knew about her or Cassie.”
I was still reeling from the information when Cliff reached up to pat my cheek. “Now go get your man, my boy. Cassie and I will be here when you get back,” he said as he turned his attention back to his roses.
I didn’t know what moved me more… Nikolai being referred to as mine or the knowledge that when I got him back, I’d have a family to bring him home to.
Chapter 27
Nikolai
“Nikolai.”
The sound of my sister’s tear-filled voice broke through the numbness that had pervaded my entire body from the moment I’d gotten the call from my father that Maks was in the ER again.
“He’ll be okay, Elena,” I whispered as I reached out to cover her hand where it was fisted on the table. “He’s a fighter,” I said firmly.
Elena nodded and fell silent again. I could only stare at the glass window of the small conference room the nurse had led me and Elena to. Wasn’t a room like this only for when they had bad news?
He’s fine. He’s going to be fucking fine.
Even as I repeated the words to myself, I felt tears pricking the backs of my eyes. What if it weren’t true? What if Maks couldn’t fight off the infection this time? His doctors had said the antibiotics were working but what if they’d found something else? Yeah, we’d left Maks playing a board game with Nattie and our parents in his hospital room and he’d seemed okay, but then why were we here?
I dropped my eyes and stared at my phone which had died sometime the night before. It had been my only lifeline to Jude and now even that was gone. I knew that no matter what the outcome of this meeting would be, I’d given up the pretense that I could be patient enough for Jude to find his way back to me. After a week of unanswered texts and unreturned calls, I’d been on the verge of trekking out to Clifton Hayes’s fancy estate and beating the shit out of anyone who tried to keep Jude from me.
The door to the room flew open. I automatically jumped to my feet, though it was more force of habit than anything else. Several men and women in white coats entered.
“Ms. Falkov? Mr. Falkov?” one of the older women in a long white coat said as she held out her hand across the table. “I’m Ellen Riggs. I’ve been consulting on Maks’s case,” she said with a smile.
I might have responded, I wasn’t sure. Since I wasn’t interested in idle chitchat or a lot of bullshit medical jargon I said, “Did you find something?”
If the doctor was surprised by my bluntness, she didn’t show it.
“Yes,” she said, which immediately elicited a gasp from my sister and had me so weak-kneed that I practically fell into my chair. “But, but,” the woman quickly added as she leaned across the table and covered Elena’s and my joined hands with her own, “it’s treatable.”
Elena began sobbing. I pulled her into my arms and let the tears I’d been holding back flood my eyes. By the time Elena and I managed to pull ourselves together enough to listen, the room had emptied and there was just the two of us and Dr. Riggs.
“Now, it’s not going to be easy, but I expect Maks to make a full recovery. His condition is very rare and thirty years ago his prognosis would have been poor, but medicine has come a long way since then. There’s bone marrow transplants, gene therapy,” she said as she counted it out on her fingers.
Her optimism helped me regain my sense of balance.
“We have a lot of information to go over. I know your parents are with Maks. Did you want them to join us?”
“They don’t speak the language,” Elena said.
“We’ll translate for them afterwards,” I added.
Dr. Riggs nodded. “Okay, so here’s what we know…”
I did my best to follow along as she explained the disease affecting Maks’s immune system but in reality, I was just so damned relieved to know that there was hope for my nephew that it was hard to focus on anything else. After going through all the treatment options, we spent a good half an hour peppering Dr. Riggs with questions. When it was over, Elena was crying happy tears as we each reached across the table to thank the doctor.
“I know how scary this is,” Dr. Riggs said. “It may not seem like