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Tears spill over my cheeks as I think of my family and send out a prayer… please don’t harm them. I’ll do anything you say, just spare them for my recklessness.
11
DMITRI
Iadjust the cuffs of my suit jacket as I leave the hospital. I hate hospitals. Always have and always will. Mostly because my mother wound up in them too often when I was a child.
When I look up, I see Layla walking back toward the entrance. “I thought you were leaving,” I say as I spot my driver waiting.
“I think I saw Elanee,” she says fast.
My heart kicks up a beat, and I immediately searching for her in the distance.
“No, it was probably my mistake. I haven’t slept much these past few nights, so maybe I was just hopeful to see her,” she says as she tucks her hands into her coat pocket and her shoulders sag defeated.
Exhausted because she was looking after me.
Exasperated because I chose to ignore the doctors and check myself out.
After I feinted, Doc and Layla agreed I needed further tests and screening at the hospital and I paid a lot to ensure my questionable appearance never made it out publicly. The last thing I needed was gossip circulating.
“Go home and get some rest,” I say to her.
“I don’t need to hear that coming from you.” She raises an eyebrow. “And here I thought taking a hit to the head would’ve knocked some sense into you.”
I casually shrug. “If taking knocks to the head since my teens wasn’t going to, now will be no different.”
She sighs and looks up at me with that ‘I will pummel your ass’ look.
I smirk. “Maybe we should do some rounds this week to blow off some steam.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “Did you not listen to anything the doctor said in there? Dmitri, you’re sick.”
A tic runs through my jaw as I suddenly find myself busy with a piece of fluff on my suit. “It changes nothing. We move forward as we’d previously discussed.”
Her eyes bulge. “Dmitri, this changes everything.”
“Not for me,” I say matter of fact. “Nothing changes until I get Elanee out of this. It’s what I promised both of you, and I won’t go back on that.”
She looks like she wants to argue but can’t. How can she when I’m the only one who can help her sister?
She bites the edge of her nail, now looking seriously pissed. “I don’t like it.”
“You don’t like many things. Especially me at the best of times,” I say as I nudge her shoulder. She looks at me in disbelief, most likely because I’m making a joke under the seriousness of the circumstances.
She grabs the edge of my suit. My eyebrows furrow because it’s strange to see Layla look even the slightest bit vulnerable. “Just promise me you’ll tell me if it gets bad. I don’t know what I can do, but I’ll do whatever I need to do to get you both out of this in one piece. You know you can depend on me, right?”
The gravity of her words hit uncomfortably. If the stakes weren’t high before, they’ve certainly kicked up a notch. But instead, I smirk.
If I had to face the Grim Reaper himself at the same time as destroying the monster whose haunted my mother and me my entire life—then let the dance begin.
12
ELANEE
Dmitri Volkov shouldn’t be here.
When my client, Ara Barone, called me to discuss her matchmaking prospects, I thought I’d be discussing her future spouse.
