Page 75 of The Beast of Moscow

“Are you okay? Can I help?”

She reached for him, but Vas jerked away.

“Just get me back to the apartment,” he snapped, the words muffled by his hands. Yet, not enough to hide the bite.

He was clearly in pain.

“Come here,” Vera said, refusing to be put off by his harsh demeanor. She reached for him again, this time grabbing him by his wrists and tugging to pull him toward her. That was all it took, and he practically sunk into her lap, his face buried into her clothes.

He didn’t take his hands away from his face, and his groaning turned into a steady stream of cusses that varied between English and Russian.

Out of all his grumbled and hissed anger, she heard one thing clearly.

“Worst fucking time for this shit.”

How often did this happen?

“What happened back there?” she asked him.

Quietly, so the man behind the wheel didn’t hear.

Vaslav didn’t answer.

“We’re almost there.”

He didn’t act like he heard that, either.

*

Vera blinked, too exhausted to read the time right the first time on her watch. Partly because the glass face had been broken sometime over the night. Maybe when she hit the ground?

Her ankle still ached, too.

Not as much, though.

The fact it was nearly half past twelve in the morning should have been a clue to her that she desperately needed to get some sleep. Especially as she’d been up before the sun even rose to get ready for her day with Hannah.

Still, Vera didn’t move.

Sitting with her back against the closed bathroom door, she couldn’t even get lost in the sound of her own thoughts with the noise of water rushing so loudly in the room. Apparently, the master suite’s shower stall was equipped with powerful, positionable showerheads at nearly every angle.

Vas hadn’t cared what one she managed to get turned on for him—which was good, because she had no clue how to run the damn panel on the side of the wall, tiled in the same grey, black, and white as the shower.

He asked for two things.

Hot water, and darkness.

Vera made it happen in the master bath, but then she couldn’t bear to leave after Vaslav stumbled into the fairly large shower stall. Once she turned the light off, and the hot steam started to fill the room, she realized how quiet Vas was.

If she headed to her bedroom down the hall, she might not hear him if he needed help again. Not that she thought he would appreciate her pointing it out. So, instead she sat on the floor, against the opened door, and wasn’t even sure if Vas knew she was there.

In her struggle to get only a few of the dozen shower heads working, she’d soaked her jeans, leaving her in a pair of panties and an oversized T-shirt she found tossed at the end of the bed in the attached bedroom.

At some point, her ringing phone almost pulled her away from the bathroom, but her concern for Vas won out. He told her nothing.

He offered no explanation once they arrived back at the apartment; and even when she outright demanded he at least tell her if he should go to a twenty-four-hour emergency room just to be checked out, he simply looked her dead in her face with nothing but a scowl, and then uttered, “Don’t do that.”

What was she supposed to do?