Chapter 31
FLIPPING THE HOURGLASS
Sometimes we need time, sometimes we give time
Della
The flight took about three hours to land in Chicago, but it felt like three lifetimes.
As if the sky were in complete resonance with my emotional state, it turned gray with a few touches of dark purple and threatened to rain.
A car was already waiting on the tarmac. David thought of everything, but him not being here makes me feel even more worried. In a half an hour, the driver stops in front of Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and I enter through the glass door with only one thought in mind—find Dorian.
After taking a few elevators and navigating lots of turns and colored corridors, I finally find David and Flor in a private waiting area on the surgical floor.
Flor is sitting on a vinyl chair, her head in her hands. David is pacing, his suit jacket gone, his white shirt stained with dried blood at the side. The moment I realize that is Dorian’s blood, I need to lean against the wall to keep from falling.
"Della."
Flor sees me first. She stands up, her face crumbled with exhaustion, and rushes to hug me. We haven’t seen each other since I first left, but it feels like yesterday. She is a warm hearted, strong woman and a very good friend to Dorian, and to me.
"Flor…” I hug her tight, but I need to know. ”Where is he? Is he out of surgery?"
"They moved him to the ICU," David says, approaching, his voice rough. He can’t look me in the eye. "He made it through the surgery. He’s alive, Della."
The relief hits me so hard my knees buckle, but I lock them.
Alive.That’s all that matters.
I look again at the blood on David’s shirt. "What happened? Please, tell me."
"You may want to sit down, first.” As I sit, David takes a deep breath and finally meets my gaze. “We found Andy. Andy Moldovan.”
Andy.The name sends a violent tremor through me. The monster of my nightmares. I instantly press my palms against my belly as if even his name could damage something inside me.
"Andy... is in Chicago?" I whisper, the old fear trying to claw its way up my throat.
"He was," David says, his expression hardening into something lethal. “Dorian asked me to find him after the night you spent at the lake house. Dorian wanted to make him pay for everything he did to you. After some deep digging, I found out he left your country for Germany, at first. There, he got involved with the Russian mafia and, finally, came to Chicago, two years ago.”
Memories flash—the coma, the police, the empty trail. After I woke up from my coma and managed to talk to the police, it was already too late. Andy Moldovan was nowhere to be found. The police eventually stopped looking, dismissing me as just another abused young woman, and moving on to bigger, more important cases to solve.
At that time, I was fighting so many emotional breakdowns that I simply assumed Andy returned to the darkness he came from, convinced he only lived in my nightmares. I locked him away with everything that happened and pretended it never did.
Knowing that Andy was walking freely in the same town, sends shivers through my body. I will definitely have to call dr. Davis and talk about it.
I can feel Flor taking my hand and pulling me out of my thoughts.
“How… Why did he shoot Dorian?” I ask.
“We were planning a trap for Andy. It was a very delicate matter; we had to be careful with the Russians. But Dorian didn’t want to wait anymore. He knew you came back from the trip, and he wanted Andy gone, now. He confronted him at the distillery. He wanted Andy to know exactly why he was dying.
He did it for you, Della. He handed Andy over to the Russians, but... Andy had a holdout piece. A small caliber."
David’s voice cracks with self-loathing. "I missed it."
"Where is Andy now?" I ask, my voice surprisingly steady.
"Gone," David says simply. "He will never hurt anyone again. The Russians don’t like traitors."
