The drive felt excruciatingly long, but once we finally made it up to the gate, I took a breath of relief while the gates opened and out ran two men. Immediately after the car had come to a halt, the two of them helped Stephan out, carrying him inside to be treated, while I was frantically scrambling trying to figure out what to do next.
I followed them inside, leaving my manners at the door because I was so worried about Stephan, and I saw how pale he looked in the stream of morning light coming in through the window. I was scared, absolutely terrified that we were too late, that there would be nothing that anyone could do to help him, but I knew I had to be strong.
He would want you to be strong right now, Annika. You can’t fall apart right now. You have to believe that he’s going to be just fine.
They carried him off into what appeared to be a study, shutting the door behind them while a man came out to meet with me, and judging from the concerned look on his face, I assumed that it was Viktor.
“Thank you very much for getting here as quickly as you did. My doctors and medical staff will do everything they can to save him, but I need you to tell me everything that happened. I know Stephan and I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye but he’s my brother, and I will always look out for family. I see that you’ve come with yours as well. If I’m not mistaken, you are a Novikova,” he said, and it amazed me that he even knew who I was.
“How do you know that?”
“My family and yours haven’t exactly seen eye-to-eye over generations either, but I have to be grateful to you for doing what you could to save my brother. I take it that you two are involved,” he said, politely.
“Yes, we are. I’ll tell you whatever you need to know, I’m just so scared right now. I don’t know what I’m going to do if I lose him, and I hate that we had to meet this way,” I said, being honest with him, and I could already tell that he appreciated that.
“While our families may have had their differences, I do not share those same feelings. I’ve done a lot for the woman I love, as has a lot of my other brothers in this family. I can see that you care about him a lot, and when he pulls through, we can have a proper meeting. Though, for now, I’d like you all to join me in the sun room so we can discuss the nature of what happened,” he said, moving over to shake hands with my father, and I was expecting him to be a little more apprehensive at being friendly towards a Volkov, but something seemed to have changed within my father as well.
It was nice to see him not act so tough, softening up to the idea that his daughter had been through enough, and it wasn’t the time to riddle her about the choices she made in men. I watched while Viktor and my father walked up, jumping into the conversation before he sat us all down and offered us some tea.
I was shaking when he eventually poured me a cup, and he made sure it was safely in my hand before he let go, holding it there for a moment, looking at me, as though he was trying to tell me that everything was going to be just fine.
I was so worried that Stephan put his life on the line only to end up dead because of me, and that was something that I’d never be able to live with, because if I had just been smarter about my actions, he probably would’ve been alive and well.
It should’ve been me fighting to my last breath, not Stephan. It should’ve been me.
I felt a single tear slide down my cheek as Viktor looked at me, sharing a sympathetic look while we dove into the gory details.
I told him everything that I’d been through over the last few weeks, and some of which I knew shocked my parents as well. I was surprised that they didn’t jump in to say anything, to criticize my actions, telling me that I should’ve known better. I thought that maybe they had passed the point of trying to discipline me, settling on the fact that I was very capable of protecting myself if the situation called for it.
I knew that my father never expected to see me that way, to see his only daughter fight with every ounce of strength she had to save the man that had changed her life. That was the kind of love I never expected to find in my entire life, one that I was very sure never even existed to begin with, but I was proven wrong from the moment I met Stephan.
He stuck around to make sure I was okay when he didn’t even know me, when I could’ve been more of a liability to him than anything else, and yet he took me in. He made me feel safe, he taught me what true love felt like, and he gave me the opportunity to explore the different areas of my life to see if I even wanted to dabble in the crime world at all.
It didn’t take me long to decide that I wanted to be a part of his life, that I wanted to grow old with him, and learn everything I could along the way. He gave me a new perspective, he taught me the very things that my parents were supposed to teach me ages ago, but instead they left me to my own devices.
I didn’t have it in me to blame them any longer for what I’d been through, because I knew deep down that they cared about me in a way that I would always be grateful for. I never doubted their love for me, only their decisions when it came to how they went about trying to keep me safe.
I saw how Natalia’s family treated her, how they left her there to die in her final moments, not even bothering to acknowledge that the one daughter they brought into this world was dying on the floor with a stab wound that I inflicted. All they ever cared about was that precious painting, the painting that was supposed to make them far more powerful than any of us due to its value, but they never managed to get to it.
I knew the location of that painting, and Stephan had only shared it with me in case things went terribly wrong, but I wasn’t going to tell anyone until he woke up. It was not my place to say, and it was the last thing he wanted to keep a secret. I knew that his family loved him, that they wouldn’t want anything to happen to him, but they still had quite a bit of their differences to sort out.
I didn’t want this painting to get in the middle of that, and so I decided to keep quiet about it even if both my father and Viktor would sit there pressing me for its location. The only thing that was important was waiting to see if Stephan was going to pull through.
I was gripping the cup in my hands so tightly that I genuinely thought I would break it, but I was lost in thought, thinking back to every moment Stephan and I shared together, the journey that made us who we were today. I thought about the good moments and the bad, realizing that I would never want to leave any of that behind even if it meant getting the chance to live a normal, mundane life. I loved who I was with him, I loved what we were able to do together, and I wanted nothing more than to live out the rest of my days right by his side.
I need you to wake up, Stephan. I need to tell you that after all that has happened, we’re still in this together.
