He did it. Grigory actually pulled the trigger.
Boris flops to his back on the floor, his eyes wide with shock as blood blooms across his chest in ugly spurts. Dominik charges Grigory, taking him out with a punch to the face and ripping the gun out of his hands. Meanwhile, my men release the three of us from our cuffs.
The moment I’m free, I rush to Alyssa. Her eyes are fluttering half-open but there’s no light in them, no awareness.
“Alyssa,” I say desperately, grabbing her hand. She’s so sweaty it almost slips right out of my grip. “Alyssa, can you hear me?”
She doesn’t answer apart from a low moan rippling with pain.
“Uri, you want me to kill the bastard?” Dominik asks with his gun pointed at a whimpering Grigory.
“P-please,” Grigory begs from the floor. “I k-k-killed him for you…”
I place my hand on Alyssa’s forehead. She’s burning up. “You killed him because you knew it was over. You were trying to save your own skin.”
“Please d-d-don’t kill me…”
“I’m not planning to,” I say harshly.
Nikolai and Dimiv both look at me like I’m insane. I ignore them. “Get over here and do whatever you can to save her. And the babies. And remember that if one of them dies—so do you.”
Dominik hauls Grigory back to his feet and shoves him over to Alyssa’s bedside. His eyes scan her body hopelessly. “The babies need to be delivered s-soon,” he stammers. “But if they do, they’ll need machines to help them breathe. They’re too premature to survive on their own, outside of a fully functioning NICU.”
I glance towards Nikolai. “Get an SUV ready and call Emily. We’re moving Alyssa out.”
As my men get ready to shepherd Alyssa out under Nikolai’s supervision, Dominik gets my attention. “Uri, you’re not gonna believe this… but the fucker’s still alive.”
As much as I want to bleed Sobakin dry and crush his bones to ash while he begs for mercy, I can’t think about anything other than Alyssa. Her safety and the safety of our children is my only priority.
“You’ll take care of him?”
Dominik raises his eyebrows. “Definitely.”
“I have only one request: make his death as painful as possible.”
A slow smile spreads across Dominik’s face. “Consider it done.”
58
URI
Dimiv floors it to the hospital. I stay in the back of the van with Alyssa, who’s burning up. “Nikolai, have you contacted Emily?”
“She’s waiting for us at St. Mary’s Memorial with an O.R. prepared for the C-section. As soon as we get there, we’re good to go.”
I want to take some relief from that reassurance—but until Alyssa looks me in the eye like she recognizes me, I’m not going to feel anything but dread. There’s too much blood staining her thighs, soaking through the hospital gown she’s wearing in oceans of red.
I grab her hand as tight as possible and lean in against her ear. “You’re going to be okay, baby. You’re going to be okay.”
Her head twists to the side as though she’s listening, but when I meet her eyes, they’re closed. Gritting my teeth, I look up and check our progress. “How much longer? We’ve been on the road forever.”
Nikolai laughs bitterly. “We’ve only been driving three minutes.”
Blyat’. Three minutes? Is that all? It feels like ten times that long. I turn my attention back to Alyssa as she moans and grimaces, fresh sweat beading on her forehead. Is that just the pain or did they give her something? Drugs? An epidural? Either one of those things would be preferable to the devastating reality that she just might be losing too much blood to survive this delivery.
“Approaching the hospital!” Dimiv yells from the driver’s seat.
When the doors of the van are thrown open, Emily is standing just outside, already in her scrubs. The nursing staff accompanying her haul the gurney out of the van and start checking her vitals. I can hear the medical jargon flying, but I try not to pay attention to it. There’s no point—it’s out of my hands now. I just need to be there for her.
I jog at her side as they wheel her into the hospital. “I’m coming in with her,” I snarl to Emily fiercely. “Pull whatever strings you need to.”
Her jaw flexes but she doesn’t fight me on that. “You sure you wanna see this?”
“She’s not leaving my sight.”
She leaves it at that and nods to one of her nurses. “Get Mr. Bugrov scrubbed in.” Then she looks over at me. “You’ll need to wash your hands thoroughly before entering my O.R., Uri. That part’s non-negotiable.”
I’m forced to watch as they wheel her into the operating room. “Come with me, sir,” one of the nurses instructs. “Once you’re scrubbed in, you can follow her inside.”
The nurse makes me run through the process three times in agonizing detail before he finally consents. Every time I try to rush it, he reminds me that I’m not the one at risk if I miss something—my woman is. So I do as he says, gritting my teeth against the pain of every passing second.
Finally, when I pass inspection, I shrug on the protective gear and burst through the doors. They’re already prepping Alyssa for surgery. There’s a cloth wall set up just underneath her chest. Emily gestures for me to get behind it.
“Stay by her head, hold her hand, talk to her if you need to. Just stand back and let me do my job, okay?”
I nod silently and sit down beside Alyssa. I press a kiss to her sweaty forehead. Her temperature is a touch cooler than it was twenty minutes ago. That has to be a good sign, right?
“Okay, we’re gonna need to move fast. Once the babies are out, they’ll need to be moved to the NICU immediately. We won’t have much time to work.”
I cling to her hand tightly as I get back to my feet, unable to stomach sitting for so long. From this vantage point, I can see just beyond the wall. Emily’s wielding a scalpel poised over Alyssa’s stomach, with surgical marker trails veering this way and that on her swollen belly.
I have to remind myself to stay put. Seeing someone cut into her goes against every instinct in my body—but those babies need to come out or else they all die.
“Uri.” Emily’s not even looking at me but her voice is strong and confident. “It’s a tough thing to watch. But I’m excellent at what I do. I’m going to save her.”
I bite back my fear and my helplessness. “Do what you have to do.”
The scalpel presses into Alyssa’s stomach and ruby red blood appears instantly. I glance quickly at Alyssa’s face but she doesn’t seem to feel it.
“Don’t worry,” Emily reassures me. “She’s numbed from the neck down.”