Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 82194 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82194 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
She blinks again, still clearly dazed, so I press a button to lift the head of her gurney to a half-sitting position, and then I bring a cup of water with a straw to her lips. She sucks on it greedily, making me smile.
The doctor bustles over and I step back, letting him and his team do their thing. The nurses put Chloe’s right arm in a sling while he asks her a few questions and takes her vitals; then they remove the IV and all the monitoring equipment.
She’s been deemed awake and stable.
“Take this for pain as needed,” the doctor tells her, setting a bottle of pills on the table. “And take care not to get the bandage wet. It’ll need to be changed every twenty-four hours.” He glances toward me, and I nod.
I have a fair amount of experience with gunshot wounds and would be more than happy to play the role of Chloe’s nurse. What I’m not happy about are the painkillers, but I know she’ll need them.
Her injury may not be life-threatening, but it’ll still hurt like hell.
“Here, I got this,” I say as the nurses move to lift Chloe, presumably to transfer her to her bed. Shooing them away, I carefully pick her up and carry her over there myself—not a difficult task, as she’s barely heavier than Slava. Though she’s been eating like a lumberjack during the week she’s been here, my zaychik is still much too thin from her month on the run.
She winces as I lay her down, and I feel it like a stab to my stomach. I’ve never been so viscerally attuned to another person before, to the point that I experience her pain as my own. If there’d been any doubt in my mind about what she means to me, it disappeared the moment I saw her Toyota gone from the garage.
I’d never known such rage and terror as when I learned the assassins were in the area—when I thought I might not find her in time.
My guts twist, and I shove the thought away before I’m tempted to strangle Alina. The important thing now is that Chloe is safe here with me. I’ve already told Pavel to beef up our security, in case the assassins had figured out who hired Chloe and conveyed that information to their employer before I found them. I doubt it—the one I tortured seemed to have no idea who I was—but I’m not taking any chances.
Besides, there’s always the threat of the Leonovs. Alexei will be even more pissed now that we’ve stolen the lucrative Tajik nuclear reactor contract from his family’s Atomprom.
Pushing that thought away as well, I focus on propping up Chloe on a couple of pillows and covering her with a blanket while the doctor and his team wheel the gurney and all their equipment out of the room.
A minute later, we’re finally alone.
I sit on the edge of her bed and pick up her small hand. “Are you comfortable, zaychik?” I ask, rubbing her chilly palm. “Can I get you anything? Something to drink, to eat? I imagine you must be hungry.”
She swallows and nods. “Some food would be great.” She looks more alert now, her big brown eyes distinctly wary. Her fear has a double-edged effect on me, making my chest ache even as it arouses that primitive, twisted part of me that wants to chase her down and mark her, to claim her in the most brutal way possible.
Suppressing the dark instinct, I lift her hand to my lips and kiss her knuckles. “I’ll bring it to you. Do you want something to entertain you while you wait? A book or—”
“I’ll just watch some TV.”
I smile and hand her the remote. “Okay. I’ll be right back.”
Leaning over, I drop a quick kiss on her forehead and hurry out of the room.
3
Chloe
Heart beating unevenly, I watch the door close behind Nikolai’s tall, broad-shouldered figure. My forehead still tingles where his lips touched my skin, even as my mind replays the raw, agony-filled screams of the man he tortured.
How can a ruthless killer act so caring and tender?
Is any of that real, or is it just a mask he wears to hide the psychopath within?
I’m not actually hungry—the anesthesia has made me somewhat nauseated—but I need a few minutes alone. Everything happened so fast I haven’t had a chance to formulate my questions, much less attempt to come up with any answers. One moment, one of my mom’s killers was straddling me, lust gleaming in his flat, dark eyes, and the next, his partner’s brains were all over the forest floor and Nikolai was slicing open my attacker and threatening to remove his intestines.
Swallowing a surge of nausea, I push aside the recollection. As brutal as Nikolai’s interrogation methods were, they did yield some results, and with the worst of the shock wearing off and my mind clearing from the haze of anesthesia, I can finally think about the implications of what I’ve learned.