Page 2 of The Bratva’s Secret Heir

“Out,” I tell him.

He ignores me and reaches for the gurney rail. “Is he alive?”

“Not for long if you keep interrupting me.”

His stare stays on Alexei. “You don’t understand who he is.”

I glance at him. “Tonight, he’s mine.”

The words leave my mouth before I can stop them. The guard’s attention shifts to me, sharpened by interest, while I turn back to Alexei and pretend I haven’t just said something that could get me followed, questioned, or buried beneath a road outside Moscow.

Gunshot cases reach our trauma doors often enough that the charge nurse has already called the blood bank and prepared the operating theater without waiting for instructions.

The elevator opens at the end of the corridor, and the surgical team arrives at a run. We move, the theater doors close behind us, and the guns remain visible through the narrow glass panels. Men take positions outside while the hospital staff work around them, avoiding eye contact and keeping their voices low. Nobody says Bratva because nobody has to.

I scrub beside Marina while a nurse reads out the latest numbers. They’re all bad.

“You know him,” Marina says quietly.

“No.”

“You looked at him like...”

“Finish that sentence and I’ll assign you to hemorrhoids for a month.”

She presses her lips together. “You absolutely know him.”

“I know he has three bullets in him and one is trying to kill him faster than the others. That’s enough.”

It isn’t enough, but by the time I step to the table, my face gives nothing away. “Scalpel.”

The first incision opens him to me again, though this time, there’s no pleasure in it.

Blood has filled the left side of his chest. We suction, clamp, search. The bullet tore through the lung, then clipped a vessel on its way past. I work quickly and speak even faster because if I stop talking, I might hear the memory of his voice saying my name against my skin.

Vera.

He’d said it as if he planned to keep it, which is funny because he didn’t. “More suction. I can’t see.”

Marina adjusts the line, and the anesthetist calls out another pressure drop. When I order two more units, he reminds me that we’ve already given six.

“Then give eight.”

My gloves are red to the wrists. I find the bleeding vessel and clamp it, then start the repair while the monitor races behind me.

I’ve operated on gangsters, police officers, children, drunks, mothers, men who beat their wives, and women who stabbed their husbands. Once they reach my table, I treat the damage and leave judgment outside the theater.

Alexei makes that rule harder.

Beneath the blood and breathing-tube tape, I saw the same dark brow Misha carries. I know he’s Misha’s father. Alexei was the first man I’d slept with in six months, and I didn’t sleep with anyone else before the pregnancy test turned positive. There has never been another man to consider.

“Pressure is falling,” the anesthetist says. “Fifty systolic. He’s not responding to the blood.”

“Increase the transfusion and start the next unit.” I hold out my gloved hand. “Suction.”

Marina places it in my palm, and I clear the blood gathering inside his chest.

“Saturation is eighty-four,” the anesthetist warns. “Vera, we’re losing him.”