Page 61 of The Bratva’s Monster

Behind me, he says, “I’m fine. The bullet went through and through.”

I’m running a hand towel under water. “You are not fine. You’re bleeding all over the place.”

I hear him sigh roughly and the soft splat of the shirt as it hits the floor. When I come out, he’s sitting on the bed with his back to me. There’s another hole just under his ribs.

“Sit still,” I tell him as I climb onto the bed and go about cleaning his wounds. He flinches and glances over his shoulder at me when the cold, wet towel hits his back.

“It’s a flesh wound,” he says. “I just need a bandage and some rest… Maybe a beer.”

“Mmm. We’re fresh out.” I press the towel as hard as I can to the wound. “You’d better not need stitches. I wouldn’t begin to know how to do that.”

His back rises slightly as he chuckles. “I told you, I’m fine. I’ve hurt myself worse while shaving.”

I glance up at his full beard and say, “And that was clearly a very long time ago.”

“It’s been years. Now you know why.”

“Funny.” I say it dryly, because there is not a damned thing to laugh about. I lift the towel to find that the bleeding has all but stopped. Then I move around to his side and start cleaning off the entrance wound. “Gonna need them to bring us more towels. And we need bandages.”

He sighs. “Probably can get a first aid kit from the front desk.”

I look up at him carefully. Then I shake my head. “I can work with this, I think. For now, anyway.”

I hear his phone buzzing in his pocket. He pulls it out and looks at the screen. It’s Alex calling. He declines it.

That can’t be a good sign.

I wrap a clean towel around his midsection, fashioning a kind of pressure bandage that should help stop the bleeding even more. I tie it tight around him and he winces, but then thanks me. When I’m done, he stands, pulling his phone out and turning it off completely before setting it on the nightstand.

“I need you to listen very carefully to what I’m about to tell you,” he says. “It’s important because the next few days are going to be hard and I need for us to survive this.”

I swallow hard, but I don’t respond. I sit up and listen.

“While I was taking care of the convoy,” he says, “one of the Irkutsks clued me in on the fact that Stefan knows about you… Or rather, he knows that Alex thinks you’re the rat.”

My stomach drops into my shoes. The conversation we had at the cafe where he offered me protection. That had to be what that was all about. He was making a play against Alex. Had I accepted…

“How he knows isn’t important,” Rikki goes on. “What is important is why he wanted to make sure that I knew. Or that Alex knows it. Since it would benefit him if you were the rat and Alex was none the wiser.”

I frown in confusion. “Wait, but I’m not⁠—”

“I know. We wouldn’t be here if I thought you were.” He starts to cross his arms, then winces and gives up on that. He sighs instead and says, “The way I see it, I wasn’t told because he wanted to taunt us. I was told because he means to kill you instead.”

“What…? But why? I don’t understand.”

“No idea. Probably looking to hurt us, though. All I can think is that somehow he knows about you and me.” He pauses as he gazes at me, his eyes turning down with something between sadness and sympathy. “Finding Alex’s monster’s weakness is a great way to cripple the Rostovs.”

I don’t say anything to that. It sounds logical except for the fact that Stefan offered to save me from all this. What was it he said? “It’s no secret that both my Bratva and the Rostovs are heading toward war. When it breaks out in earnest, your blood will probably be among the first to run.”

In the moment, I’d taken that as a warning. Was it, though? Or was it a threat?

“I’m not going to let that happen,” he says. “So, here’s how all of this is going to work. You’ll stay here while I go talk to Alex.” He pauses as if the next words are too heavy to even speak. “I’m going to convince him that Gedeon wasn’t the rat… and clear your name.”

Instantly, I feel like I’m going to throw up. We haven’t even gotten far enough to talk through what we’re going to say to Alex. Now he’s talking about going alone?

“Why does that sound like a terrible idea?” I ask him.

“Probably because it is.” He looks down for a moment at his shoes, then back up at me. “He’s given me a kill order, Liz. He wants me to take you out.”