30
1012 Words
It takes both Stefan and Tolya to get me standing again, though I’m not able to remain that way for long.
Stefan is tasked with holding me up while Tolya helps me in and out of dress after dress. Patient as a saint, his gaze lowered, he gently takes my feet one by one and lifts them into the opening of another rustling skirt, sets my foot on the floor, waits until Stefan balances me, then does the same routine with the other foot and pulls the skirt up my legs.
Buttons are pushed through buttonholes. Snaps are snapped. Silk ties are tied.
All the while I remain entombed in a body that now serves as a crypt for my heart.
My devastation is so total I’m unable to cry. The proof of Naz’s death has hit me like an atom bomb, flattening everything inside with a scalding flash of heat and a powerful shock wave of pressure. I’m a wasteland of poison gas and smoking cinders, howling, acid winds.
He’s gone. My love is gone. My kind, soulful, beautiful man . . .
Gone.
And I’m in ruin.
“This one is pretty,” says Dimitri, gesturing at me with his cigar.
I’m swathed in yards of crepe and French lace. A funeral shroud. I stare at nothing, unable to see.
Naz.
“It’s very flattering to her figure,” agrees Alek. “That slender waist.”
“All right. We’ll take it.”
“Very good. A veil to match, sir?”
“If you recommend it.”
“I do.”
Dimitri waves a hand. It’s done.
Naz.
Tolya and Stefan share a look I don’t bother to interpret, then the two of them assist me out of the sample dress. I no longer care about my nudity or even notice it. I can’t feel the air on my skin. The room and everyone in it is far away, beyond the howling winds and poisonous gases.
Another guard enters the room. As faceless and interchangeable as all the others. “Sir, your physician is here.”
“Show him in.”
The guard leaves. Dimitri stands—
And wobbles.
He grips Stefan’s shoulder to steady himself, then straightens his tie. He smooths a hand over his hair. When the doctor enters the room, Dimitri drops his hand from Stefan’s shoulder and welcomes him with an untroubled voice.
“Stefan, see Evalina to the bridal suite.”
He leaves, ushering the doctor down the corridor with a sure step.
He doesn’t look back. If he did, he’d see Stefan’s look. The sharp, cat-eyed look, the one that doesn’t miss anything.
Dimitri didn’t come to me last night.
The wobble and the thought are connected, but I’m too dead to care.
With Dimitri gone, Stefan takes over. He issues a curt command for the other guards to remove the rolling dress racks to the truck outside, which is obeyed without question. Alek and Tolya follow, giving Stefan a wide berth.
I sense the hierarchy of things, the undercurrents of power.
The room emptied, Stefan snatches my turquoise sheath from the floor and tries to find the hem. It’s slithering liquid in his hands. He throws it aside, irritated, and removes his jacket. He slings it over my shoulders and doesn’t bother asking if I can walk.
The answer must be more than obvious.
He picks me up and carries me from the room.
As he strides down the empty corridor, he says through barely moving lips, “He’s injured.”
“Shot,” I answer, finding the right word through the desolation in my head.
“Your doing?”
Naz. I shake my head, a sob sticking in my throat.
“Why doesn’t he go to the hospital?”
“Paranoia. Enemies everywhere. And he thinks he’s invincible. A god.”
We turn a corner, encountering a maid dusting a carved sideboard. She scurries out of our way. When she’s gone, Stefan murmurs, “He’s in trouble with Pakhan. Overstepping boundaries. Losing money. Attracting attention.”
Pakhan is the boss in the Russian Bratva. The godfather who controls everything. Dimitri is extremely powerful and connected, but there’s only one man in all of Russia who answers to no one, and it isn’t him.
This bit of information tells me that Stefan has not only defected from Dimitri’s side, he’s actively working against him. Not only that, but he’s decided to trust me.
“Does Pakhan know about the nuke?”
There is the slightest falter in his step before he recovers. “Nuke?”
“Dimitri made a deal with the president of Venezuela to send him a UR-100 warhead.”
“Are you positive?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have proof?”
“No. But I know someone who does.”
“Give me the name.”
I close my eyes and rest my head on his broad shoulder, a weight like a thousand pounds of stones crushing my chest. “I’ll do you one better,” I whisper. “I’ll give you his phone number, too.”
TWELVE
NAZ
“I look like shit.”
“Really? I think you look good.”
“I hate that picture. It’s my passport picture. I look constipated.”
Leaning over me and gazing at the newspaper in my hand, Doc shrugs. “I never look that good when I’m constipated.”
The way he says it makes me think he owns a lot of laxatives. Probably due to all the meat he eats. In the past day, he’s made himself four bacon cheeseburgers, as many roast beef sandwiches, steak and eggs, double-stuffed carnitas burritos, and several large cans of beef stew. Right now he’s polishing off a bag of turkey jerky, and he shakes the bag in my face.
“Want some?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You gotta eat, man. You can’t go on a hunger strike—it won’t help you heal. And you gotta hydrate. Here.” He hands me a bottle of water.
- Writer
