The Final Hour (Volkov Bratva #3)(41)

He didn’t move in any other way, but this, this was enough.



Four hours.

That was how long it took for Lauren to gather the courage to call Luka, asking him to meet her in Mishca’s room. The hospital was relatively quiet, just the occasional nurse doing their rounds. She had always heard that fear made people do crazy things, and in that moment, Lauren agreed completely.

Vlad had been her first choice, but Lauren knew that what she would ask of him would be too much, and he would more than likely try to talk her out of it, but she needed this done.

She didn’t want to live in fear.

Luka stepped into the doorway, a bag of grapes in his hand. “What can I do for you?”

She knew what she was about to ask would not go over well with him, especially with the person it was dealing with.

“I need you to find Klaus.”Just as she had thought, he didn’t look happy about the idea, but she needed him to understand her reason. “Mishca said that Klaus was one of the best—if not the best—snipers in the world. So either he was the one that shot him, or he knows who did. Either way, we need to bring him in.”

Luka rubbed his jaw, his expression closed off. “Nyet. Not a good idea.”

“It’s what you do though,” Lauren argued. “You’re an enforcer. You find people, beat the shit out of them, or bring them in. I want him brought in, and if it makes you feel better, you can hit him in the face for what he did to you.”

“Tempting, yes, but Cap would have my balls if I even bothered bringing someone like him to you. Especially with him out of commission,” he said with a jerk of his head towards Mishca.

“What did Mishca tell you to do exactly?” Lauren asked, refusing to back down from what she wanted.

“Look after you…” But he trailed off, and she knew that he knew exactly what she was referring to.

“And what else?”

Rolling his eyes, he scratched his head. “Give you whatever you ask for.”

“And I need Klaus here.”

“Fine.” He threw his hands up in the air. “But you don’t move from that spot until I get back. And if I can’t get him, you leave it alone, yes? I don’t need you f*cking shit up.”

“Vlad can even keep me company,” she said light-heartedly, looking to the stoic man that had just entered the room.

He looked between the two of them, curious about what they’d been talking about, but he didn’t ask.

Luka was gone after a private conversation with Vlad. With just the two of them in the room, Vlad came over, pulling a chair around until he was sitting next to her. He reached over, patting her shoulder.

She knew how much Mishca meant to him, even if he never spoke the words aloud. Mishca always spoke positively about him, and before Luka, there was and would always be Vlad.

“Do you think he’ll ever wake up? He’s been asleep for a long time.” She asked softly, that question plaguing her mind.

She had never had the courage to voice it to anyone else, afraid of what they might say. Susan and Ross would have sugarcoated it, doubting she would want to know what they truly thought. Ross might have wanted to, but Susan would have stopped him, especially after the way Lauren had snapped at him before.

“He’s too stubborn to die,” he answered after some time.

And that was all she could hope for.



One day passed, another, and Mishca still hadn’t woken up. Alex had come by, Amber and the others, even Susan and Ross. Luka had yet to come back, and he hadn’t called either, but Lauren wanted to wait just a little while longer before sending Vlad after him.

She had become a regular fixture at the hospital, the nurses with Mishca on their rounds greeting her by name. It wasn’t until later in the day did she get the answers she needed.

Lauren had left Mishca’s side for a couple of minutes at most, but when she came back and reclaimed her seat, she felt his presence without seeing him. She didn’t have time to wonder how he had gotten past the nurses, or even Vlad who had dozed off in the lobby, she was just glad he was there.

“I didn’t think you would actually show up,” she whispered, not bothering to look away from Mishca as he slept on.

Klaus made a sound as he walked out from the shadows, his gaze skirting from her to Mishca, lingering for a moment before returning to her. She had hoped to see something, some flicker of emotion in his eyes to show that he cared about what happened to Mishca, but there was nothing, like he wasn’t even human.

“You sent for me, here I am. What do you want?”

The first time Lauren had met Klaus, she was too shocked by the fact that Mishca had a twin to really notice the discrepancies between them, but now that she was looking at him, they did have subtle differences between them.

Klaus didn’t wear facial hair—at least during the times they crossed paths—and he wore his hair significantly shorter, it barely fell below his ears. And there was so much anger in his face. He also didn’t have the accent. In fact, there were no inflections at all in his voice to discern a geographical background.

“I need your help.”

“Nothing I can do for the Russian,” he said, tucking his hands in his pockets as he stood next to the window, his back against the wall. “And who’s to say I didn’t put that bullet in him?”