Page 92 of The Mad Don
“She walks better now,” Annika tells me when she takes the phone back. “Almost no limp. The physio is going well.”
We talk a bit more. “Be careful, Yana. We love you. Dimitri says he’s keeping a snow globe for you.”
“Tell him I’ll be there for it. I love you too.”
I get the groceries. I cook in the little kitchen Kirill arranged near the hospital, and by evening, I am returning to the hospital with a flask full of food.
I push the door open with my shoulder.
The room is empty.
The bag slips out of my hand and hits the floor. The bed is stripped. The machines are dark and pushed against the wall. There’s no one in it.
I back out into the corridor and check the number on the door. It’s the right room. It’s his room. I go back in and look again as if he might appear, and he doesn’t, and the floor tilts under me.
I catch a nurse in the hall. “The patient in that room. What happened to him? Where is he?—”
“He went out a few hours ago,” she says.
My head spins. “That’s not — he was unconscious this morning.”
She’s already walking away.
I get my phone out, and my hands won’t hold it steady. I call Christov. It rings out, but no answer.
So I call Kirill, but it rings out.
I’m pacing now, fast, the panic climbing up my throat. I call Kirill again, and this time he picks up.
“He’s gone,” I say. “Giovanni’s gone, the room’s empty, they’re saying discharged, and I can’t reach Christov either. Kirill, I can’t find either of them?—”
“Don’t panic,” Kirill says. “Stay where you are. I’m coming.”
I’m shaking. I press my back to the wall and try to breathe, and I’m doing the math: who’s left, who could want him. Fabiano’s dead. His body was scattered in the explosion.
And then I hear a voice from somewhere off the corridor.
I turn toward the sound. There’s a door to the hospital garden, propped open, and through it, in the last of the light, I see Christov.
He’s pushing a wheelchair. I run to him.
There’s someone in the chair. I get close enough to see, and it’s him. Giovanni. He is thin and pale, his eyes open just out in the garden. He is fine. I throw my arms around Christov first because he’s closest, and I can’t stop myself.
“He woke up,” Christov says, startled, patting my back. “An hour ago, he asked for air. I asked the doctor, and he said it was fine. Yana, what’s wrong? You’re shaking.”
I let him go and drop down in front of the wheelchair. Giovanni is looking at me. There’s no smirk. He’s gaunt and tired, and his eyes are soft in a way I’ve only seen a handful of times.
“You scared me,” I tell him, and my voice cracks on it.
I lean in, and I put my arms around him, careful of his back, and I hold him.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Giovanni
Iwant to kiss her.
I woke an hour ago to Christov’s face and not hers, and for one cold moment, I thought she’d gone. I thought it had all been too much, that she’d taken her brother and her freedom and her millions and gone the way I told her to go. That I’d finally given her a door, and she’d walked through it.
