"Of course I'm awake," he says softly, his smile widening slightly. "I told you I wasn't going anywhere yet, didn't I?" I grab his hand tighter, laughing through my tears. "I was so scared, Dad. I thought I was going to lose you."
"I know," he says gently, his thumb moving slightly against my hand. "But I'm okay now, I'm here, you're here, that's all that matters to me."
I sit down properly in my chair, still holding his hand like I'm afraid he'll disappear if I let go. "You still want me to call you Dad? Even after everything?"
He looks at me with confusion written all over his tired face. "What else would you call me?"
"I don't know," I say, trying to smile. "Mister Miroslav? Sir? Your honor?"
He laughs weakly, then winces in pain. "Don't make me laugh, it hurts my chest, but yes, please keep calling me Dad, I like hearing it from you."
I smile through my tears. "Okay, Dad."
He squeezes my hand back with what little strength he has. "Good girl."
After a moment of comfortable silence, I ask quietly, "Do you think it was Ilay who sent that man?"
His expression shifts immediately, becoming more serious. "No."
"How can you be so sure?" I press, needing to understand. "He threatened to kill you, he threatened the whole family, how do you know it wasn't him?"
"I know how Ilay operates," he says with certainty in his voice. "That man doesn't use hired guns to do his dirty work for him, if he wanted me dead he would show up himself to put the bullet in my head, he wouldn't send some nobody in a hoodie to do it from a distance."
I blink, processing this. "Then who would want you dead badly enough to try this?"
"You want to know why that man hates me so much?" he asks, his voice getting slightly stronger. "Why he threatened your entire family when they took you?"
I nod quickly. "Yes, I want to understand."
He takes a slow breath, gathering his strength. "My father was a hard man, cruel in ways I've spent my whole life trying not to repeat, he believed in cutting down weeds while they're still small so they can't grow into problems later, from the time Ilay was just a boy, maybe eight years old, he had been kidnapped by my family five different times, five times we took him from his mother and used him as leverage against his father."
My eyes widen in horror. "Five times? Why would your father do that to a child?"
"The last time was when Ilay was fourteen years old," my father continues, his voice heavy with old guilt. "My father decided it was finally time to kill him off permanently, to eliminate the future threat he represented, but that bastard refused to die like he was supposed to."
"What happened?" I whisper.
"He survived somehow," my father says, almost admiringly despite the circumstances. "Ran through the forest to escape while my father's men hunted him like an animal, on his way through the woods he encountered a wild wolf, that's how he got that scar on his neck, the one you've probably noticed."
I gasp, my hand going to my own throat. "A wolf attacked him while he was running for his life?"
"He killed it with his bare hands," my father says. "Fourteen years old, bleeding, terrified, running from killers, he still managed to kill a full-grown wolf that attacked him, that's when I knew he would grow up to be something truly dangerous."
My mind is reeling with this information, trying to reconcile the image of a terrified fourteen-year-old boy with the powerful, ruthless man I know now.
"So you see," my father continues, "the real culprit for this shooting, the person who's actually after me right now, should be whoever is also after those property documents we've been fighting over for months, that's who shot me, not Ilay."
For some reason, hearing him say that with such certainty makes me feel calmer than I've felt in weeks.
It isn't Ilay.
He didn't do this.
He didn't send someone to hurt my father.
I don't know why that matters so much to me, but it does, it matters more than I want to admit.
My father watches me carefully, reading my face. "You were really worried it was him, weren't you? That's why you've been so frantic."
