"Christ, little brother," I whisper, barely able to get the words out. "Look at you."
And for the first time in three years, I let myself feel it: He came home. I didn’t lose him.
Ettoro’s voice is in my ear again, practical and clipped. The other two men have opened the door for him. "We move him on my mark. The bird is ready."
I swallow. The plan returns, cold and necessary, but beneath it something else wakes: a promise I didn’t know I still had the right to make. I press my forehead to Nico's temple for the smallest instant, an old protection, a stupid superstition, then straighten.
"There’s work to do," I tell him, and the words are for both of us. My brother breathes on, slow and stubborn.
"Fuck," I say, and it’s not a curse; it’s a prayer that forgot how to be hopeful. "It’s really you."
Nico doesn’t wake. The monitor does the talking, thin beeps like an apology. My hand finds his shoulder and fits there perfectly.
"Conti," Ettoro warns, eyes at the door, "we need to move."
"I know." I swallow the burn in my throat and force my head to work. "Oxygen, saline—keep the drip. Pressure bag in the med pack when the bird is ready. We move him flat, no jostling. Bring the nurse."
Then, from out of nowhere,hervoice cuts in, cool as ice over a knife, "HQ breached. Call Grigori."
The words don’t match the tone. The tone says traffic report; the words tear the floor out from under me. For a heartbeat, the room narrows to a tunnel: Oksana alone at the hotel, door blown inward, rifles aimed. My lungs forget their job; heat punches my spine cold. I have a thought I shouldn’t have in a place like this. We were kissing an hour ago, and my brother was dying, and now she might be?—
No. No.
"Stay with me," I say, not sure if I’m telling Nico, Oksana, or myself. I jam the earpiece tighter. "Ettoro, get him ready."
He’s already on it, taking the brakes off the bed Nico is on and rolling it underneath where the ceiling used to be. I wince when the bed stutters over broken metal from the roof, but that can't be helped.
"Oksana," I say into the mic, and my voice is too steady for the way my hands want to shake. "Say again."
Static cracks. Far off, our south team pops another charge; the building answers with a shudder. There is nothing from Oksana's end. Fuck.
The calm slides under my ribs and sets up a fight with the part of me already moving. I look at Nico—gray skin, the stubborn flicker in his pulse—and I want two bodies, one of them to go with him and the other to go after Oksana.
"Ettoro," I say, throat tight.
"On it, call Grigori." Ettoro is already securing ropes to the gurney Nico is strapped to. The nurse is still pressed to the wall, and the two men with her hold her still. She’s the reason Nico is still warm. "Grab the portable monitor," I tell them. "Unclip it. We’re moving him."
She glances at the door, back at me. "If you pull him now?—"
"He dies if we don’t," I say. "He might die if we do. Those are the choices."
Ettoro secures the ropes. "I've got this," he snarls at me.
I get it:make the fucking call.
The room is a siren, monitors whining, rotors chewing the roof, Ettoro yelling orders. I thumb my phone and hit the number I swore I’d never use unless the floor fell out.
"Arsenyev," a voice answers like a drawn wire.
"No time to explain," I say. "Oksana was taken. She said to call you."
"Blyat." The curse lands heavy; I hear him moving, not wasting time—footfalls on old wood, a door, the minute echo of a high-ceilinged hall. "What happened?"
"I don’t know," I grind out. Nico’s weight is still on my hands; his breath is a metronome I’m trying to match. "We’re extracting my brother. She was on comms, working the terminals. She said,Call Grigori, and then… nothing."
Silence on the line, then the sharp staccato of keys, metallic, fast. He’s already in a system, opening doors I had no clue were there.
"She has a tracker," he informs me.
