29
Julian
“How is she?”Lucas asks, sitting down on the chair next to my bed.There is a thick bandage on his head, and he has to use crutches for his broken leg.Other than that, he’s already on the mend.He was unconscious in another room when Al-Quadar attacked the Uzbekistani hospital and thus missed all the fun.
“She’s… okay, I think.”I press a button to get the bed into a half-sitting position.My ribs ache at the motion, but I ignore the discomfort.Pain has been my constant companion since the crash, and I’m more or less used to it at this point.
Ever since our rescue from that construction site in Tajikistan five days ago, Nora and I have been recuperating in a special facility in Switzerland.It’s a private clinic staffed with top doctors from all over the world, and I’ve had Lucas personally supervise the security here.Of course, with the most dangerous cells of Al-Quadar eliminated, there’s less of an immediate threat, but it still pays to be cautious.I’ve had all of my injured men transferred here as well, so they could recover faster and in a nicer environment.
The room Nora and I share is state-of-the-art, equipped with everything from video games to a private shower.There are two adjustable beds—one for me and one for Nora—with Egyptian cotton sheets and memory foam mattresses on each.Even the heart-rate monitors and IV drips positioned around the beds look sleek, more decorative than medical.The whole setup is so luxurious, I can almost forget I’m in yet another hospital.
Almost, but not quite.
If I never set foot inside a hospital again, I will die a happy man.
To my tremendous relief, all of Nora’s injuries turned out to be minor.The wound on her arm needed a few stitches, but the blow to her face left only a nasty bruise on her cheekbone.The doctors also confirmed that she hadn’t been sexually assaulted, despite her state of undress.Within a few hours of our arrival here, Nora was pronounced healthy and ready to go home.
I, on the other hand, am a bit worse off, though not nearly as fucked up as I could’ve been.
They’ve already performed two operations on me—one to minimize the scarring on my face, and the second one to put a prosthetic eye into the vacant eye socket, so I don’t resemble a cyclops.I will never be able to see out of my left eye again—at least not until bionic eye technology advances further—but the surgeons have assured me that I’m going to look nearly normal once everything is healed.
My other injuries aren’t too bad either.They had to reset my broken arm and wrap it in a new cast, but the gunshot wound in my left shoulder is healing nicely, as are my cracked ribs.I still have some crusted blood under my fingernails and toenails from the needle torture, but it’s gradually getting better.The beating Majid’s men gave me at the end bruised my kidneys a bit.However, thanks to Peter’s prompt arrival, I escaped other internal injuries and more broken bones.When all is said and done, I will have a few more scars—and potentially some weakness in my left arm—but my appearance won’t scare little children.
I’m grateful for that.I’ve never been particularly vain about my looks, but I want to make sure that Nora still finds me attractive, that I don’t disgust her with my touch.She’s assured me that my scars and bruises don’t bother her, but I don’t know if she really means it.Because of my injuries, we haven’t had sex since our rescue, and I won’t know how she truly feels until I have her in my bed again.
In general, I’m not sure how Nora has been feeling for the past five days.With all the surgeries and doctors in the way, we haven’t had a chance to talk about what happened.Whenever I bring it up, she changes the topic, as though she wants to forget the whole thing.I would let her—except she’s also been unusually quiet.Withdrawn in some way.It’s as if the trauma she’s gone through has caused her to retreat within herself… to shut down her emotions in some manner.
“So she’s handling it?”Lucas asks, and I know he’s talking about Majid’s death.All of my men know about the way Nora gunned him down, and about her role in my rescue.They admire her for being so brave, whereas I’m battling a daily urge to throttle her for risking her life.And Peter—well, that’s a whole other matter.If he hadn’t disappeared promptly after bringing us to the clinic, I would’ve torn his head off for placing her in that kind of danger.
“She is,” I say in response to Lucas’s question.My concerns about Nora’s mental state are not something I want to share with him.“She’s handling it about as well as can be expected.The first kill is never easy, of course, but she’s tough.She’ll get through it.”
“Yes, I’m sure she will.”Reaching for his crutches, Lucas gets up and asks, “How soon do you want to head back to Colombia?”
“Goldberg says we can leave tomorrow.He wants me to stay here one more night, to make sure everything is healing properly, and then he’ll oversee my care back at the compound.”
“Excellent,” Lucas says.“I will make the arrangements then.”
He hobbles out of the room, and I reach for my laptop to check on Nora’s whereabouts.She went to get a snack from the cafe on the first floor of the clinic, but she’s already been gone longer than ten minutes, and I am beginning to get worried.
Logging in, I pull up the report from the trackers and see that she’s standing in the hallway, about fifty feet away from the room.The dot showing her location is stationary; she must be chatting with someone there.
Relieved, I close the laptop and place it back on the bedstand.
I know my fear for her is excessive, but I can’t control it.Seeing Majid’s knife at Nora’s throat had been the worst experience of my life.I had never been so terrified as when I saw the blood trickling down her smooth skin.I literally saw a wall of red at that moment, the rage pumping through me giving me a surge of strength I hadn’t known I possessed.Killing that terrorist hadn’t been a conscious decision; the need to protect Nora had overwhelmed both my instinct for self-preservation and common sense.
If I had been thinking more clearly, I would’ve come up with some other way to get Majid’s attention away from Nora until the reinforcements could arrive.
I had begun to suspect the rescue plan as soon as Majid mentioned shopping.It made a terrible kind of sense: Nora knew that my enemies would want her as leverage, and she knew that she had the trackers.I couldn’t believe that she would put herself out there like that—or that Peter would let her—but it was the only thing that could explain how Al-Quadar were able to lay their hands on her in my absence.
Instead of staying safe at the estate, Nora risked her life to save mine.
Knowing what Majid was capable of, she faced her nightmares to rescueme—the man she has every reason to hate.
I don’t know if I believed that she truly loved me until that moment… until I saw her standing there, scared, yet determined, her small body swathed in a man’s shirt ten sizes too big for her.Nobody had ever done anything like that for me before; even when I was a child, my mother would slink away at the first sign of my father’s temper, leaving me to his tender mercies.Other than the guards I hired, nobody had ever protected me.I had always been on my own.
Until her.
Until Nora.
