I don’t particularly like the sight of blood, but I watch in morbid fascination now wondering about the things Dragna said.
His hands are bloody. He’s killed people, tortured people. How can the hands that held me, caressed me, the hands that made me feel safe be the same hands that caused someone else’s pain. Someone else’s death.
I feel bile rise up in my throat and I turn quickly to vomit into the sink beside me. Lev rushes back in with a chair that he sets down in front of the counter. He holds my hair back for me and I feel his hand rub my back. He doesn’t speak, he just waits until I’ve brought everything up before he turns the tap on and washes the sink.
“I’m so sorry Willow.”
“What for?” I ask breathlessly as I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, still feeling dazed and out of it because of everything that’s happened.
“I lied to you and Alina. Both of you have been hurt by us lying to you and because you both found out the truth in horrible ways. I didn’t want either of you to get hurt.”
He sits on the chair he brought in and grabs some wipes and whatever the bottle is that he lifted from the cabinet.
“It’s not your fault.” It’s the only words I can come up with right now because Lev is not the person who should be apologising to me.
He opens the bottle and tips the liquid onto a wipe.
“It’s partly my fault. This is going to sting by the way.” He doesn’t give me a second to ask what he’s doing before the wipe is pressed to my knee.
“Fuck!!” I jerk my leg back.
“What the hell are you doing?” I grit out.
“It’s antiseptic, I need to clean all of these cuts before I can start taking the glass out.”
“I don’t think so Lev! Take me to the hospital if it’s that bad! What do you know about doing any of this?”
He looks at me and raises his eyebrow and gives me a pointed look as he sits back in the chair.
“You’re asking me, the second in command to Dragna, now knowing what you do about us on what I know about taking care of injuries?”
My mind reels again thinking of everything they’ve possibly seen, all the things they’ve probably done and I feel like I'm going to throw up again. Tears brim my eyes and start to spill down my cheeks as Lev stands and wraps me in a hug. I cling to him automatically, my brain just looking for any kind of anchor to keep me grounded right now.
“I wish this all could have been different. I wish you and Alina didn’t go through this hurt and pain because of us. I swear to you if I could take it all away, I would.”
He strokes my hair and I start to laugh a little.
“Are you laughing?” He asks and his hand stops. He sounds so confused and it makes me laugh even more.
“Willow. If you’re having some kind of breakdown I might need to call for backup.”
He pulls away from me to look at my face and he looks so concerned as he searches my eyes for any sign that I’m about to go crazy.
“I’m laughing in shock. None of this is funny, it just doesn’t feel real because I don’t understand any of this.” I say as I wipe my tears away.
“How can you and Dragna, two terrifying looking men, two men involved in crime, both be so gentle to me? To Alina? It doesn’t make any sense and I feel like I have whiplash, or maybe I am just having a breakdown.”
Lev breaths out a sigh as he sits down again, repeating the process of the adding antiseptic to another wipe.
“If you let me clean your wounds and look after you, I’ll tell you how.”
I blink at him, he really isn’t going to let me get out of him helping me.
“Okay.” I sigh.
“When Dragna and I were younger.” He says, clearing his throat as he brings the wipe up to my knee, pressing it down and holding the back of my leg gently so I can’t pull away as I hiss again at the pain.
“I had to go live with him, Aunt Milena and our grandfather because something happened to my mother. I had two sisters as well. They were twins, only a couple years younger than me.” He gives me a weak smile and all I can focus on are the words ‘had’.
