“I didn’t tell them, Yelisey. I wouldn’t.” He nods, but again, his eyes betray him as I go on, “I love Kostya. And yeah. I know who he is.” I whisper the next part. “What he is. And I love him anyway and there’s nothing I can do about it. But when I love someone, I love them completely, so you can take it to the bank that I’m not going to be the weak link. There’s nothing anyone can say that’ll make me talk to anyone who could hurt him or take him away from me.”
As I finish, I can see the gears turning in his head, weighing what I’ve said against my body language and my history. He seems to be somewhat satisfied, at least, because he nods once and says, “Kostya will want to know what that agent said. He’ll need to know.”
I nod, and he looks over at the monitor. The lines wiggle and wave on the paper, and it’s all very good news. “The baby is okay?”
“Yeah.” They haven’t specifically said as much but the lines and wiggles and the heartbeat coming through the speakers is good news. That much I know.
Yelisey smiles. “He’ll want to know that, too.”
He’s hovering now, standing over me and watching the monitor as if he’s concerned, and it warms my heart enough that I relax. Yelisey lets Tiana back in and I hold her until the doctors come in to say that I’m fine and the baby’s fine, and there’s still no word on Kostya, but as soon as there is, I’ll be first to know.
For now, that’s enough.
“Where’s Daddy?” Tiana and I are back in the waiting room with Vlad when she looks up from her coloring book to me. He stops and also looks at me as if he wants to know, too.
“He’s …” Oh God. I don’t even have a good lie. “He’s seeing the doctor right now.”
She goes back to coloring with renewed zeal, as if we haven’t been here for hours waiting when finally, the doctor who helped me earlier sticks his head in. “Mr. Zinon is asking for you.”
“He’s out of surgery?”
The doctor nods. “It was delicate work. The bullet punctured his femoral artery and he didn’t take well to the anesthesia. But he’s awake now and he’s asking for you.”
I stand, but this time I get lightheaded. I still haven’t eaten and I know that’s why, but I want to see Kostya way more than I want a Snickers bar. “Stay here with your friend, Tiana honey, okay?”
“Mmhmm,” she murmurs, oblivious to the world around her. Oh, to be so blissfully ignorant as a child. I don’t think I’ll ever be that peaceful again.
I swallow against the bile in my throat and follow him down a hallway, through an electric door that he needs a keycard to open, and down another hallway. “I know it looks bad that he’s in intensive care, but with his reaction to the anesthesia, we have to keep a closer eye on him than he would get in a regular room on the floor.”
“But he’s okay?” Or is this guy sugarcoating it because he’s afraid I’ll drop to the ground and writhe around with another panic attack?
“Yeah. He’s doing just fine.” He stops at the sliding glass door to a room with a curtain pulled in front of it so I can’t see what or who is waiting for me inside.
The reassuring words are fine, but I need to be in there now.
“Look, he needs to stay calm,” the doctor says. “If you can do that, keep him from yelling at nurses and refusing his medications, then I’ll be grateful.” He chuckles a little and nods to the long desk that lines one wall where several nurses are seated with computer screens and charts in front of them, but there is definitely an interest in me that has several of them looking up and pretending they aren’t giving me the full visual pat-down.
“Okay,” I whisper through a throat that is suddenly tight with apprehension.
He slides the door open, and I step inside.
The room is basically quiet, and I’m still outside the curtain because I’m a chicken.
Then I remember what I’ve gone through.
My mother. Lila. Tiana. Guns and blood, the man in the pool house, the daily torment of Kostya and his will-he-or-won’t-he that accompanied every second in his compound. A baby that never should have been conceived. I’ve been through the shoot-out at the Baltzley and another at Fifth Faith. I’ve survived beatings in captivity and days of both physical and psychological torture. I’ve been shot at and beat down and locked up.
And I’m still here.
I made it. I survived.
I became stronger than all the people and all the things trying to break me. Found strength I never knew I had. Maybe I took some of this newfound steel from Kostya or his daughter or from Yelisey, or maybe it was just buried deep within me, but either way, it’s mine now. I am my own person.
I’m not a pawn in a scary game.
I’m a queen.
My heartbeat settles down and my breathing becomes slow and calm. I feel tall, somehow, like I grew another inch. The constant pregnancy nausea seems to recede into the background.
Finally, because everyone at that desk and the man behind the curtain are all waiting for me to move, I push it aside and walk to the bed.
Kostya’s eyes are closed but as I lay my hands on the rail, he covers one with his and his lips curve into a smile.
He cracks an eyelid open. “Hey.”
I smile back because he’s alive and he’s safe in a hospital and he’s smiling at me. “Hey. You look”—pale, tired, drugged—“good.”
“That’s funny. I feel like shit.” He shifts and the smile morphs to a grimace.
I can’t pull a chair over because there isn’t a chair in the room. It’s not the kind of room where they
