THE DEVIL’S ON CALL

Retainers and Realities

The cold weight of the gun barrel against her forehead didn’t make Zoya flinch. It made her jaw lock so tightly her teeth ached.

She stood perfectly still, a fresh bag of saline gripped in one hand and an antiseptic lock in the other. Her apron was soaked through with his twin’s blood, her hair was sticking to her damp forehead, and her muscles were trembling from a three hour marathon against death. She had just pulled his literal carbon copy back from the edge of the grave with nothing but a stolen surgical kit and sheer, stubborn will.

He should have been thanking her. He should have been kissing her boots for not leaving his brother to rot on the asphalt in front of a third grade classroom. Instead, here he was, playing the arrogant king in her basement.

This, Zoya thought with a surge of familiar, venomous disgust, is exactly why I hate men in power. They truly believed the entire world, including gravity and mortality, owed them a personal favor.

"Lower the gun, Lev," Zoya said. Her voice didn't shake. It was a low, dangerous growl that cut right through the heavy silence of the room. "Or so help me, I will drop these saline bags, walk out that door, and let your brother’s stitches dissolve. See how fast he leaks out then."

Lev studied her face. His winter-blue eyes searched her expression for a tremor, a blink, a single bead of fear. He found nothing but raw, unfiltered fury. Slowly, almost deliberately, he clicked the safety back into place and lowered the heavy black pistol, sliding it into the interior pocket of his tailored coat. The men standing in the shadows behind him didn't move an inch, their hands still hovering near their holsters.

"You have an incredibly bad habit of threatening people who can erase you, doctor," Lev noted calmly, his gravelly voice echoing off the damp concrete walls.

"And you have a bad habit of interrupting my post op," Zoya shot back, pushing past him without a shred of deference. She marched straight to the metal table, spiked the saline bag, and expertly hooked it into the IV line she had established in Ivan’s uninjured arm. "What happened out there? Your brother decided to play soccer mom at an elementary school, and a dark sedan decided to turn him into road kill . That's what happened on my account."

Lev stepped closer to the table, his eyes mapping the clean, uniform white silk stitches cutting across his brother's chest. "Ivan was targeted. A rival syndicate tracing our north dock movements. What I want to know is why he was at that specific location."

"Ask him when he wakes up," Zoya snapped, adjusting the drip flow with a sharp flick of her thumb. "He followed me there from a mini mart. He probably thought it was funny. and his little game almost brought a gang war down on my head."

She spun around, pointing a blood-stained finger directly at Lev’s chest. "Listen to me very carefully. You keep your brother away from me. You keep him away from my car, away from my neighborhood, and away from that school. Because if he follows me again, I won't bother fixing him Next time, I’ll be the one putting a bullet in him myself."

A ghost of a smirk touched Lev’s aristocratic features a chilling, fleeting shadow of the expression his brother wore so naturally. "He’s stable?"

"For now," Zoya said, her tone shifting back into flat, clinical detachment. "The bullet nicked the left subclavian artery. I repaired the wall and stopped the internal bleeding, but he’s lost a massive amount of fluid. He needs absolute bed rest for at least three weeks. No heavy lifting, no shooting people, no running around the docks. Keep him on a tight leash, or the pressure will rip my stitches right open."

Lev nodded once, a cold, decisive gesture. He flicked his wrist, and two of his towering guards immediately stepped forward, moving toward the table with practiced efficiency.

Zoya didn't like other people touching her workspace, but she wasn't about to carry the giant up the stairs herself. She grabbed a small scrap of paper, scribbled a list of heavy-duty antibiotics and pain management protocols, and shoved it into the pocket of the lead guard's jacket.

"Those are the meds he needs. Don't skip a dose unless you want sepsis to finish what those shooters started," she commanded.

She followed the men up the creaking wooden stairs, watching in silence as they carefully loaded an unconscious, pale Ivan into the back of a sleek, black armored SUV. Lev didn't say goodbye. He didn't offer a parting threat. He simply slid into the backseat, the heavy door clicking shut with a muted, expensive thud before the vehicle melted into the gray morning mist.

Zoya marched back down into the basement, her shoulders finally dropping as the adrenaline began to leave her system. The room was suffocatingly quiet now. She walked over to her stainless-steel work table to begin the grueling process of scrubbing the metal down, but she stopped dead.

Resting on the blood smeared surface was a thick, heavy stack of crisp hundred dollar bills.

Zoya stared at the money. Her hand hovered over it.

Then, she thought of the stack of medical past-due notices sitting on her kitchen counter. She thought of Leo's upcoming oncology checkup.

Zoya closed her fingers around the cash, shoved it deep into her hoodie pocket, and picked up the bleach.

By 3:00 PM, the sky had cleared into a pale, deceptive blue. Zoya stood in the crowded drop-off lane outside Leo’s school, her eyes tracking every single car that passed the gates with a hyper-vigilant intensity. The brick walls of the building felt different now vulnerable.

"Zoya!"

A bright blue nylon backpack came hurtling through the crowd. Leo broke away from his class, sprinting toward her sedan with a massive grin on his face, holding his white science poster board proudly over his head.

"Look," he demanded the second he threw the car door open, pointing a small finger at a bright red, glittery sticker at the top of the cardboard. "An A plus. The judges noted that my rendering of the digestive system was 'disturbingly accurate.' I told them my aunt teaches me anatomy. I did not mention the basement."

Zoya smiled, the tension in her jaw finally melting away as she pulled out into traffic. "Good. Let's keep the basement out of parent teacher conferences, Professor."

"Naturally," Leo said, leaning back and crossing his arms. "Though I believe Mr. Harrison could benefit from a lesson in precision. His handwriting has a terrible margin of error. Oh, by the way, did you patch up the tattooed guy?"

Zoya’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror. "He's fine, Leo. Don't worry about it."

"I wasn't worried," Leo shrugged, looking out the window. "His heart rate was rapidly decelerating when you put him in the car, but based on your average surgical completion time, I calculated a seventy four percent chance of survival. You're very efficient when you're angry."

"Glad my panic is an active math problem for you," Zoya murmured dryly.

When they unlocked the door to their three-bedroom apartment, the heavy scent of frying onions and frantic energy hit them instantly.

Alina was pacing the length of the small living room, still wearing her red supermarket smock. Her hair was pulled into a messy bun, and her phone was clutched tightly in her shaking hand. The second the door clicked, her head snapped up, her pale face twisting with raw, maternal terror.

"Oh my God," Alina gasped, dropping her phone onto the couch and throwing herself at Leo, pulling him into a crushing, desperate hug. "Leo! Thank God. Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

"Mom, your maternal grip is compressing my trachea," Leo wheezed, though he wrapped his small arms around her neck anyway.

"I heard it on the police scanner at the store," Alina cried, her voice trembling as she looked up at Zoya, her eyes wide with panic. "They said there was a shooting right outside the lower school gates. A black SUV. They said people were screaming, the school went into lockdown Zoya, what happened? Were you there?"

Zoya slipped her keys onto the counter, her face turning into a mask of perfect, reassuring calm. "It was a targeted hit on some local gang member, Alina. It happened out on the street, completely away from the kids. The school just locked down as a precaution. Leo was inside the gates the whole time. He was perfectly safe."

Alina let out a long, ragged breath, burying her face in her son's dark hair. "I swear, this city is turning into hell. I was terrified. I was ready to leave my shift right then."

"We're fine, Mom," Leo patted her shoulder with an old, comforting rhythm. "In fact, I am exceptionally hungry, and the olfactory data suggests you are burning the onions."

Alina gasped, instantly letting him go and scrambling back toward the kitchen stove. "Oh, blast it! Kirill will be home in ten minutes!"

Dinner was a loud, cramped affair around the small wooden kitchen table. Kirill had stumbled through the door at 6:00 PM, his eyes bloodshot from a brutal thirty-hour shift, his medical intern scrubs wrinkled and smelling of hospital cafeteria food.

"If I have to place another geriatric catheter today, I am changing my major to accounting," Kirill groaned, slumping heavily into his chair and reaching for the plate of meatloaf. "I mean it, Zoya. Accounting. Nice, quiet numbers. Numbers don't bleed on you."

"Numbers also don't pay your residency malpractice insurance, little brother," Zoya shot back, passing him the mashed potatoes with a faint smirk. "Eat your dinner. You look like a walking corpse."

"Look who's talking," Kirill muttered, though there was a deep, affectionate warmth in his tired eyes. "You look like you fought a bear."

"Just a long day," Zoya said smoothly, taking a sip of her water.

"An A plus day, actually," Leo interrupted, pointing his fork at his poster board resting against the refrigerator. "My digestive tract model was superior to Billy Henderson's. Billy used glitter glue for the large intestine. It was anatomically insulting."

Kirill laughed, a tired, rumbling sound that made him look exactly like the ten year old boy Zoya had protected in the foster system. "That’s my boy. Never accept sub-par intestinal representation."

"Exactly," Leo nodded solemnly. He took a bite of his food, chewed thoughtfully, and then looked directly across the table at his father. "Dad, did they teach you how to sew up bullet holes in your rotation yet?"

Kirill blinked, his fork pausing halfway to his mouth. "Uh, occasionally in the ER, buddy. Why?"

"Because Auntie Zoya’s friend with the throat tattoos got shot right in front of my school today," Leo said casually, reaching for the salt. "He was leaking everywhere. Auntie Zoya had to yell at him to get into the car ."

The entire kitchen table went dead silent.

Alina’s fork clattered against her porcelain plate. Kirill lowered his food, his tired eyes suddenly widening as they snapped directly to his twin sister, searching her face with an abrupt, terrifying sharpness.

Zoya kept her expression perfectly flat, her hand remaining entirely steady as she carefully cut her meatloaf, pretending she couldn't feel the sudden, suffocating weight of her family's gaze.