His longest had been nine days.
Of unending pain.
Igor was right.
He needed to take that early weekend and hide away behind the stone walls of his estate with the shades drawn tight on every window and a bottle of good vodka close. At least then when he started to puke, he couldn’t blame it just on the migraines.
“Where is my fucking money?” Vaslav demanded.
He did meet Feliks’ stare, then, only to find the younger man’s cheek twitched with the lie he was about to spew. No surprise.
“You already know I don’t have it or you wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
Hell.
Maybe the man wasn’t a total fucking moron.
“This place has been—”
“It’s not been the same since the accident,” Feliks rushed to say.
Excuses, Vaslav knew.
Still, he let the man talk because it gave him a second to steady himself again. Maybe he could push down the pain long enough to get this over with.
“We couldn’t sell a fucking ticket—every vendor in Europe canceled for the tour. There was too many problems, they said. Rumors. It practically ruined us.”
Licking at his dry lips, Vaslav then asked, “Do you really think it matters now?”
He knew of the incident the man spoke of—an injured ballerina, a favorite of the company and public. Vaguely, the details stuck out in his mind but little else because that time in his life had been a particularly hard one. Those years followed the death of his wife and almost everything surrounding finding her murdered on the front steps of his estate, a shotgun blast through her face to ensure there would be no open viewing of her body before they buried her, well ... he’d lived his days in a bit of haze.
Until one day, it all cleared.
And everybody paid.
Everybody.
And none of that changed what Vaslav intended to happen here today.
“Vas, you’ve gone white,” he heard Feliks say. “You don’t look okay.”
When had the room swayed like that? Why was it so goddamn bright? One of his hands went numb, but the bigger issue was that he couldn’t tell which.
Well, the ringing in his ears had finally started. Of that, he was sure. The second he let go of the desk, both his knees buckled. He was barely able to keep his formidable frame from crumpling to a heap on the floor.
A floor that was spinning beneath him.
Something was definitely wrong.
It was more than just the pain.
“Get Igor,” Vaslav ordered, unable to watch Feliks’ retreat from the room, but he thought he heard the footsteps receding. It was a toss-up whether the man even heard him call out, “He should be at the front.”
By now.
Fortunately for Feliks, the rest of Vaslav’s plan would have to wait.
4.
“Vas, are you even listening to me?”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he heard himself snarl.
Had he pushed Igor off? He must have because from somewhere behind him, his steps stumbling one after another to propel him toward a set of large doors, his head of security shouted, “You can’t barely stand—I’m calling one! Kill me later for it.”
“Otva’li,” Vaslav barked, but he thought it came out a little too garbled. The curse didn’t have his sharp impact coming out of his mouth like it usually did.
Or maybe that was just the rest of the sounds around him that felt like they were all swirling together. He didn’t recognize the hall he entered, but he was sure a different voice had added something into the conversation he left behind.
Something that sounded a lot like, “He can’t go far. Call for help. I know he hates me, but goddammit, she’d never forgive me.”
Vaslav wasn’t sure what part of this he disliked the most—that he couldn’t remember where he was or the reason for why he was there. In fact, when he reached into his memories, he found a bank of still images, faces and moments that he understood and recognized without any uncertainty, but he couldn’t remember where he had woken up that morning.
Still stumbling down the unfamiliar corridor, the argument continued to ensue behind them. He wasn’t seriously listening to whatever the men had to say—it wasn’t anything different from what he’d already heard.
People will know.
Something is wrong.
He makes the calls.
Vaslav tried to focus on the short bursts of his breaths as his wild gaze scanned the large portrait paintings of ballerinas. It was getting too bright again.
He didn’t know where that light spilled in from. All the same, he couldn’t bear it. The pain was back.
Vaslav shrunk into the first set of shadows he could find, and squeezed his eyes shut when his back hit a wall.
“Vas!” he heard someone call.
But he couldn’t speak again.
Not when the stabbing bursts from the scattered migraine pain began to flutter, and he could barely hold himself up.
Footsteps raced by mere feet from his presence, beyond the sliver of light offered by a small doorway that he probably could have reached for if only his arms would do what he wanted them to.
“Vas—boss!”
“Where did he go?”
“Vaslav!”
*
Beep.
Beep.
BEEP.
Every one of those strange digital beeps accompanied a rocking motion that made Vaslav acutely aware of the fact his back was flat against something hard.
“Is the blinking a good sign?”
The question didn’t get answered in the way the person likely wanted considering as soon as Vaslav had some sense of consciousness, he was fighting.
Ripping at the mask on his face, gasping in a burning lungful of air, he didn’t recognize the faces of the men dressed in blue and white hovering over him. Roaring his anger and confusion out with flailing arms that sent everyone inching back.
But not for long.
Why was he laying down?
“Sir—”
“Sir, if you don’t stop we’ll have to tranq you!”
He might have laughed at that threat, but he was too busy shouting unintelligible curses. Tranq him? He’d have their hearts cut out and the blood in the chambers boiled for tea. Hadn’t Igor just asked him a question?
Wasn’t he in a dark room?
“Vas, come on.”
“Give it, then,” came the order.
“Twenty milligrams of—”
Good God.
Did they have him strapped down to a gurney?
His struggle increased at the same time a paramedic plunged a needle full of something straight into Vaslav’s neck.
The beeping and rocking came back as his gaze settled on the glass window on the rear door of the vehicle. He couldn’t see the faces of the three men anymore—not the two working on him or the one trying to stay out of their way, tucked into the rear corner.
He just saw the glass.
That’s what the window made him remember.
What he saw first.
The glass.
When he had stumbled into the doorway with shadows, then down the dark hallway that he thought would save him from further pain in his confusion, he hadn’t realized it had only been something of an alternative exit. It led him to a gallery, but he’d ignored the carpeted benches and tight stairwell that led downward for the wall of glass windows waiting in front of him.