Page 12 of The Beast of Moscow

The man in the white lab coat sighed. “Exactly. I’m sorry; less stress, let him relax. There isn’t much else I can do here.”

“B’lyad.”

Igor’s cuss flew over the doctor’s head as the man turned on his heel and left without a word. There wasn’t anything else that needed to be said, honestly. Vaslav probably wouldn’t even waste the time it would take to sign the discharge papers at the front desk.

“You were right, the week was too much,” he said to his head of security. Igor’s behavior came from his worry, and Vaslav understood that but in the end ... he made the final call. Every call. Especially on this. “I should have just taken an early weekend when I woke up already wanting to puke.”

Igor sighed, scrubbing a tattooed hand over his bald head before he said, “I called Nico. He’s coming back from his trip early.”

That didn’t make Vaslav any happier. Not that he thought Igor suspected it would. Nico left the country with unfinished business between him and his boss, and that was already a problem. His sovietnik still had things to answer for regarding Feliks and The Swan House. At least, the hours spent at the hospital weren’t entirely wasted.

He had time to think.

To remember.

The incident that found him here wasn’t enough to divert his plans entirely. It only put them off for a short while.

“Good,” he said to a quiet Igor. “Make sure the first person he comes to see when he steps off that plane is me, yes?”

Igor nodded. “You won’t even give them one more night, Vas? Just to check or—”

“There’s nothing to find.”

And even if there was, Vaslav couldn’t say he wanted to know.

Clearly seeing he wasn’t going to get anywhere with Vaslav, certainly not when it came to convincing him that the hospital was where he needed to be, Igor headed for the door. “I’ll call the driver and get the car ready. For the record, nobody knows you’re here; nobody will.”

Vaslav didn’t look away from the rings he slid back into place on his fingers, or the watch he affixed to his thick wrist as he muttered, “Perfect—I’d hate to have to kill both my spies for being totally fucking incompetent.”

“Boss—”

“There was a woman.”

Igor froze in the doorway, shooting a look over his shoulder at Vaslav who was lost to his thoughts again. He’d been doing that a lot since his consciousness came back, and the confusion finally cleared. This place gave him too much time to think, and he hated that just as much as he despised the idea that someone might think something was wrong with him.

“Pardon?” Igor asked.

Vaslav considered not repeating his question—it meant admitting maybe his memory wasn’t entirely back like he’d claimed when the doctor had done a simple neurological test before agreeing to his discharge demand.

That didn’t change what he knew.

Or what Igor might know, for that matter.

“She was dancing below the gallery,” Vaslav said, choosing each word carefully. The same way he chose what he would not say. That he remembered placing his hands along the ledge where the glass wall was so that he could watch the woman dance in her tights and sneakers. Or how when she finished, coming out of a fouetté, she’d been crying.

All at once, the music that had been playing on her phone silenced and left the dark studio down below heavy. Even through the glass, though she hadn’t known then that he was watching her, Vaslav had felt it.

Her heaviness—the sadness—it permeated.

He didn’t know what had made her look up and see him there, but when she did, he’d collapsed again. Apparently, the small stairwell he’d noticed when he made his way into the gallery room led downstairs to the studio.

He’d heard every one of her racing steps up to find him, and how loud she had screamed for help.

While the unknown woman touched his face, still tear-streaked from her own private breakdown, she’d asked him for his name. She’d not been concerned by the grisly scar that her fingertips grazed as she maintained their eye contact. Even when she yelled for help a third and fourth time, her blue eyes had never once looked away from his own.

Vaslav hadn’t given her his name. All he remembered asking back was, “Why were you crying?”

That was how Igor and Feliks managed to find where he’d wandered off to down the corridor. Because the woman had been there to help.