by Holly Bargo
“Doubtful.”
“Get Zakhar on the line,” Maksim ordered. “Find out what happened.”
A stone cold voice answered: “Bogdan here.”
“Where is Zakhar?”
“The bitch killed him. I’m tracking her now.”
Maksim cursed. Vitaly buried his face in his bloody hands. Then he lowered his hands and stared at them for several seconds. He raised his face and Maksim felt his testicles shrivel. Vitaly had always—always—been a reliable soldier, a dutiful second in command. He had the ability to lead. But the sheer, vicious rage in the man’s eyes iced his guts. This was a man who cared nothing for hierarchy; only for vengeance.
“Find her. Then bring her to me,” Vitaly snapped out the order, his eyes and voice colder than ice and sharper than broken glass.
Pyotr looked at Maksim, who nodded his approval. Pyotr relayed the order to Bogdan and added, “Bring in whomever you need to do this.”
“Da.”
“Vitaly.”
He turned is face toward Maksim, his eyes still icy, the skin over his cheekbones stretched tight, his big, bloodstained hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. He said nothing, just looked at Maksim, who dared rest a heavy hand on his shoulder in a gesture meant to calm, to comfort, to steady.
“Before you kill her,” he said in a quiet tone in Russian to avoid the wrong persons overhearing their conversation, “find out where she put my money.”
Vitaly blinked once and turned his face away. His silence discomfited Maksim.
They continued to wait in silence. They listened without hearing and observed without seeing the chaos of pain and misery that filled the emergency room in fits and spurts. Somewhere a small child cried. Two low level thugs shouted epithets at each other while being physically restrained by police as a third was wheeled through a pair of swinging doors. A middle aged woman with a bruised and swollen face wept as she was escorted into an examination room.
The outdates magazines held no interest for them.
“Mr. Synvolka,” a short, plump man in blue scrubs called.
Vitaly stood and face him. “Da.”
The man’s eyebrows rose as he took in the big Russian’s imposing stature. “Your wife is out of surgery. Please come with me.”
Maksim stood also.
“Are you a relative, sir?” the man in scrubs asked.
“I am Vitaly’s uncle,” Maksim lied.
“Only immediate family are permitted to visit at this time,” blue scrubs said.
The emergency room doors opened to admit an elegantly dressed older man whose polished dress shoes slapped authoritatively as he strode across the tile floor toward Vitaly. The male nurse tensed; there were few in town who did not recognize Giuseppe Maglione.
“My granddaughter. How is she?” the old man demanded, each syllable snapping off his tongue like a whiplash.
“Mr. Maglione, only immediate family are permitted to visit her at this time,” he repeated, his expression and tone cautious.
Giuseppe slapped his hand against his chest and said, “Do you know how much money I have donated to this hospital? I will see my granddaughter.”
The old mobster glanced up at Vitaly and subsided a little. “But her husband may see her first.”
Vitaly said nothing, but gestured toward the nurse to lead them to Giancarla. By rote, he memorized the path, took note of exits, visualized ambush points. He exhaled explosively when he saw his wife lying on a bed, her skin ashen, wires and tubes sprouting from her and connecting her to various pieces of equipment.
“Giancarla,” he groaned hoarsely and collapsed to his knees beside the bed. He took no notice of the bits of glass still embedded in his knees as he took her limp hand in his, carefully avoiding the intravenous drip taped there.
“Sir! Sir!” a nurse cried out. “You’re bleeding!”
“Get away from me,” he growled as she rushed to urge him to sit in a chair rather than kneel on the floor beside the bed.
“Vitaly, let the nurse help you,” Giuseppe’s voice ordered coldly from outside the door. “You will do Giancarla no good injured.”
The mobster’s reason penetrated Vitaly’s mind and he rose with a grunt. The nurse called a doctor, who arrived within a few minutes.
“You’ll have to come with me,” the doctor said.
“Nyet,” Vitaly replied. “I will not leave her.”
The doctor glanced at the big man’s face and gave in. Unless he wanted to wrestle his patient’s husband—and he really, really did not—then it was best that he simply gave in to the inevitable and treated him right there. He turned to the nurse and snapped out orders. She nodded and returned a few minutes later with the necessary supplies.
“I will have to cut your pants, Mr. Synvolka,” he said.
Vitaly grunted and shrugged, his gaze never leaving his wife.
The doctor shrugged, snapped on a pair of exam gloves, and removed the lower half of Vitaly’s jeans. He pursed his lips seeing the shredded skin, the shards of glass embedded in the man’s legs. He also noted the other old scars decorating the man’s skin. He’d seen similar scars before on soldiers who had returned from heavy combat.
“Iraq? Afghanistan?” he asked.
Vitaly ignored him. The metal bowl plinked with each bloody bit of glass extracted from his flesh. He squirted sterile saline solution over the wounded knees without care for the resulting puddle on the floor. The nurse, however, did care and wadded towels around Vitaly’s feet. At the doctor’s command, the nurse handed over a threaded needle and a syringe.
“No drugs,” Vitaly grunted.
“I have to stitch these deeper cuts,” the doctor said. “It’s going to hurt. A lot.”
“No drugs.”
“Then you’d better hold still.”
Vitaly shrugged. The doctor shrugged and set aside the painkiller. The big man’s lips tightened with the first puncture of the needle, but he held still. Sweat beaded on his skin, but he held still as the doctor stitched first one wound, then another, then another. None of the wounds was very large, but together they required enough thread to make his knees look like a child’s inept embroidery project. Cutting off the thread after the last stitch, the doctor rinsed the wounded knees again, slathered them with antibiotic ointment, and then wrapped them in sterile gauze and medical tape. An orderly arrived to clean up the mess.
“Mr. Synvolka,” try not to get your stitches wet. The dressings will need to be changed in two days, then every day after that, assuming no infection sets in.” He held up another syringe. Vitaly shot him a cold glare. “It’s not a painkiller, Mr. Synvolka, it’s an antibiotic to help ward off infection.”
Vitaly nodded and the doctor quickly jabbed him.
“Mr. Synvolka, you should go home and get something to eat. Rest.”
Vitaly grunted.
“She won’t wake up until tomorrow morning at the earliest. She doesn’t even know you’re here.”
Vitaly felt a slight twitch of her fingers. “She knows. I will stay.”
The doctor looked at the dapper man hovering outside the door and nodded. “Mrs. Synvolka is your granddaughter, Mr. Maglione?”
“Sí. She will recover?” Giuseppe asked as he stepped inside the room and approached Gia’s bed. He reached out to stroke his fingertips across her forehead.
“She should,” the doctor replied with cautious optimism. “The bullet nicked both the pulmonary artery and aorta, but missed the heart itself. Its passage shattered two ribs, one on the entry and another on the exit, which we’ve pieced back together. The exit wound is extensive. The back muscles are badly damaged, but should heal sufficiently for her to live and work normally. She’ll be scarred for life.”
The old man closed his eyes to control his grief and anger. When they opened, the doctor and the nurse both took backward steps. Every rumor about the old man’s ties to crime raced through their minds and they knew they stood in the presence of a killer. The nurse
glanced at Vitaly’s expression of glacial wrath and amended that: she and the doctor stood in the presence of two killers.
“Do you know who did this?” Giuseppe hissed.
“Da.”
“Tell me, boy.”
“This is my vengeance to take.”
“You have three days, Vitaly Synvolka. If my granddaughter is not avenged, then I will ensure it is done.”
“Uh, sir, you really can’t plan a murder. I’m duty-bound to report that to the authorities,” the doctor ventured, his voice shaking with fear.
The short man drew himself to his full stature and sneered down his hooked nose at the doctor. “I am Giuseppe Maglioneand no one tells me what I may or may not do.Capisci?”
The doctor and nurse both nodded. They understood.
“Tre giorni,” Giuseppe reminded his granddaughter’s husband, not caring whether the man spoke Italian. He walked out, patting the blankets draped over Gia’s legs on his way.
Vitaly didn’t speak Italian, but he needed no translation guide to understand what Giuseppe meant. Unfortunately, leaving Giancarla’s bedside wasn’t something that he could force himself to do. A heavy hand landed on his shoulder. Startled, he looked up, concerned with not having heard anyone approach him from behind. Maksim met his gaze. The older man’s eyes were hard, his expression stony.
“We’ll find her,” he vowed. “You stay with your wife. We will find her.”
“Spasibo,” Vitaly replied with true gratitude. “Let me know when you have her. I want to interrogate her myself.”
Maksim’s expression tightened with bloodthirsty satisfaction.
“Da.”
With a squeeze to his subordinate’s shoulder that was meant to reassure him, Maksim left. Pyotr followed.
Olivia kindly arrived a few hours later to give Vitaly a break at Gia’s bedside with a satchel containing a clean change of clothes. “If you won’t go home to rest, then at least get something to eat and put on some clean clothes,” she insisted. She dug in her purse and held up her cell phone. “I have your number. If anything changes, I’ll let you know immediately.”
Vitaly’s belly growled loudly, eager to take Olivia up on her suggestion. He bowed to biological need and promised to return shortly. His boss’ wife then settled in a chair with a paperback novel. Before cracking open the book, she took Gia’s fingers in hers and said in a quiet voice, “Come back to him, Gia. Vitaly loves you. He needs you more than he knows. You are the one who will keep him human.” She sighed, laid the book on her lap, and continued. “My Maksim was much like Vitaly: cold, driven, calculating. He liberated me from a human trafficking ring quite by accident. He had intended to use me and then sell me, but we fell in love and he lost his taste for the business. He has worked these last fifteen years to move into legitimate business and it has saved his humanity. But, alas, the shift is not complete and Vitaly has been his right hand man for enforcement and interrogation and it has blackened his soul. I feared for him before he found you and I fear for him if he loses you. So you must fight to come back to us, Gia. You must fight.”
She watched the young woman lying still and pale and hoped for a reaction, but she saw nothing. She lightly squeezed Gia’s fingers and then picked up her book. Nurses came into the room and checked on Gia’s vital statistics with quiet efficiency.
When Vitaly returned, she met his hopeful gaze with a small shake of her head and relinquished her seat. He returned her silent communication with a curt nod, loosed a sigh, and sat down.
“Talk to her. Hold her hand,” Olivia advised gently. “Give her spirit something to grab onto.”
He nodded and began to talk, beginning with the harsh story of his life. Softly spoken, Russian words flowed in an endless stream broken only by the occasional pause for a sip of water. Then he talked of her classwork.
“Your professors,” he said, “will surely forgive incomplete homework assignments this time. Even they cannot expect you to meet their deadlines now. I will ask Pyotr to make sure your friends get to and from their classes without fail and to speak to your professor about assigning Jeremy a new laboratory partner.”
A knock on the door interrupted his somewhat hoarse monologue.
“Hi, Vitaly, can we come in?” Cecily asked, peering into the room.
“You may,” he agreed and gestured for her to enter.
The plump blonde stepped inside, eyes wide and mouth agape at the tubes and cords and beeping machinery. Latasha followed immediately behind her and picked up Gia’s medical chart. Pyotr lingered just outside the door. He nodded at Vitaly, eyes tired within his usual inscrutable expression. Vitaly nodded back in silent gratitude. Perhaps having her closest friends near would help Giancarla.
“Good Lord,” Latasha whispered as she read the chart. She looked at Vitaly and said, “School officials aren’t saying anything about the shooting, except that it wasn’t a student who went crazy.” She pinned him with a piercing look. “Was she targeted?”
“Da.”
“Why? Gia’s never hurt another soul.”
“Because of me,” Vitaly admitted.
Cecily sobbed once and then choked back her distress. Latasha glared at him.
“I ought to kill you myself,” she snarled in a low, intense tone.
With an icy look at her, Vitaly simply replied, “Better to kill the shooter who did this.”
Latasha narrowed her eyes and asked, her voice filled with suspicion, “Do you know who did this?”
“I do.”
“And?” She tapped her foot impatiently when he did not answer. “Vitaly, I’ve got four brothers and ain’t none of them upstanding citizens. But they love me and they’ll go after whoever shot Gia.”
“I appreciate that, but the Bratva will find this person and then I will make her pay.”
“Her?” Cecily gasped, latching on to the pronoun. “A woman shot Gia?”
“You don’t think a woman can shoot a gun?”
“But…but…” Her shoulders sagged. “It doesn’t fit that profile, that’s for sure.”
Vitaly agreed and ignored Pyotr’s warning glare.
“Why don’t you take a break?” Cecily suggested kindly, seeing the weariness of body and spirit in his haggard face. “We’ll stay with her for a while. Surely, you need to eat.”
“And a shower wouldn’t hurt either,” Latasha added with a pointed sniff.
“Go, I will stay as well,” Pyotr said in English, then switched to Russian. “If it were my wife lying there, then you would do the same for me.”
“Spasibo,” he thanked them and rose from the chair with all the slow, creaky carefulness of an old man. Pyotr patted him on the back and gave him an encouraging nod. Vitaly nodded his head toward Cecily who had taken over the chair and was talking softly to Giancarla. Sticking to Russian, he asked his colleague, “So, are you going to marry this one?”
Pyotr’s expression softened infinitesimally and the corners of his mouth curled in the faintest of smiles. “She cooks the best food I’ve ever had and is a wildcat in bed. Yes, I’m going to keep this one and put babies in that belly.”
Vitaly glanced back at the demure looking blonde and said nothing. The image of Giancarla with her belly swollen and ripe with his child taunted him. He wanted that. He wanted to build a family with her.
“She looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but that woman is hot under the sheets,” Pyotr bragged.
“Congratulations. Tell me when you set the wedding date. I’m sure Giancarla will want to plan a party to celebrate.”
“I’m waiting for her to graduate. Just a few more weeks and she’ll be wearing my ring.”
“Congratulations,” he repeated with sincere regard. “And what of the other girl?”
“Ah, that one.” Pyotr’s expression turned sour. “I’m half-tempted to sic Gennady on her.”
“He breaks women.”
“I know.” Pyotr’s brief smile wasn’t pleasant.
�
��Don’t.”
Pyotr sighed. “If she did not mean so much to your wife and, therefore, to you, then I would. She’s a shrew, that one. As soon as Iosif gets back from his trip, I’ll throw her at him and see if she sticks. Bogdan’s interested in her, too.”
“He likes a challenge.”
Pyotr shrugged, dismissing the matter. Whether Iosif or Bogdan decided to keep Latasha wasn’t something he’d waste time worrying about. He patted Vitaly again in a wordless gesture of comfort and stood alert while his woman and her friend chattered at the patient lying pale and still.
Chapter 7
Another day passed and Vitaly saw no improvement. Things got worse. Blood frothed bright and bubbly from her mouth. Vitaly shouted for assistance which quickly arrived and shoved him out of the way. Medical personnel wheeled her to an operating room with all due haste and emerged a few hours later.
“She’s stabilized. The nick to the pulmonary artery broke open again and we’ve patched it,” the doctor said. “Barring infection, she should recover.”
Vitaly nodded and wanted to shout and pound something, but the doctor had done all he could and was not to blame for the setback. He seated himself once more beside her bed, bowed his head, and prayed like he’d never prayed before. He railed at God, implored, and bargained. Silence answered him and he doubted that a deity in whom he had never given the slightest credence would waste time answering his prayers.
He slumped, resting his head on the mattress alongside her thigh. Closing his eyes for a moment, he mustered his courage and determination as though he could will his own great strength into her slender body.
His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and answered the call.
“Bogdan found her,” Pyotr’s voice announced.
“Does he have her?” Vitaly asked in Russian.
“Not yet. Iosif returned yesterday evening. He’s with Bogdan and Gennady. They’ve got her trapped in a hotel room. Gennady wants to go in and get her.”
Cold fury suffused Vitaly. His lips peeled back in a horrifying sneer. “No. Call Olivia and ask her to sit with Giancarla. That woman’s fate is in my hands. Give me your direction; I will join you as soon as Olivia arrives.”