Because It Is My Blood (Birthright #2)(71)

I awoke in a hospital bed. What I felt was a mild amount of pain and an incredible amount of annoyance. I had let Sophia Bitter go. Who knew where she was or what trouble she would cause next? Also, I was nearly as tired of hospitals as I had been of Liberty.

I needed to get going. I stood, feeling a bit woozy. I hadn’t been at the hospital long, so I was still in my clothes. I found my shoes (though not my machete) in the closet. I went into the bathroom to take stock of my injuries. There was a huge bump on my forehead and another one on the back of my head. I couldn’t see the second one as it was covered by hair. Other than that, I seemed to be in one piece.

I poked my head out the doorway. There didn’t seem to be any nurses around, so I made my move. I walked down a hallway, then past the reception area. No one noticed me. In the waiting area, I could see Daisy Gogol and Natty. My sister’s face was red and tearstained while Daisy’s was pale and tense. I didn’t want to be stopped, but I also didn’t want them to be too concerned.

I went up to them. “Shh,” I said.

“Annie, what are you doing out of bed?” Natty yelled.

“I’m okay, but I have to go,” I told them.

“You’re not making any sense,” Natty said. “Who hit you? What happened?”

“I’ll explain everything later. I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” Natty insisted. “You don’t look at all fine. If you don’t go back to that hospital room, I swear to God, Anya, I am going to scream.”

I looked at the reception desk. Despite my sister’s increasingly hysterical tone, we still hadn’t aroused much interest. It was a busy hospital in a crime-filled city, and the staff was used to filtering out the cries of the agitated.

“Natty, I have something I need to take care of, and it absolutely cannot wait.” I turned to Daisy. “Would you happen to have my machete?”

Daisy Gogol did not choose to answer my question. Instead, she looked from me to my sister. “I feel awful, Anya. I shouldn’t have let you go to church without me. I thought you’d be fine. It is church after all.”

“It’s fine, Daisy.”

“I understand if you need to fire me,” Daisy Gogol said.

I didn’t want to fire her, but I did want to know if she had my weapon.

“I do, Anya,” she said. “But I can’t give it to you.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said.

“I’m sorry. My job is to protect you, not facilitate you.” Daisy Gogol lifted me off the ground, as if I weighed nothing—and trust me, I did weigh something; I may have been small, but I was also dense (yes, occasionally in the other sense of the word, too)—and carried me back to the desk. “This girl has had a head trauma, and she’s gotten out of her room,” Daisy Gogol said to the nurse.

The nurse looked insufferably bored with us, as if giant women toting around smaller women was a regular occurrence. She instructed Daisy to carry me back to the room, where a doctor would be in to see me shortly. As we were traveling down the hallway, I weighed my options. I could not overpower Daisy Gogol, but I was fairly confident that I could outrun her.

She placed me on the bed gently, like I was a beloved doll. “I am sorry, Anya.”

“I understand.”

“But I do know a thing or two about head traumas, and you need to be monitored for the next day at least. Whatever has happened can surely wait until you’re thinking more clear—”

I sat upright and pushed her as far as I could. I didn’t make much of an impact, but she was stunned enough that I had time to run out of the room. “Take Natty home!” I called as I fled.

Since I didn’t have my machete, the first place I went was Fats’s speakeasy. I’d need backup before going to deal with Mickey and Sophia. “Annie, what brings you?” Fats asked.

I had run from the hospital and I was scant of breath. “You were right. Sophia Bitter planned the hits. And I think she was responsible for the poisonings,” I said.

Fats poured himself a shot of espresso. “Yes, that makes sense. Do you think Mickey was in on it?”

“I’m not sure. Sophia says he was the one who killed Leo in retaliation for what Leo did to Yuri. The truth is, she might have just been lying to get the heat off her for Leo’s death.”

“And the easiest way to do that is to point the finger at her husband.” He paused to look at me. “Jesus, kid, what happened to your forehead?”

“I got between a sinner and her Bible,” I explained. “I want to go confront Mickey, and I need you with me.”

Fats nodded. “I’ll get my gun.”

When we got to Mickey’s brownstone, a servant answered the door. “Mr. and Mrs. Balanchine just left. They said they were going to visit her relatives.”

I said to Fats that we should go to the airport, but he shook his head. “We don’t even know which one. Maybe the best thing that could possibly happen is the two of them leaving town. Think of it, Anya—if the two of them stayed, we’d have an internecine war on our hands. With them out of the picture, it’s back to business as usual and that’s a very good thing.”

“But I want to know for sure if Mickey killed my brother!”

“I understand that, Annie. But what would knowing really matter? Sophia said he did. And Mickey is gone. You drove them out of town, so you got to take some comfort in that because that is all the truth you’re going to get for now.”