Satin Princess(22)
Tears slip from my eyes. I’m not sure if I’m sad or relieved. But if he’s here with me… death won’t be so bad.
8
ANTON
The doctors keep telling me her body is strong. But Jessa still hasn’t woken up since I found her. Even in the moments when her eyes flicker open, they stare unseeingly at me before fading shut again.
“You can go rest if you want,” Dr. Mathers says, walking into the suite in her light blue jeans and thick sweater. She doesn’t wear the white doctor’s coat and, for some reason, I trust her more than the rest of the idiots tending to Jessa. “Standing by her bed is not going to wake her up any sooner.”
“No, that’s what I hired you people for,” I snap. “And yet here we are.”
She gives me a solemn nod, unfazed by my irritation. “Her body needs time to recover. She’ll wake up when she’s ready.”
“And the baby?” I demand. “Nobody else has been able to tell me anything.”
Her face drops visibly. I almost regret asking the question. “It will be touch-and-go for the next twenty-four hours. We’re monitoring the baby carefully, though. I can assure you of that.”
“Save her,” I say firmly. “Just make sure you save her.”
Mathers nods. “I’ll do my very best.”
“Do better than that.”
If she’s scared of me, she shows no sign of it. She just gives me a determined nod and slips back out of the room.
I turn towards the floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over London. The view from the seventeenth floor is far from shabby. All I want is for Jessa to wake up and take a look at it with me.
The sound of my ringer slices through the quiet. I reach for my phone. “Yeah?”
“Where are you?” Lev asks.
“The Four Seasons. In the King’s Suite.”
“Ah. I’m assuming that means you got your woman back.”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Sensing my tone, Lev’s voice falls to match it. “Okay. What went wrong?”
“Everything.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Not worried,” I reply. “But ready. You should be ready.”
“Should I get Yulian?” he asks. “Should we be on a conference call for this?”
“No, I’m not interested in talking to Yulian right now.”
“Um… okay. Is there a reason?”
“What do you think?”
The pause on the other side is deliberate. “Do you want to talk now? Or should I call back later?”
Lev has always had a way of cutting through my defenses. One second, I want to hang up on him, but the next, I’m opening up.
“I got there just as she lost consciousness,” I tell Lev. “She was poisoned.”
Lev could ask a million questions. But, ever the pragmatist, all he says is, “Poisoned with what?”
“An old-school homebrew to force a miscarriage.”
He hisses, a sharp inhale. “Someone tried to kill the baby?”
My hand tightens around the phone. “So it would seem. The bitch who helped her run, then jammed the knife in her back. Freya.”
“Where is this bitch now?” Lev asks.
“She made a run for it before I could catch her,” I say. “Before I even saw her. But it doesn’t matter. I know who she is.”
“Anton… you’re starting to lose me again.”
“Doesn’t this feel familiar to you, Lev?” I ask. “She used to pull these fucking deceptive mind games all the time.”
“Anton—”
“Listen to me, Lev.”
The silence on the other line is heavy. He’s already caught up—he’s no fool—but I keep talking anyway. There’s something cathartic about walking him through my process of realization. It helps curtail the rush of murderous adrenaline that shoots through my body every time I think of the bitch who tried to kill my family.
“We never saw Marina’s body, did we?”
Lev grunts in frustration. “Yulian did.”
“Exactly. Yulian fucking did.”
It takes Lev a second to understand what I’m suggesting, but then he scoffs. “What reason would Yulian have to lie about the body?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But I’m going to find out.”
“Listen, the devil knows Yulian and I have had our differences over the years. But there’s no way he would—”
“He was sloppy, Lev,” I say. “He was clumsy. He got rid of it before I could verify if it was her or not.”
“Did you see her there today?” Lev asks.
“No. She made a run for it right before I arrived.”
“Then how do you know it’s really her?”
“Instinct,” I say. “Experience. Fate.”
“Fate?” Lev repeats incredulously. “Since when do you believe in that kind of hocus-pocus bullshit?”
“I should have been the one to kill her,” I snarl. “I wish I had done it. I wish I deserved the rumor that’s being spread as we speak.”