by I. A. Dice
“I guess I know where this is going,” I said, sitting back. “You were in love with her, but she chose Frank.”
He nodded, his eyes sad, hinting that the feelings never went away. Otherwise, Jess’s portrait wouldn’t be hanging in his office.
“I loved her, Layla. She was my little dream. I tried everything to isolate her from Frank, and I almost succeeded. I was certain that she left him; that she chose me. Frank seemed to have disappeared, and Jess and I started dating.”
He rubbed his face and squeezed the bridge of his nose, then raised the glass to his lips, a pained look on his face.
“How long were you dating?” I asked.
“Only a few weeks,” he replied, clenching his fist. His eyes snapped to mine, a whole sea of regret in the gray irises. “What you have to know right now is that I am sorry.”
“Just say what has to be said. I guess it’s not the end of the revelations, so just say it. Frank found out about you? Why did you leave her?”
Anatolij straightened in his place and took a deep, calming breath. “She came to me one night, crying.” Another deep breath.
He opened his mouth, but no words came out. Instead, he finished the second glass of wine, and I noticed his hands trembling. My heart rate picked up, but no rational explanation for his apparent distress sprung to mind. Anatolij was always an oasis of calmness, and seeing him so out of place had me sweating.
He inhaled again, staring right at me. “She was pregnant and had no idea which one of us was the father.”
For a moment, I was certain I misunderstood. Then his confession sank in, and my world turned upside down.
Hundreds of wet, cold insects crawled under my skin. Childhood memories flashed before my eyes reminding me of the life I got from a man who took his revenge on my mother for her betrayal.
“Jess wasn’t sure which one of us was a father until you were born. She didn’t need to do DNA tests. Your blood group was enough...” he continued, but I heard him as if through the glass.
Individual words failed to penetrate my psyche. They stretched, blending together into a long, incomprehensible, distorted sound.
My lungs stopped pumping enough oxygen. I was breathing too fast, too shallow. Black spots appeared before my eyes, the sound was suddenly gone as if sucked out of the room as if I were stuck in a vacuum.
All I could focus on were the memories. Every disappointed look on Franks' face. The times he treated me like an enemy like I was worthless.
“Stop acting like a spoiled brat.”
“Don’t cry, crying is for sissies.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Go to your room.”
“Don’t touch me.”
“You’re just like your mother. Useless.”
“Don’t come crying to me.”
“Get out of my face.”
“I don’t care.”
“It’s your problem, deal with it.”
“Don’t count on me.”
“You’re on your own.”
His words played in my mind on repeat, echoing in the deepest recesses of my soul, each memory as painful as a cigarette burn.
I blamed myself for years, always thinking I wasn’t good enough or smart enough to deserve his love and attention. No matter how hard I tried, it was never enough.
And now I knew why. Frank couldn’t love me. He couldn’t stand me because I wasn’t his daughter. I was a burden, a constant reminder that Jess cheated on him, that she undermined his authority.
I used to look at Frank and see the eighth wonder of the world. I spent nineteen years working on my personality to please him. He made me feel worthless time and time again, and I only worked harder, so one day he’d proudly call me his daughter.
But he couldn’t... He couldn’t be the father I needed because he wasn’t my father.
My mind raced to its limits, panic pulling on my throat like tight ropes. I was choking, struggling to resurface from the pile of unwanted memories. My mind stripped me of defense mechanisms and self-worth.
“Layla.”
A familiar voice got through my walls, and my head snapped in the direction of the door. Only then I realized Anatolij was crouching in front of me, his face pale, eyes like those of a mindless, trapped animal.
I frowned, snapping out of the lethargy.
“Breathe, star,” Dante said, and at the same time, I felt the phone Anatolij was pressing to my ear.
He squeezed my hand, letting out a shaky breath. “Talk to him,” he told me, and after making sure I had a tight grip on the phone, he left the room looking a little calmer.
“Hey,” I said to Dante, hanging my head low.
A cool drop fell from my nose to my lips, my face wet from tears. I didn’t know I was crying.
Dante sighed, sounding relieved. “You scared me. What happened? Anatolij said he couldn’t get to you.”
“You knew.” My voice was small, but the accusations loud and clear. “You knew Anatolij’s my father and you didn’t tell me.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I should’ve told you, but he wanted to do so himself, and I promised not to say anything.”
“Will you be okay?” Anatolij cut in, standing in the doorway, three men and Lew behind his back. “I’ve got a meeting to attend to. It won’t take long. We can talk more when I’m done.”
“I’m not going anywhere if that’s what you’re asking,” I said, and he nodded, gesturing for Lew to stay with me while he led his guests away.
“Layla,” Dante tried to grab my attention again. “How do you feel?”
I shrugged, well aware he couldn’t see it. “Angry. Confused. Sad…”
“Sad?”
A small smile curved my lips. He didn’t mind my anger. He wouldn’t have minded if I started screaming, swearing, or taking my frustration and confusion out on him, but sadness?
He couldn’t cope with my sadness.
It was physically hurting him. I could hear it in his voice, and in my head I saw his face, a worried grimace tainting the perfect features.
“I’ll be fine. I just need time to process. I have so many questions…”
“I’m sure Anatolij will be more than happy to answer them all. He cares about you a lot. Give him a chance to prove it.”
For the last three weeks, he did his utmost to get to know me, and he learned more than Frank did during the nineteen years we lived in the same house. He deserved a chance to explain why he wasn’t present in my life. Why he abandoned my mother and me.
“I love you,” Dante told me. “And I’ll see you very soon.”
The relaxed note to his voice meant he found a way to close the hit. And hearing him at ease put me at ease for the first time in a while. I frowned, noticing it was only ten past two in the afternoon, which meant it was the middle of the night back in Chicago.
“How soon is soon, and where are you going at four o’clock in the morning?” I asked, hearing the engine accelerating in the background.
A soft, chuckle was his first answer. “So perceptive,” he muttered. “How does fifteen hours sound? I’m on my way to the airport.”
A full, blown smile stretched my face, my heart swelling. “Like the best thing I heard since you told me I’m going to be Mrs. Carrow.”
With the corner of my eye, I noticed movement in the corridor. Anatolij didn’t lie when he said the meeting wasn’t going to take long. It’s only been five minutes, and the three men were already leaving. One of them looked at me and smiled slightly.
A peculiar thrill passed through me. There was nothing friendly about his smile.
I didn’t have a chance to react. I didn’t even have a chance to blink. The man drew a gun and with a sniper’s precision aimed at me, pulling the trigger without a moment’s hesitation.
I didn’t feel the pain right away. For the first few seconds, the sound of more gunshots being fired rang in my ears, mixing with Dante’s screams until the phone slipped out of my hand.
/>
I doubled over pressing my hands against the wound on my chest.
A stabbing pain overtook fear, tearing my chest apart. I closed my eyes, and for a few short seconds, I fought to stay conscious. Then I gave up.
TWENTY-SIX
DANTE
The sound of a gunshot was unmistakable. I’d recognize it everywhere and at any time regardless of whether I’d be standing in the same room, a hundred meters away, or listening to the gun being fired over the phone.
I was breathless when my conversation with Layla was interrupted by a gun going off in the background. One, isolated shot first, then more followed closer together. I distinguished between pistols and machine guns while screaming to Layla, begging her to say something.
She didn’t. And before the shots stopped, the connection broke, and I couldn’t get through again. Anatolij wasn’t picking up either.
Fifteen minutes passed, and I had a hard time comprehending how on earth, I didn’t lose my wits yet. With my heart on my shoulder, and my teeth threatening to break any second from clenching them so hard, I pushed the black thoughts aside, searching for a rational explanation for what I heard. Maybe the sound came from the TV?
I lied to myself. I knew one of the many hitmen found her. I felt it in my bones, but I kept those thoughts locked in the depths of my subconscious to stop from going crazy before Anatolij could answer the phone.
Somehow I knew she got hit, I could feel it in my bones. Just as I could feel that she was alive. There was no other option. Layla couldn’t die now, not when the hit was a few hours from closing. Not when I was about to bring her back home. She couldn’t die.
Spades was clenching his teeth, sitting behind the wheel and trying to cheer me up with his attitude, speeding down the interstate over one hundred and thirty miles an hour.
“Call Julij,” he offered. “Maybe he can get in touch with one of Anatolij’s pawns.”
At least one of us was thinking straight. With every passing second, my composure was shattering more and more. If it weren’t something serious, Anatolij would’ve picked up the phone by now.
“What’s wrong?” Julij asked, his voice sleepy.
The early hour must’ve triggered all kinds of alarm bells in his head.
“Something happened in Moscow. I was on the phone to Layla when the shooting started, and now I can’t get through to her or Anatolij. Do you have contact with anyone else there?”
“Yes. I’ll call Lew right away.” The nerves in his voice were as tangible as fear in mine. “I’ll check what’s going on, and call you back.”
I banged my head against the headboard when he cut the call before I could ask him for the number. I wanted to know what happened first hand, but Julij also decided not to take any more of my calls, probably already on the phone to Moscow.
Spades tried not to look at me. It was as if he didn’t trust me to remain that calm for long. As if he expected an outburst any second. And my outbursts usually ended with a gun in my hand and the barrel being emptied into the sky.
I was itching to do it now, but a rational part of me kept rage bubbling up somewhere at the back of my mind, ready to unleash all hell on Morte. In the end, it was his fucking fault. All of it. If he hadn’t agreed to help Frank, none of this would’ve happened.
Julij’s conversation with Lew took almost ten minutes. My body grew cold when the phone rang. One deep breath was all I did to prepare for words I wasn’t ready to hear; for words, I never wanted to hear, because listening to him say that the only person I loved was hurt exceeded my capabilities.
But once again, with considerable surprise, I realized I could withstand much more than I expected; that regardless of how bad things got, I’d find a way to push forward.
“Get to Moscow, Dante,” Julij said, sending my mind into a frenzy. “Layla got hit. It’s bad. They took her to the hospital, and she’s on the operating table as we speak.”
And just like that, my courage faded. I crouched in the seat, and for the first time in my life, I felt... helpless.
“The bullet was a through and through. Missed the heart, but hit the lung. Lew doesn’t know much, the doctors won’t tell him more than that, and Anatolij is unconscious. Lew accidentally shot him when taking care of the hitmen.”
“What happened?” I asked, leaning forward to hang my head low and starting to feel nauseous.
“Three French arrived. For quite some time they’ve been trying to get into business with Anatolij, but he hates the French, and refused point-blank to work with them.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “Lew said they were leaving, and shooting Layla looked like a last-minute decision. A spur of the moment. One of them just drew the gun, and the other two seemed unprepared.”
I rubbed my face and fell silent, waiting for at least half a gram of courage to come back to me so I could ask Julij another question. I opened my mouth a few times before the words came out.
“Will she be okay?”
“She will,” he said but didn’t sound too sure. “She has to, right? The bullet missed the heart, and that’s the main thing. I’m sure Anatolij will get the best medical care money can buy.”
“She’s tough,” I confirmed, though I wanted to stop feeling.
The agony I went through after waking up from the nightmare a few weeks ago was nothing compared to what I felt now. There was no imagining how much worse it’d get if Layla would really die.
Knowing she was thousands of miles away from me, fighting for her life had me losing my senses bit by bit.
“Yes,” Julij agreed. “She’s tough. She’ll be okay, but she needs you.”
“I’m on my way to the airport right now.”
“Good. I’ll get on the next flight out from New York, and I’ll see you when I get there.”
It didn’t bother me that he wanted to see her too. I didn’t care about anything other than Layla, making it out alive. Nothing else mattered. She had to survive. She had no right to leave me. Not after promising to become my wife. Not after all the shit, we went through already. Not when we were so fucking close to peace.
If there was any fucking justice in the world, then she’d be just fine. And that’s what I prayed for. That’s what I begged of God, the Devil, providence, fate, and everything else that came to mind.
The rational part of my brain knew that praying wouldn’t do much more than calm down my conscience, so I reached for the phone once again and called the one person whose medical skills I trusted endlessly. There wasn’t enough time for him to fly out with me, but he could board the next flight at ten a.m.
“Who should I keep alive this time?” Carlton asked, sounding fresh as a daisy. Muffled sounds in the background suggested he was at the hospital. “Dante?” he urged, and his tone changed from casual to tense. “What happened?”
“It’s Layla,” I said simply. “She got hit, they’re operating.”
“Which hospital?”
“She’s in Moscow. The flight leaves at ten. Can you make it?”
“I’ll be there.”
No questions, no complaining, no hesitating. He didn’t even give me three seconds to say thank you.
TWENTY-SEVEN
DANTE
To my surprise, not one of Anatolij’s pawns waited for me at the airport in Moscow. It was Julij who sat on a blue chair, staring at the screen of his phone, a suitcase beside him.
“How did you get here before me?” I asked.
He glanced up, and I almost stumbled backward. He looked exactly as I felt – like shit. Bloodshot, puffy eyes and a pale face. It was a true testament to his feelings, but I couldn’t care less.
Nothing mattered except Layla. I wanted to see her, to be with her, and I wanted her to look at me with those big, gray eyes.
“I landed twenty minutes ago. Don’t forget it’s a direct flight from New York, and you had a change-over in… Warsaw, was it?”
“Yeah. How is Layla?”
“She’s stable,” he began w
eakly. “But she was in surgery for almost four hours, and she’s still unconscious now. I spoke to Anatolij. I never heard him so shaken up, and worried before.”
Ah, Julij still had no idea that my wife to be, and the love of his life was, in fact, his cousin, but this was neither the time nor place to drop that kind of a bomb on him.
“And how is he doing?”
“He said he’s fine.”
We left the building and got into a car Julij had rented. He knew Moscow better than he knew New York, and less than half an hour later, we walked through the long hospital corridors, climbed several flights of stairs and passed hundreds of small rooms on our way to the private suite in the intensive care unit where Layla was.
I hesitated, stopping in front of the door with black numbers reading six hundred and twenty-two. I was afraid of seeing her hurt and not being able to stomach the sight of the most important person in my life unconscious in a hospital bed; I was scared of my own reaction, of breaking down and losing my shit.
I gathered the remnants of courage and pushed the door with both hands, taking half a step inside, eyes glued to the floor for the first two seconds or so. The smell of disinfectant hit my nose. Beeping and humming of the machines filled the air. I distinguished between the heart monitor, pulse oximeter, and the mechanical ventilator. The latter made my knees weak even before my eyes roamed over the bed, starting at the white sheets, then climbing slowly to reach Layla’s face.
Her skin had a pale, ashen tint to it, but she looked calm, and if it weren’t for the patient monitors and the array of medical equipment surrounding the bed, I could’ve sworn she was asleep, not unconscious.
Her blood pressure was low, and her heart seemed to be beating slower than I remembered. Multiple IV’s were dripping into long, plastic tubs that connected to the veins on her hands, and part of the dressing that hid the gunshot wound on her chest was peeking out from underneath the bedsheets, making me sick.
I took a few cautious steps forward, and Julij entered the room close behind me, sucking in a sharp breath when he looked at Layla.
