62. Mikhail

The hallway is dark, save for the lone light above me. The hospital hallway groans and clicks and twitches with noises from the rooms lining the corridor. I pace back and forth and the light overhead flickers with me, like the energy radiating from my body is fucking with it.

"Have you found anything?" I ask the second Raoul answers his phone.

"I'm looking. Everyone is looking," he says. "There's nothing yet."

"The security cameras?—"

"Off," he growls, every bit as frustrated about yet another setback as I am. "Someone turned every single camera between Viviana's room and the garage to standby. The one at the gate showed Anatoly's car leaving, but it's too dark to see inside it."

Could that have been Viviana? I wouldn't have thought she knew where the security cameras were or how to work the system. Then again, I also wouldn't have thought she'd be capable of killing Trofim and lying about it, or shooting Stella and Anatoly in the chest.

That'll teach me to underestimate people.

My hand tightens around the phone until I'm sure I'll crush it like a can. "Keep looking. We need to find them."

"How's Anatoly?" Raoul asks.

"Unconscious, but stable."

When he wakes up, he'll be thrilled to know the surgeon credits his barrel chest for why he doesn't have an exit wound, which probably would have caused him to bleed out. The bullet will stay inside of him until the day he dies, but that day won't be today. It's a win.

"Call me with updates," Raoul says. "I'll do the same."

I want to be out there looking for my son, but someone has to be here with Anatoly. Maybe he heard where Viviana was going before she fled. He might be able to give us some insight about what happened and where to look for her.

I just need him to fucking wake up.

I drop down into an uncomfortable plastic chair and comb my fingers through my hair. Maybe I should have let my father kill Viviana the way he wanted. Would Dante be safe in bed if I had? Would Anatoly be uninjured? Would Stella be alive?

Would any of that change my mind?

The thought of a world without Viviana makes me wonder if I don't know what it's like to be shot in the chest, after all. Even after everything she has done, letting her be killed would fucking hurt.

Why can't I just let her go? I let her get inside my head even after I swore I wouldn't. I took risks I shouldn't have, and for what?

This entire night proves why love is the worst kind of parasite. You let it in and think it's good for you. Somehow, you convince yourself that whatever shit comes your way because of it, it was worth it. Inevitably, though, at the end of it, you're used up, miserable, and alone.

But I won't make that same mistake again.

My head is still in my hands when I hear a crash from the hospital room behind me. "What in the—" Another crash echoes into the hall. "Where the fuck am I?"

I'm on my feet and in the room before any of the nurses can even get around the nurse's station. Anatoly is standing next to his hospital bed with his IV pole on the floor. The bags are leaking across the floor—not that it matters, because he's actively ripping the IV out of his arm.

"You better leave that in, brother. Unless you want to die."

He looks up at me. He's deathly pale, but his usual smile spreads across his face. "It'll take a hell of a lot more than a shot to the chest to kill me."

Not much more, I want to say.

The nurse in charge of Anatoly disagrees, too. "Lie down," she barks, shoving him back into bed while simultaneously calling for a maintenance team to come take care of the mess. "You've been unconscious for hours and the first thing you do when you open your eyes is jump out of bed and start tugging on tubes." She shakes her head, inserting another IV into his arm with a little more force than strictly necessary. "Stay in bed before you do something stupid and collapse your other lung."

Anatoly isn't scared of anything, but he looks cowed by this fierce, middle-aged nurse. He apologizes softly and dips his head in respect as she finishes her work and leaves.

Once she's gone, he peeks up at me. "I think I'm in trouble."

"You were almost dead. You've been unconscious for hours."

His eyes go glassy. I can tell he's deep in his head, reliving the moments before he was shot.

"Do you remember anything?" I ask.

His jaw flexes and his eyes narrow and when his voice emerges, it's a feral growl like nothing else I've ever heard from him before. "I remember everything."

I nod solemnly. "Good. The more detail you can give me, the sooner we can find them." I lay a hand on his shoulder. "I know you care about Viviana, but she isn't going to get away with this."

"She?" Anatoly frowns. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about you getting shot in the chest, brother."

"Did you check the cameras? Did you watch any of the footage of what happened?"

"They were all offline. I don't know how she did it, but she must have?—"

"She didn't do anything," he interrupts, explaining it to me the way he explained electricity to Dante last week. "Viviana had nothing to do with this."

I shake my head. "But if she didn't, who?—"

"Pyotr." The heart rate monitor behind Anatoly's bed spikes. If he doesn't calm down, the nurse will be back in here with a stern warning for him, I'm sure. Though one look at the murderous grimace on Anatoly's face might be enough to scare even her off. "I don't know who he's working for or why he did it, but… it was Pyotr."

I drop down into the chair next to Anatoly's bed, physically unable to stand.

Viviana didn't do this.

Viviana didn't do this.

It's the only theory I've had for hours and this new information doesn't compute.

"Tell me everything," I rasp. "Every single detail. I need it all."

So Anatoly does.

"An hour after you and Raoul left, I went to Viviana's room like we planned. She asked about Dante, like we both knew she would, and I told her he was waiting for us in the garage. I knew once she saw Dante wasn't down there that she'd throw a fit, but I figured I'd rather explain it to her there than in the hallway outside of his bedroom. I was gonna give her the old, ‘It's either leave without Dante or die at the hands of Iakov' ultimatum. I figured that would knock some sense into her."

"Un-fucking-likely," I mutter.

"But we never got that far, because as soon as we got into the garage, Viviana saw something in the backseat. She thought it was Dante. Hell, for a second, so did I. I thought maybe he was hiding under a blanket or something. It was small enough that it could have been—" He squeezes his eyes closed, blowing out a tight breath. "It was Stella. She was already—I don't know when he did it, but Pyotr shot her, too."

A tear rolls down his cheek. I reach out and squeeze his shoulder.

Love is a parasite, but that doesn't mean I don't feel bad that my brother got bit by it, too.

He thought he was being covert, but I've known about him and Stella sneaking around for months. Now, she's gone. I know how deeply that pain hurts.

"I'm sorry," Anatoly croaks out. "I was so focused on Stella that I didn't even see Pyotr coming. I looked up and h-he shot me." He shakes his head like he still can't believe it. "I didn't even hear the door open. I was fucking lost. Then, suddenly, I was down and… I don't know what happened after that."

He took my family. That lying fucking mudak stole my wife and child, that's what happened.

"Pyotr took Viviana and Dante," I tell him icily.

"Dante is gone?" Anatoly slams his fist into the thin mattress. "Fuck. I'm sorry, Mikhail. I should have?—"

"Should have what? Been faster than a bullet and taken Pyotr out before he could get away?" I finish for him. "Yeah, that would've been nice. But since we're all human here, let's just focus on what comes next."

Anatoly sighs. "Yeah. Okay."

"He didn't count on you surviving and was probably hoping he'd have a few more hours before we figured it out. That's why he took your car instead of his."

Anatoly gasps. "He took my car?!"

"I'll get you another one," I snap. "Help me find Viviana and Dante and I'll get you whatever lime-green monstrosity you want."

"I'm not mad he took my car, you idiot. I'm—" Anatoly twists around, looking on either side of the bed. Whatever he's doing, I know his nurse wouldn't like it. "Where the fuck is my phone?"

I spot it, grab it off the desk behind me, and hand it to him.

"I'm not mad he took my car," Anatoly repeats. He turns his phone around to show me a little flashing dot in the center of the screen. "I'm thrilled. Because the asshole doesn't know about the tracker I keep in the glove compartment." Anatoly is tapping away. "I'll send the live location to you and Raoul now."

My phone buzzes a second later.

"And Mikhail?" Anatoly calls as I'm already halfway out the door. "Before you kill him, tell Pyotr I sent you."

I nod. "I'll make sure he hurts, Nat. I'll make sure he knows why."