains on my hospital gown and the trail of blood dripping to the floor between my feet with every step. The pain wants to make itself known, slow me down, pulling at the edges of my focus, but fuck that. I’ve been through worse. And nothing beats the agony of not knowing…of watching the person you love fade away.
I shove the thought down hard.
“She’snotdead.”
Just then, a nurse barrels past me, turning the corner fast, her shoes slipping against the tile. Whatever she’s running toward sounds worse than the man bleeding down her unit. Shouts break through the air, followed by the crash of metal and frantic voices. Maybe this is the distraction I need to slip past them and duck into the elevator, find a phone, steal one—but something in my gut twists and tugs me the other way.
I move faster, ignoring the sting in my side, and when I round the corner, it’s like my heart kicks back to life.
Valentina. Wild. Furious.
Alive.
My hand slams against the wall to keep from going down.
“Valentina,” I rasp, but my voice barely cuts through the noise.
She’s thrashing against two nurses, gown slipping off one shoulder, IV still hanging from her arm, dragging on the floor. When she tries to pull free, one of them catches a handful of her hair. Valentina cries out, teeth bared, tears of desperation cutting down her face. Instinct takes over, and I ball my fists, ready to tear them apart for touching her, but before I can reach them, Remi appears out of nowhere and drives a right hook square into the nurse’s jaw, knocking her back against a crash cart.
Valentina takes advantage of the chaos and sprints, but she’s running the wrong way.
I push off the wall to go after her, but my fucking legs don’t cooperate. Pain rips through me, and I fold over, clutching my middle with a guttural groan.
I drag in a breath, steady just enough to shout, “VALENTINA!”
She stops, but doesn’t turn, not yet. Her shoulders shake as she wraps her arms around herself, head bowed like she’s afraid of what she’ll see if she looks.
“Valentina,” I say again, quieter this time. The hallway has gone still. The nurses, the alarms, the shouting…all of it fading.
It’s only her. It’s always been her.
She finally turns around, her chest rising hard, her lips trembling—and then she runs to me.
The moment she’s in my arms, the world feels whole again, my black heart stitching itself back together.
“Maksim…you’re alive,” she cries. “They told me…But I needed to see it, needed to see you, and they wouldn’t let me.” Her gaze falls to the blood on my gown. “Oh, my god?—”
I set her down and cup her face, my thumbs sweeping away her tears. “I’m okay now,” I say, resting my forehead on hers. “You came back to me,Ptichka.” My voice breaks on a sob. “You’re here.”
“I’m sorry…I shouldn’t have?—”
“Ask me,” I whisper.
Her brows knit in confusion. “What?”
“Ask me, baby. Truth or dare.”
