“Have there been any breakthroughs?”
“Yes. And no.” She furrowed her brow at me. “Not a cure, but something that’s shown to indicate a longer remission. It could buy time, but…” She winced, clearly uneasy about the topic. “It’s not on the market. It’s not even approved by any medical board. The little of what I’ve heard about it, it’s um…”
“Risky? Any medicine can come with side effects, I know that.”
“Yes. That, of course. But it’s also something that’s really only available illegally.”
“On the black market?”
She nodded. “Has one of the representatives from the facilities I told you about mentioned it to you? Because, really, it’s experimental at best yet. And not approved. And, uh, it’s um, it’s sponsored by a known terrorist group. Something of an offshoot that some suspect came from a biowarfare research effort.”
Of course. Of course it would.If my uncle could “learn” about a new treatment that could help my cousin he didn’t care about, it’d be from a shady source like that.
“It does exist, though?”
She shrugged, seeming uncomfortable to even discuss it. “Where did you hear about it?”
“Just, you know, Googling about it and it popped up in a thread somewhere.”
“If you need help getting her into the hospice, I’m more than happy to help you move her and start her under a new care plan.”
“No!” I regretted the outburst. Imagining Claire meeting Esmeralda or knowing she was being transported out of a Giovanni property would be bad.
I felt like my worlds were colliding. “Thank you,” I said at her wide-eyed expression from my shout. “But I’m figuring it out. I’ve found some friends and I’ve got an idea on how to make the move easy for her…”
“Okay.” She didn’t seem convinced. It looked like she was debating asking me more about how I’d heard of that black-market drug.
Glancing at the time, I realized that I had been over for a while. “I should get back. Andre might be home soon. He’s been so busy and I haven’t really seen him today. At all, actually.” I added a light laugh as I stood.
“Oh, I know the feeling. Those Orlov men are too prone to being workaholics.”
I thanked her for her advice and left.
As soon as I entered Andre’s floor in his building, I called out for him.
“Andre?”
No one replied.
Hmm. He’s got to be home by now.
I went to his room, and per the steam billowing out from the open bathroom door, I’d found him.
Or rather, he found me. We encountered each other at the same second. He exited the bathroom, a towel slung so low on his waist, and I entered the bedroom.
“There you are.” I smiled, lowering my gaze to the tattoos and scars that littered his chiseled body. Water dripped over the dips and rises of his muscles. Just like that, the sight of this powerful, sexy man had me nearly drooling.
“And there you are.”
I frowned, looking up at his face. He’d said it not playfully like I had, but expectantly.
“I was helping Anya with her homework and talking to Claire for a few minutes.” I hated to rush to give him an explanation. That was a habit I had with my uncle when he ordered me to explain myself.
Andre is not like him.
He’s not interrogating me. Or anything like that.
But he didn’t seem happy.
