He snorts softly. “You’re blaming me for that now?”
“I’m trying to distract myself while you pour hellfire into my ribs.”
“That sounds like your problem.”
I smile despite myself.
He catches it and shakes his head. “You know, most men your age take up golf.”
“Most men my age are dull.”
He laughs then. A short, startled sound, like the amusement got past his guard before he could stop it. It changes his whole face when it happens. Briefly. Enough to remind me why women used to lose their minds over him before he became married to medicine and impossible standards.
Then it’s gone, and he’s all business again.
“What happened, Viktor?”
“Someone took a shot from the roofline.”
“At you.”
“Yes.”
“Anyone see the shooter?”
“Not clearly.”
“Anyone dead?”
“Not yet.”
He nods once, as if that tracks with the laws of the universe. Then he tapes fresh gauze over the cleaned wound and steps back. “I want imaging. I want blood work. I want you under observation for a few hours.”
“No.”
His expression hardens at once. “Yes.”
“I have somewhere to be.”
“You were just shot.”
“I’m aware. I was there.”
“Viktor.”
That tone. The one that used to freeze me in place before I was old enough to match him snarl for snarl.
I meet his eyes. “Tonight matters.”
“Tonight,” he repeats flatly. “Your son’s rehearsal dinner.”
I don’t answer. I don’t need to.
His mouth twists with something halfway between disbelief and resignation. “Of course it is.”
I adjust the edge of the gauze taped over my side and reach for the clean shirt one of my men has already produced. The fabric is crisp, dark, expensive. Dry. Useful.
He watches me pull it on with the expression of a man who knows he’s losing an argument and is deeply offended by it.
