He sensed Petrov hovering in the background unsure of what to do, but didn’t have enough fucks to give to spare a thought for the man. His entire focus was on the woman he had grown to care about more than he thought his black soul capable slowly bleeding out in a filthy alley behind his warehouse. He wanted to commit murder in that moment. With every moan of pain she uttered he wanted to sink his knife into the man or men responsible until they knew her agony. He would slice at them one piece at a time until they were obliterated.
His fingers gently probed her injured arm until he found her wound. She flinched, but didn’t move away from him. He pushed the sleeve of her T-shirt up and felt the wound with his fingertips. He was not a doctor, but he was a man who had sustained his fair share of injuries and doled out much more than that. He knew what a killing wound felt like. A sigh of relief passed his lips. It was a flesh wound only.
Then he frowned. The wound on her arm didn’t explain the puddle of blood spreading beneath her prone body. Before he could search her for another wound, Boris tore up the alley in an SUV. Petrov waved at him and opened a door for Vlad.
“Jane, I need to pick you up now. This will hurt. Just hang on to me tightly.”
Her response was weak but firm. “Do it.”
Vlad grunted and reaching under her, lifted her in one smooth movement so as not to jostle her. She let out a long, low scream and lifted an arm to clutch at her middle. His heart froze in his chest.
“Fuck!” he bit out savagely. If she had an abdominal wound her chances were much slimmer and getting worse by the second.
He ducked his head and climbed into the vehicle. Ignoring the other man who slammed the back door shut and climbed in the front with Boris, Vlad bit out instructions for Boris to take them to the nearest emergency room. Turning his attention back to Jane he attempted to scan her for another injury. Her head lolled weakly on his shoulder. Her hand was pressed protectively against her middle. Vlad gently circled her wrist with his long fingers, feeling the fragility of her small bones beneath his much larger hand. She was too small, too easily hurt.
“Vlad… hurts so much,” she moaned, her lips brushing against the collar of his shirt. She was curled into him like a dying butterfly might curl into itself as its life ended.
“I know, malysh. Where else are you injured? Were you shot somewhere else, Jane?” he asked, his long fingers gently massaging her belly. He felt nothing but smooth skin, no gaping wound as he had feared.
“What… does mol…molish… mean?”
“It’s Russian for baby, an endearment. Jane, my girl, you need to pay attention to me and answer my question. Where else are you injured?” he tried to make his voice hard, ignoring the rage and fear that engulfed him, destroying his usual icy calm.
“Hurt…” she said, her voice growing fainter.
Vlad jostled her against his shoulder, bringing her sharply back as pain licked at her. “Pay attention, Jane! Tell me now where you are shot or so help me woman, I will make you answer.”
“Fuck!” she said with a little more life. “That hurt!”
Her eyes snapped open and glared up at him in the dimness of the vehicle. He gave her a feral smile and she shoved against his chest with a tiny huff. “Only you would be so cruel as to stoop to threatening an injured woman.”
Vlad was intensely glad to hear her voice grow in volume and steadiness. “You will now tell me where else you are hurt, Jane. Or I will make it hurt worse that it does now.”
With a snarl she grabbed his hand, which had been probing her stomach and ribcage and shoved it down the front of her body. She gingerly placed his large hand below the right side of her stomach and above her hip. His fingers came away soaked in her blood. He bit out a savage curse as he imaged the damage the bullet could inflict. Kidneys, liver, intestines. She could, and likely would, bleed out in his arms before they even reached the hospital.
Trying to distract her, he asked. “What piece of stupidity brought you to that particular warehouse in the middle of the night Jane? Were you spying on me?”
Petrov tensed in the front seat. The Russian probably didn’t like the idea of their exchange being spied on. Vlad didn’t particularly care what the other man thought. He undid the snap on her jeans and then gently unzipped her pants as she struggled to breathe. Blood pooled where he peeled the denim back and ran across her pale skin, soaking into his pants where she lay across his knees.
“Was following a tip…” she gasped out. “Told to be there. When I saw the cars and you, I knew… knew… tip would pay off. You’re dirty, Sitnikov, and I can prove it. Evidence… warehouse.”
Vlad chuckled darkly. “I think we are past that now, my dear. If you manage to survive walking into what was clearly a trap, then you will finally belong to me. I can no longer allow you to continue this path of reckless disobedience. It is time for you to come home, Jane McKinley. Now hang on to me tightly, this is going to hurt like a motherfucker.”
Jane clutched at him and braced herself as he pressed his hand hard into the tender skin over her pelvic bone. He pressed hard, feeling the wound gush beneath his relentless fingers. Jane’s screams filled the air until they grew weaker and finally faded as she started to lose consciousness. Her head lolled back and her eyes drifted shut, her hand where it gripped his shirt front slackened.
“Stay with me,” Vlad snapped furiously.
Vlad continued to hold pressure on the wound and nudged her head up his shoulder with his other arm. When her face rolled toward his neck he swooped down to press his lips against hers savagely. He took her mouth in a possessive, desperate kiss. She was too weak to protest the intrusion, opening her lips helplessly beneath his aggressive kiss. He felt the moment she stopped responding. He bit her lip, trying to force a response from her. She didn’t move.
With one final press of his hard lips against her soft mouth he said in a whisper, his steady breath mingling with her shallow pants, “You will live, Jane McKinley. So I can take you home and teach you what it is to belong to me. I won’t lose you before I ever had you.”
She said nothing in response having drifted to where his words couldn’t reach her. Her long black lashes brushed across the top of her cheeks and her bangs cast dark shadows over her white features. Her body slumped against his, all strength leaving her as her internal organs began to shut down and her heart gradually beat slower.
“You will not die,” he snarled savagely, as the bright lights of the hospital loomed in his vision.
CHAPTER TWELVE
What. The. Fuck? Where were the drugs?
“Where are the drugs?” she mumbled incoherently, squinting into the gloom of a dimly lit room.
Movement to her left indicated another presence in the room. He stood, tall and predatory by her side, and swooped low over her bed. Brushing the hair off her forehead he asked in a deeply accented voice, “What was that, malysh?”
Vladimir Sitnikov.
What was he doing in her hospital room? Shouldn’t a woman be allowed a little bit of privacy when she was slowly dying of increasing excruciating pain? And where the fuck was the morphine? Jane licked her lips and cracking her eyes as much as she could handle, rolled her head toward his voice, “Where the fuck are my drugs, Sitnikov?”
He clicked his tongue. “Tsk, are you into the drug business, Jane? Well that would make us rivals, wouldn’t it? I’d probably have to have you killed.”
Jane snorted painfully, “You know I’m not into that criminal shit. I mean… where is the goddamned morphine? I shouldn’t be in this fucking much pain.”
He chuckled. “Your language is vile when you are looking for a drug hit. Remind me to keep you stocked up when we get home. You’ve been shot, Jane, my love. You’re going to hurt. Believe me, there is plenty of morphine in your system at the moment.”
“More,” she growled, preparing to launch herself at him if he continued to tease her and cruelly withhold the drugs.
“Ah, ah,” he said, when sh
e attempted to struggle up in the bed. He pressed a hand against her good shoulder and pinned her down with almost no effort. “You aren’t to move woman. You can tear the wounds and start a bleed. You are currently at the maximum dosage of painkiller, which you can, of course, argue with your doctor when he returns.”
Jane gritted her teeth and relaxed her posture. She clearly wasn’t going to get her way in this and the effort was making her wounds hurt. Sitnikov held a cup of water up and raised a brow. She nodded jerkily and allowed him to place the straw against her lips. She moaned weakly when the first stream of sweet, cool water hit her tongue. Jane closed her eyes, sighing in satisfaction and continued to draw on the straw until she was satisfied. After drinking her fill, she pulled her lips back from the straw and licked the residual moisture with a dart of her tongue.
She glanced up at Sitnikov who was standing motionless at her bedside, the green plastic cup held tightly in his hand. She frowned. He stood as if frozen, staring at her with an intensity that wasn’t suitable for a hospital room. With a gasp, she felt the sexual tension rolling off his bigger body and onto hers. The heat felt like a physical presence.
Jane held her breath and watched him intently as he struggled to leash the sexual aggression that had threatened to overwhelm them both. He slammed the plastic cup onto the bedside table and shoved his long fingers over his scalp. The dark tattoos flexing across his fingers merged momentarily with the ones on his head and neck, adding to his air of menace. Jane closed her eyes tightly as the world swooped and shifted. Damn. Maybe she really was on morphine.
His voice was husky when he spoke, “Do you have any idea how close I just came to taking advantage of a woman who was nearly mortally wounded yesterday?”
Jane gave a tiny nod of agreement, “You are kind of a sick fuck, Sitnikov.”
He chuckled and dropped his long, heavy limbs into the chair behind him. “You test my control, woman, as no other has.”
“You probably murder anyone else who might test your legendary control, Russian. I guess I’m the lucky girl you don’t intend to kill, or you would have left me behind in that alley.”
“Da,” he agreed.
“Lucky me,” Jane said weakly with a spark of sarcasm.
“Da,” he said again.
Jane wanted to yell at him. To tell him to go away and leave her alone. That he should have let her die if she was such a trial to his prized self-control. She opened her mouth to tell him as much when a doctor entered the room. Oblivious to the tension between the two other occupants, the elderly man checked her pulse and adjusted the morphine drip. Higher, she noticed and quickly decided this man needed to go on her Christmas card list. Or he would if she had one.
“It’s good to see you awake, Jane. You scared us when you were brought in yesterday. Your fiancé here was quite distraught. How are you feeling?” he asked kindly.
Jane raised an eyebrow at the man sitting beside her. Fiancé? He ignored her completely. Instead demanding, “When can she be released?”
The doctor continued to look at Jane, patiently waiting for her answer. She liked the guy, despite his stinginess with the drugs. “I’m feeling grateful to be alive, I guess. And in a lot of pain. Apparently it hurts to get shot.”
The doctor smiled and checked the needle penetrating the pale skin on the inside of her arm. “Your surgery went very well, Jane. You’re a strong young lady, you fought your way through, despite the blood loss.”
She smiled. She was a fighter.
“I asked you a question, old man,” Sitnikov growled standing next to her side and glaring at the doctor.
The doctor glared right back. “I can appreciate your concern Mr. Sitnikov. However, Jane can’t be released until she’s completely stabilized and her wounds have healed to the point that she won’t risk bleeding out. She’ll also need to make a statement with the police, standard for gunshot wounds.”
“No police,” he snapped.
The doctor shrugged, “I’m afraid it will be unavoidable.”
“We’ll see.”
The doctor stared at the menacing spectre of Vladimir Sitnikov. No doubt he had heard of the Russian mobster, but he gave no indication, treating the pair like any other couple that might come through his emergency room. He sighed and waved Sitnikov back. “I have something I must tell your fiancé. You may want to sit, as this could also affect your future.”
Sitnikov frowned. He didn’t sit. “Speak, old man.”
The doctor looked away from the dark, scarred visage of Jane’s questionable protector into her golden, pain-clouded eyes. He touched her arm gently. “The wound to your abdomen cut a path through your uterus. A section of it along with an ovary had to be removed and there will be some scarring to the surrounding tissue. I’m afraid the likelihood of your having children is much slimmer now.”
Sitnikov didn’t move a muscle to indicate this news affected him in any way. Jane opened her mouth to say something, to thank the doctor for saving her life. Nothing came out. Tears filled her eyes.
She didn’t understand. She hadn’t thought about children. She didn’t date and never dreamt of marriage and babies. Police work had been her single-minded focus for more than ten years. The news shouldn’t bother her. Yet for some reason, scalding tears now flooded her vision. A sob escaped her parted lips and she brought the hand from her uninjured arm up to press back any more sounds of distress.
The doctor nodded and left the room.
Sitnikov cupped his hand over her shoulder. Jane turned her head away from him and closed her eyes. Visions of babies flooded her mind, torturing her against her will with images of something she had never wanted, but suddenly couldn’t have. Unwanted tears squeezed past her tightly closed eyes and made steady paths down her cheeks. She hiccupped and stifled more sobs until she couldn’t hold them back anymore. Finally, heedless of the pain it caused she rolled onto her side, away from Sitnikov, and curled into herself. She cried helplessly into the pillow.
Sitnikov stood at her back, like a dark, avenging angel watching over her as her heart broke into pieces. He ran his long fingers down her back, in a soothing manner. It was so out of character for him, his movements so hesitant, that she would have laughed at the thought of his doing anything remotely soothing if she hadn’t been so miserable.
She cried for the lost babies. She cried for her lost family. She cried for her lost job. And she cried for her lost ovary.
Finally, when her tears began to let up and she rolled once more onto her back, she stared up at Sitnikov through tear-soaked lashes. In that moment, he looked so angry, so evil that she shuddered. She knew what was coming. Was prepared for it.
“Tell me who did this to you.”
“I don’t know,” she immediately whispered back, the lie slipping out easily.
He tensed, his body preparing to deliver death. He leaned over her, using his bulk to block out the meagre light in the room. Placing his big hands on either side of her head he brought his face down to hers, his lips inches away form hers, “You don’t want to lie to me, Jane.”
She lifted her chin and stared back up at him wordlessly. Tense silence filled the room. She began to worry that she pushed him too far by refusing to give him the grim job of vengeance on her behalf. They both knew that was exactly what he would do once she gave up the name of her shooter. Jane couldn’t let that happen though. She needed some questions answered first, and she didn’t trust Sitnikov to get those answers before ripping out the spine of the man that shot his woman.
And she was his woman. Jane realized that she was probably his woman from the moment she stepped foot in the interrogation room all those months ago. “I’m tired,” she whispered.
He looked at her for several long moments debating whether or not to push her. Finally the haunted look in her eyes combined with the tear tracks down her cheeks made up his mind. He leaned back and dropped his heavy bulk into the hard plastic hospital chair. “Sleep, Jane,” his deep voice said, �
�I will be here.”
She should have been upset, should have demanded he leave her in peace. But she felt comforted instead. He had saved her life. As her eyelashes drifted shut and she let the extra dose of morphine drag her under she decided she would trust him to watch over her for a little while. There wasn’t a single other person in the world who would. Why not a vicious mob boss?
* * *
Less than twenty-four hours later, against the advice of her doctor, Jane was released from the hospital into the care of the most dangerous man in the city. She probably would have laughed at the irony, except it hurt too much. Vlad had explained to the frowning doctor that a very skilled personal physician would provide Jane with round the clock care until she was completely out of danger. Perhaps the doctor sensed Vlad’s iron resolve to get Jane away from a place with too many vulnerabilities for his liking, because the man had finally capitulated.
"Are you taking me home?" Jane asked Vlad, her tired voice cracking a little.
Vlad didn't speak for a moment as he lifted Jane from the wheelchair and into the waiting SUV. He climbed in beside her and pulled her into his arms, forcing her head against his shoulder. "You are coming to my home. It will be yours from now on."
She tried to struggle upright and push away from him. The movement caused her to yelp in pain. He held her tightly until she settled down, albeit stiffly. Her rigid spine pressed into the muscles of his arm. He breathed in her scent, pleased that it was still there despite her stay in the hospital. It was a flowery, feminine aroma, slightly at odds with her edgy personality. Her small hands were clenched into fists in her lap as though she wanted to punch him. This was good, he preferred her feistiness over the exhausted pain he had witnessed over the past two days.
She spoke in a low voice. "So you’ve decided my time has run out."
Like an invisible clock. She had known eventually he would come for her. "Da."
"Why now?"
Unable to stop himself, though he knew she wouldn't welcome his touch, Vlad stroked his fingers down her neck and tapped the softness of her cheek. "Your reckless disregard for your own safety has made up my mind. Besides, I have been patient enough. It is time you come to me."
Savage Vendetta (Fire & Vice Book 4) Page 9