Page 167 of Ruthless Sin
My chest seizes. I hold it. For her. She does not need what is in my chest right now. She needs the voice that tells her it is over.
“He’s dead. Sokolov. He will not say either name again.”
Oksana’s eyes close. A tear slides down the side of her face. The medic catches it with a thumb.
I will carry the rest to Mila at the compound.
The medic lifts the stretcher with Renzo at the head. They go down the hallway. Marco at the side door. Earpiece in. Mama’s St. Christopher catches the hallway bulb at his throat under the collar. Into the comm.
“Base. We’re out. Both. Bringing them home.”
He looks at me. Capo nod. I nod back.
Dante’s hand stays at my elbow the whole drive. Neither of us speaks. The watch is warm against my right wrist and I press it into my palm and feel it tick. Proof of time. Proof I am moving through it. We are moving through it.
The gate of the compound opens before the SUV stops. Marco’s voice on the comm ahead of us. The drive is full. Cassia at the front door in the silk robe with the bump full under it. Giada at the door in scrubs, the duffel at her feet, the medic gear ready. Nonna behind them in her apron with the rosary in her left hand. Isabella at the steps in jeans and one of Renzo’s shirts. Maria at the porch.
Mila is in the drive.
She is in dark layers. The chain at her throat. The clothes she had on at the back room. She has been in the drive since the SUVs hit the gate. She walks. She does not run. Her spine is straight. Her hands at her sides. The walk of a woman who learned to move through danger without showing it.
Marco’s SUV is ahead of ours. Oksana comes out first on the stretcher. Mila goes to Oksana. She takes Oksana’s hand. Walks beside the stretcher to Giada at the door. Mila does not let go of Oksana’s hand until Oksana is on the gurney inside.
Then Mila turns.
She walks back across the drive.
I am out of the SUV. Dante’s hand at my elbow. The watch on my right wrist. The shirt torn at the shoulder.
She stops three feet from me. Her eyes do not flinch. She lifts her right hand. Puts it on my chest over the torn shirt.
The hand stays.
I close my eyes. Open them.
She moves her hand to the side of my throat. Her fingers find the pulse point and press there, just for a breath, and I feel it — feel her feeling for it — the proof that I am here and breathing and back. Then her hand moves to my face. Her thumb at the line of my jaw where a boot landed.
My throat tightens. Heat moves through my chest, wrong and necessary, the way blood moves when the wound is finally found.
Her face does not change. But her breath goes shallow and I hear it — the small break in the exhale, the hitch she does not try to hide. She has been holding that in since the drive. Since she heard the comms. Since she stood in this drive and waited and did not know.
Quiet. The same voice she used in the medical wing, the one that carried the lullaby through that room.
“Ty doma.” You are home.
My eyes burn. I press my forehead to hers. She holds my face with both hands and I let her. The drive is full of my family and I do not care who sees it. I am not performing anything. I am a man who was in a concrete room an hour ago and the woman holding his face is the reason the count worked.
For the first time since the chair in Moscow, I am not alone.
I let her hold me up and it is the hardest thing I have done in this building tonight.
29
MILA
We are in the medical wing. Nico is on the second cot. Shirt off. Forearm taped and ribs taped. Gia is stitching the cut at his eyebrow.
I sit on the stool beside him.
