AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Do you know who did this?”
I wished I didn’t. God, I wished I didn’t. The fact I knew most of them, that I saw their faces, added to the misery. I wished they were unknown to me. Nameless, faceless strangers I could forget. But no. I recognized three of the four and knew two by name — Yuri, the fucking lunatic who attacked me, set me free, and came back to utterly destroy me. And Ivan, the nice guy turned evil because Sasha cut off his fucking fingers —becauseof me. No matter how I looked at it, I was the cause ofallof this.
“Was it Misha?” The guy from the club? No. He’d been the only genuinelyniceRussian I met in the past few weeks.
“Dimitri?” No. I didn’t know who the fuck that was. At least, I didn’t think I did.
“Roan, look at me.” The snarl was back, barely masking the quiver in his voice. His fingers dug into the sheet so hard I was sure he was going to rip it to shreds. “I said look at me!”
I refused. It was bad enough hearing his voice break, I couldn’t bear to witness the look on his face too.
“Was it Yuri?” He sounded as desperate for answers as I was for him to go the fuck away.
A tear slipped out of the corner of my eye. I squeezed them shut, hoping he wouldn’t see it with the low light and that I could stop the burning in my eyes.
“Roan, was it Yuri?”
After a few more agonizing moments of silence, he lowered his forehead to the bed, his shoulders shaking with each ragged breath.
Russian whispers floated around, like he was praying, but their meaning was absolutely useless to me. I no longer had a desire to learn Russian. I didn’t want to know what they were saying while they took turns assaulting me with garbage from the alley. As if the act itself hadn’t been humiliating enough…
The concussion, the broken ribs, the dislocated shoulder, the broken blood vessels in my eye — that pain was tolerable. Being held down, being invaded, degraded, mocked? That pain was…
Fuck!
Adding to my complete embarrassment, more tears streamed out beneath my closed lids. I couldn’t even controlthat. I couldn’t controlanythingwhen it came to my body, what it did ordidn’tdo and what happened to it. So much for being a man, for being the “strong” one of the species. The protector. What a crock of shit. I was a disgrace to my gender.
“I’m going to kill them,” Sasha announced, lifting his head. “I promise you, Roan. I’m going to kill every single one of them.”
I knew he would.
Too bad he wouldn’t start with me.
46
Sasha
SeeingRoan like that made me sick to my stomach. I’d left men like that —worsethan that — so swollen and bloody, their own mothers wouldn’t recognize them after they healed.
But they weren’t Roan.
My Roan.
Mine.
The oneIwas supposed to protect.
I failed at my job — I failed him. I should have taken him with me. I felt it in my gut and I ignored it and now look.
The details of what happened were still out of reach, despite my best efforts. If this was Russia, I’d steal his chart and look. But it wasn’t. It was America and all of the information was locked away on their computers and tablets. I had a feeling throwing a wad of cash at the staff wouldn’t solve the problem either.
The doctor wasn’t entirely without heart, though. With enough persistence he gave me a little more than the medic had. Beyond the fact Roan had been severely beaten, he said they’d given him blood transfusions and performed some sort of emergency colorectal repair. I had to Google the word and nearly crushed my phone when the search results loaded.
There was onlyoneway he’d be injured there. And for it to be bad enough he required emergency surgery? I didn’t see red. I surpassed red. I saw fucking black.
Yuri was the only name that caused a reaction in Roan. It wasn’t an outright confirmation, but it was the only thing I had to go on. Combined with Lada’s scared phone call, it was enough. Now I just had to find the fucker.
Once the Starlings returned to sit with Roan, I disappeared back to the underworld. As much as she may have hated me, I knew Francesca wouldn’t let anyone get near her friend. He was as safe as he was going to be, which meant I had some time to hunt Yuri down.
