Page 18 of Ace of Shadows
6
RUSLAN
“Ruslan?” Valentina knocks gently on the door to Ivy’s room, then lets herself inside with a steaming mug of tea in her hands.
I lift my head and watch her out of the corner of my eye, unwilling to take my eyes off Ivy. “What?”
“Here.” To my surprise, she passes the cup of tea to me. “Don’t worry, I made sure there was an insane amount of sugar in it.”
I study the cup and small cluster of bubbles spinning around on the top for a moment, fresh from the spoon she used to stir, then I accept it with both hands. “Sugar and poison?”
Valentina scoffs slightly. “If I were going to kill you, do you really think I wouldn’t do something more creative than poison?”
“I know you would.”
“Exactly.” She sighs and crosses her arms while I bring the tea to my lips and take a sip. It’s as sweet as she claimed.
“So, why then?”
“You’ve been in here for three days nursing her. I was beginning to forget what you looked like.”
“You were worried?”
“No, you just have a forgettable face and I didn’t want to shoot you the next time I saw you.” There’s a lick of humor underneath her words and amusement pulls very slightly at my lips.
“She went under asking me to let her die. The doctor who came said the stress of the crash and her injuries, plus the heartbreak of her parents, is too much.”
“And if she never wakes up?” Valentina lifts one perfectly arched brow. “You can’t stay in here forever.”
“I know. Just a little while longer.”
Valentina’s hand warms my shoulder and she squeezes once, then slips from the room. Silence falls, and I nurse my tea. Three days I’ve watched Ivy toss and turn, caught in the throes of a fever. Three days I’ve wet her brow with a cold towel, dribbled water past her parched lips when she’s gasped from thirst, and administered medication to try and draw her out of it.
It’s hard not to be responsible.
When I first got here, Bradley warned me about the kind of things I would see. How working here, being one of the team is unlike anything else I’d see in the world of organized crime. I was cocky and told him I could handle anything. I was the Ace, after all.
I was wrong. This entire thing sits heavily in my gut like a bad meal refusing to shift. Something about this entire situation stinks and if Ivy dies, then I’ll likely never find out the truth.
She can’t die. Selfishly, I need to know the truth. I need to know why that plane crashed, why her family was so brutalized, and why those assholes were parading as cops.
The silence drags on, broken only by the beep of her heart monitor and the occasional shift of her body under the blanket. I drink my tea until there’s nothing left, and it’s only my own body heat that warms the mug.
Three days, fifteen hours and twenty minutes after she collapsed from a fever in my arms, Ivy finally wakes up.
She cracks open her eyes slowly and stares up at the ceiling, unable to mask the clear rush of disappointment when she doesn’t see whatever it is she’s looking for. She blinks slowly, then turns her head, and our eyes meet.
“Hey,” I say quietly. “Welcome back.”
Disappointment lingers in her eyes, and the air around her seems to deflate as she stares at me. “What happened?”
“You passed out and fell into a fever. I was worried it wasn’t going to break.”
She wets her lips with a dart of her tongue. “You weren’t worried.”
Persuading her of my intentions isn’t the goal here. “A doctor came to check you over. We’ve kept your fluids up and some painkillers. It’s good to see you with clear eyes.”
Rising, I stand over her, and she continues to stare at me even as I press the back of my knuckles to her forehead. Unlike the past few days, her skin is no longer scorching to the touch.
