“Your wild Cassie wants to dance in the rain and have sex on a moonlit beach. She wants to be with you, which is more than enough wildness for any woman. She doesn’t want her wildness to result in being kidnapped, stabbed, or shot at.”
“No one has shot at you,” he says. Then grumpily amends. “Technically, they weren’t shooting at you.”
“Give it time,” I reply.
We stare at one another.
“Do you really love me?”
“Fuck, yes.”
“Then get out of the game.”
His face hardens. “There is no out.”
“There’s always an out, Konstantin. One just has to find it.”
The curtains part, and Konstantin whirls around. “Leave us,” he snaps.
The doctor stares at him, shock on her face for a moment before she composes her features. “Sorry, Mr. Silvanov. I need to check Miss Evans.”
He nods, but watches the doctor, glowering as if she’s going to hurt me.
“In private,” she says more forcefully.
“Fine. I’ll be back.” He kisses me on the forehead and leaves.
I sink into the raised pillows and sigh.
“We’re scheduling surgery now. It’s a relatively speedy procedure, and I hope you’ll have a quick recovery. You’ll be kept in for a day or so after and given painkillers and antibiotics to ensure the wound is healing properly, and then you should be free to go home. An armed police guard will be placed outside your room. You will have a private room, and there will be an alarm by your bed. Use it if you need to.”
It hits me so hard. I’m still in danger. I’ve got to have armed police outside my room, and Konstantin thinks I’m a bad person for not wanting this life?
She takes my blood pressure, listens to my heart, takes my pulse and oxygen levels and smiles when she’s done. “All good.”
Then she leaves, and a moment later, a dark head pokes around the curtain, and ghostly wolf eyes regard me.
“Don’t lurk,” I snap. “Come in.”
A mere few days ago this man filled me with fear. Now, I’m so tired and drained from the violence aimed at me, I can’t summon up any healthy regard for the predator in front of me at all.
Andrius comes to the bed and sits more elegantly than Konstantin did, in the chair by me.
“You’re going to have the best security we can buy. Marcus, the British Intelligence guy is on it, and we have a plan to deal with the Armenians. No one from their fucking seedy little group will terrorize you again.”
“No, but someone else will come along who will,” I say to him.
“Not if K gets out,” Andrius replies.
“He says there is no out.”
Andrius smiles. “It’s not easy, but I’ve been talking to Reece and Marcus, and I might have figured something out.”
“What, kill all the baddies,” I say sarcastically.
I’m being a bitch, but I’m exhausted, in pain, and frankly terrified of a future that seems bleak, whatever I do. Either it will be filled with a broken heart, or filled with terror, violence, and mayhem.
Broken hearts heal, but some people we never get over.
Konstantin entered my life a whirlwind of magnetism and power, and he upended everything. Once he’s gone, nothing will settle in the same place.
Andrius shifts in his seat.
“One of the issues is that Konstantin is a warrior. I understand what that’s like. I am too. I thought I could walk away and play house, but the war still came to me.”
“This is what he says. There’s no leaving.”
“No… But there is a way to fight a different war. A much less deadly one. Konstantin can no more sit at home all day doing watercolors than you could fly to the moon, but he doesn’t have to keep fighting this war.”
“You’ve lost me,” I say.
“I need to talk to K, but I might have a way he gets to keep being who he is but without as much danger.”
“You think he’ll go for it, whatever it is?”
“I have to work the details out, but yeah, he might.”
“Are you going to be involved?”
He nods. “Yes, I am.” He shifts again in the seat, and I expect it’s uncomfortable for a man as big as him, that small plastic chair. “You see, I tried to walk away, but the war found me. It’s always there, in the distance, rumbling away. I think the reason it happened is my enemies of old saw me happy, living with Violet, to all intents and purposes retired, and they thought