“Nyet,” he says. “You cannot enter yet. He is still in critical condition.”
“Look,doc,” I growl, my voice cracking. “I don’t give a fuck about your rules. I need to see him. I need to see his face…”
“Dr. Pyotr,” he introduces himself as if I give a shit about his name right now.
His thin lips twitch, barely a motion, before he answers, “Multiple surgeries. We’ve removed both bullets, but there is significant damage; the internal bleeding is bad.”
I hold my breath, waiting for the words that could crush me.
“Mr. Orlov has less than a 24-hour window to survive; his fate is in his own hands,” he declares.
I clamp my teeth down on my bottom lip. I hate the way his voice carries that eerie, matter-of-fact tone, like death is something he discusses over coffee.
Damn it. I stare after him, feeling the anger boiling under my skin.
No. Fucking. Way.
And then, from the pit of my mind, another cold thought twists in the dark:What if I lose D forever? What if I never get the chance to tell him about his son, about how Alex is as tough and determined as he is?
I’m about to lose my shit, to grab that bony-assed doctor and shake some hope out of him, when—
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
An alarm rips through the building, piercing and urgent. Fuck. Code red.
My heart stops dead in my chest.
Dr. Pyotr’s head snaps toward the operating room. In a blink, he’s sprinting back, his bony frame moving with surprising speed. The double doors bang open, then swing shut behind him, cutting off a glimpse of frantic activity inside.
I can’t breathe. Can’t think. The world goes fuzzy around the edges, like I’m seeing everything through murky water.
Dr. Anastasia comes tearing out of Oleg’s room, face white as a sheet, her coat splattered with blood. My pulse kicks into overdrive as her panicked eyes lock onto the operating room where D is.
Oh God. No. Please, no.
My chest constricts, every cell in my body screaming in terror. The beeping, the pounding footsteps, the controlled chaos—it’s all for D.
“His heart stopped,” I whisper, the words tasting like ash. “No, no, no. Not now. Not like this.”
My knees give in, and I slam down hard onto the cold tile floor. The impact jolts through my body, but I barely feel it. My hands shake as I try to brace myself, fingernails scraping uselessly against the smooth surface.
“Wren!”
I freeze. That voice. My blood turns to ice in my veins. I turn, slow and unsteady, my muscles quivering with the effort to keep me from collapsing completely.
Sophia.
Luka.
They’re standing in the clinic doorway.
Sophia… Tears I didn’t even know I was holding back start streaming down my face. Seeing them here, now—it’s too much. Everything comes crashing down, threatening to drown me in a tidal wave of fear and grief.
The alarm’s still blaring, but all I can hear is the pounding of my own heart—and the terrifying silence where D’s should be.
Sophia rushes toward me, arms outstretched. But I can’t move. Can’t speak. Can’t do anything but stand there, trembling, as the world falls apart around me.
Luka’s already sprinting toward the operating room, shouting for the doctors. His voice sounds far away, like he’s yelling from the bottom of a well.
