“Your ass better be bleeding out in a gutter. Do you know what time it is?” Andrei barks as he answers, and it’s the greatest sound I’ve ever heard.
“Yes,” I breathe, sniffling against tears that I refuse to let fall. “I’m going to text you an address, and I need you to come here. Right now.” I swallow thickly. “Please.”
There’s a brief pause, and then the sound of shuffling.
“On a scale of one to ten, how bad is he?”
I use two fingers to try to find a pulse in Daniil’s neck. It’s there, and it’s strong, but he isn’t awake, and it doesn’t take a genius to know that’s a problem.
“Please, just come.”
“Christ,” Andrei mutters, and I feel like I’m going to choke on my tears. I cradle the phone with my shoulder, using myother hand to press against Daniil’s wound. I can’t tell if the bleeding is getting worse or not.
“Andrei, please, I don’t know what to do.” My voice cracks and, feeling a combination of terrified and useless, I let the tears fall, adding to the dark stains on Daniil’s coat. Andrei grunts as he hangs up. I type out the address, trying not to think about the way Daniil’s blood is all over my hands, smearing across the phone screen.
“You better make it out of this, because we both know Andrei will never believe this isn’t my fault if you don’t.”
Apparently, Daniil’s regained consciousness, because he has the nerve to huff a laugh, as if he didn’t show up in the middle of the night, bleeding all over the new floors. We only moved in a week ago, and now I have to figure out how to get blood out of the pretty hardwood flooring.
He clenches his jaw, brows drawn together as he breathes through the pain.
“He likes you more than you think, you know. He’d probably help you bury me.”
“Yeah, right.”
Andrei’s never made his feelings for me a secret. For fuck’s sake, the only time he ever even smiled at me was the first time we met, and that ended in him kidnapping me at gunpoint, keeping me hostage for three days, and threatening to kill me until I agreed to work as an informant for him. It’s the kind of thing that’s hard to look back on fondly, and even if I could, it would probably be a hallucination that my brain makes up to compensate for what a giant idiot I was.
“I’d rather not talk about burying you any time soon,” I whisper, arms shaking from the effort of keeping pressure on the wound. “You’re going to be fine, and if you ever do this to me again, I’ll kill you myself, consequences be damned.”
Before our first date, Daniil promised me that he’s not one to put himself in harm’s way. He’s a lawyer, for crying out loud. He doesn’t deal with the nitty gritty details of working with the Bratva.
The whole reason he’s in Colorado in the first place is because Andrei’s supposed to be cleaning up some sort of mess in their drug smuggling business, and people keep ending up in jail. Daniil’s job is to help mop up the legalities for their men.
He told me that he doesn’t even carry a gun most of the time.
He rolls his eyes, managing to look handsome despite the fact his brown hair’s plastered to his forehead with sweat, his usually tanned skin pale. Somehow, it only makes his dark eyes stand out even more. If I wasn’t so fond of him, I’d hate him for how he’s able to look so put together all the time.
“No, you won’t. You love me.” He smirks, like the ass that I know he is. Confident, full of himself, and infuriating beyond words.
“No, I don’t. Not right now.”
He lets out a strained chuckle, and I want to slap him across the face. “Yes, you do.” His eyes slip from my face and down my body, like he’s just properly looking at me now, and he flashes a filthy grin. “You aren’t wearing a bra.”
Another tear slips free while I glare at him. I have never hated another person more than I hate Daniil Krutikov right now. He’s bleeding on my new floor, disturbing my precious sleep,and he has the wherewithal to notice whether I’m wearing a bra or not?
He’s lucky that Andrei’s on his way. If something happens to Daniil, Andrei will make me wish I was dead, but Daniil’s quickly burning away the good will my affection for him has bought.
“It’s three in the morning, and I have work in less than an hour, you ass.”
He shrugs, hissing with the movement. “You’re still pretty when you’re mad.”
“Shut up,” I seethe.
Fortunately, the door slams open before he gets a chance to dig himself a deeper hole. I flinch away, looking up to see the barrel of a gun sweeping the room, Andrei’s broad shoulders block the doorway like he’s waiting for someone to rush past him. His cold gray eyes take in the scene, observing the unpacked boxes and blood like they’re opponents to be conquered.
“There’s no one else here, just us,” I rush to explain. “He showed up like this.”
Andrei looks at us for a moment before putting his gun away. “Well, you didn’t tell me that on the phone, did you?” he practically growls, rolling his shoulders. “You hardly told me anything.” He pins me in place with a glare, and I glare right back. “Daniil, you good?”
