I kicked. I twisted. I clawed.
“I amnotstaying in this car!” I hissed. The man didn’t even seem to hear me. I pounded on his chest with closed fists. “Let me out!”
Before I knew it, my body was tipping sideways, andI was falling face-first into the gravel and concrete below the SUV. I shoved my hair out of my face and ignored the stinging in my palms as I jumped up from the ground and raced where the two Cristof brothers had disappeared to. Except it didn’t matter because they were exiting just as I was getting close to the building.
My breath broke. My hands flew to my mouth as my knees almost gave out. They hauled his massive body between them, each gripping an arm over their shoulders—his feet dragging, his head lolling—blood streaking down his jaw and into the collar of his shirt.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. My gaze bounced between their grim faces and the shadowed warehouse behind them, where they had just pulled him from.
“Whoever did this to him is long gone,” Alexei grunted as he readjusted Ivan’s dead weight, voice low and furious. Dimitri muttered something back—sharp, vicious—but the ringing in my ears swallowed his words whole.
They moved quickly past me and toward the SUV.
The two guards who’d kept me trapped earlier now rushed to the back door, yanking it open and stepping aside to make room. Dimitri and Alexei maneuvered Ivan into the seat with brutal efficiency, lowering him as carefully as they could for men operating on pure adrenaline. I scrambled in behind him, climbing onto the seat and onto my knees, hovering over him. My hands trembled so violently I could hardly touch him—but I forced myself to. I passed my fingers over his blood-streaked cheek, his jaw, and his throat. His skin was hot. Too hot.
He looked… dead. He lookedgone.
“This is all my fault,” I whispered. What did I do? What could I do? His face was swollen, one eye nearly sealed shut, his lips split, his shirt soaked in dried blood—front, sides, everywhere. His ribs rose in shallow, barely-there movement.
“Is he still bleeding?” My voice cracked so hard it barely came out.
Dimitri shook his head as he slammed his door shut and peeled out of the lot, tires squealing. “No. My guy got here just as everyone was leaving. He patched Ivan up the best he could.”
Patched?
Where?
How?
There was so much blood.Too much blood.My fingers slid over crusted and fresh smears alike, and I couldn’t even tell where one injury ended and another began.
Ivan’s head lolled toward me at a harsh angle, his breath wheezing unevenly through broken ribs. His wrists were torn raw from what I imagined were restraints, his knuckles were bruised and torn, and his entire torso was one horrible, mottled mass of purple and red.
I choked on a sob.
This was because of me.
This wasallbecause of me.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Poppy
Knowing verylittle about the Cristof world… I’d expected the worst.
I’d expected the brothers to bring Ivan to some underground, dimly lit warehouse where a doctor “off the books” would stitch him up with questionable tools and even more questionable ethics.
But I’d never been so wrong.
Instead, they barreled straight to the hospital. Not a rundown clinic—not some mafia backdoor operation—but one of the nicest hospitals in the entire city. A private floor. Armed guards everywhere. Dimitri barking orders like a military general. Alexei threatened to tear down walls if someone didn’t move fast enough, and that was where Ivan stayed.For an entire week.
I wasn’t allowed to see him. I didn’t blame them. Not even for a second. Whatever boundaries the brothers set? I deserved them. All of them. Ivan wouldn’t have been in thismess if it hadn’t been for me. I’d accepted all of this, even if it hurt, and I spent my nights crying my eyes out, wondering if I would get the call that he’d died.
My phone buzzed, the soft vibration slicing right through the heavy quiet of Emeline’s home. My stomach plummeted. For a week, I’d barely left the penthouse except to get Jane to and from school. Don was glued to her side.
When I unlocked my phone, everything inside me went cold.
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