Mira wouldn’t have forgiven him had he left the teenager to fend for himself even though Vaslav knew Kiril was perfectly capable, and had done so for a long time.
Neither would Vera.
That’s who Vaslav really cared about.
“He’s definitely considering having you arrested,” Kiril said as Vaslav let his tires squeal on the wet, cold asphalt as he did a U-turn in the middle of the street.
“On what? Fuck him. I’ll burn his house to the ground if I see his fucking face again.”
The whole lot of them.
Every musor in this city.
And every vor, too.
No one was safe.
Vaslav would figure out how this happened on his own seeing as how everybody else was clearly useless. A shame, really. Nobody seemed to like the way he did things.
Too bad for them.
They all had their chance.
*
“I’m fine, Papa. I can’t help that Vaslav won’t answer your calls or return them. He barely returns mine ...” Vera’s assurances for her father trailed off just long enough for her to let out a sigh. “That’s ridiculous. You’re being ridiculous.”
Vaslav decided that was the moment to make his presence known to his wife. Whoever had been last to leave her private hospital room left the door open a couple of inches. Just enough to allow someone outside in the hallway to eavesdrop.
Him, unfortunately.
Pushing the door open, earning him a swing of Vera’s head as he entered the room, Vaslav asked, “What is Demyan saying that’s so ridiculous, hmm?”
The smile that fettered across his wife’s lips as she saw him was short lived. But only because she had to return to the conversation with the man on the other end of the phone.
“Yes, Papa, that’s him.” Vera rolled her eyes Vaslav’s way, and rubbed at her cheek with her IV-connected hand. A friend she would hopefully be rid of soon if everything went well over the next couple of days. Or so her doctor said when Vaslav cornered the man in the carpark that morning. “If he hasn’t picked up your calls yet, then I think we can both assume he doesn’t want to talk to you n—”
“Give me that, spasibo,” Vaslav said, arriving at Vera’s bedside and pulling the phone out of her hand before she could finish her defense of him. He appreciated it, but now wasn’t the right time. A worried Demyan was low on Vaslav’s list of priorities, but he could appreciate that Vera was high on her father’s list, respectively.
They wanted the same thing.
Essentially.
“Demyan,” Vaslav greeted as he put the phone to his ear.
“Imagine I’m having a conversation with my injured, hospitalized daughter, and now is the time you decide is the best to take a fucking phone call from me,” Demyan returned, hotly.
It was due.
Vaslav didn’t correct the man.
“Da, well,” Vaslav muttered, lamely. “There are only so many hours in the day, Demyan.”
“You said she was safe.”
That accusation, not nearly as angry but still heavy, sent Vaslav glancing Vera’s way as he rounded the foot of her bed, but she only glowered back at him. Obviously, she wasn’t happy about his trick with her phone. The room wasn’t much bigger than the first she’d had in the same hospital two wings over, but it had a television.
And there was him, of course.
He opted to stay night after night—holding her if he could in her bed, or making due with the reclining chair in the corner—more than he didn’t.
“It wasn’t about me,” Vaslav informed, likely the most information Demyan had been able to gather since the bomb blew. “So it had practically nothing to do with her.”
“Someone put a bomb at her house! And you really think—”
“There’s no need to yell, but I honestly don’t have the patience for it, either. I could hang up, except this is a prime opportunity for the two of us.”
“For what?” Demyan barked.
“To inform you. I’m sending Vera to spend the rest of the winter with you and her mother, stateside. Shouldn’t that make you happy—or is the job too hard for you, Demyan?”
The revelation gained him two drastically different reactions from Demyan and his daughter.
“Absolutely not,” Vera snapped.
Demyan, on the other hand, only asked, “Are you getting the flight plans together, or should I?”
“I’ll leave that to you.”
“Fine by me—get my daughter’s walking papers.”
Vaslav sighed, but the woman across the room hadn’t taken her eyes off him for a second. “She’s not particularly happy about it.”
“I’m not going to the states for the winter.”
From her hospital bed, dressed in a standard gray medical gown—with a second that she wore turned around as a cape around her shoulders—Vera stared Vaslav down like she was daring him to tell her differently. He hated to be the bearer of bad news, but they simply didn’t have another choice.
This was for the best.
The further she was from Russia, the more damage he could do to any and everyone who might have put her in this fucking hospital in the first place.
“Oh well for her,” Demyan returned.
Silently, Vaslav thought: touché.
He wasn’t foolish enough to actually say it. Even that didn’t last long before her gaze drifted away to the stiff blankets tucked in tight around her on the bed. It was her quiet moments lately that killed him the most because that’s when he saw the sadness she couldn’t hide in her eyes.
Even if she wasn’t crying.
Even if there weren’t tears.
Inside, in her heart, he knew she hurt. It constantly radiated from her every second that he was in her presence whether they were talking, and she was smiling, or not. An ever-present cloud hanging over the two of them that she, for some reason, wouldn’t speak about.
He tried to understand. They’d had something just long enough to have it ripped away. Before they could be happy or angry; before a single decision about her pregnancy was even considered between them, the selfishness of someone else made the call.
So, he tried. To give her time. For her to be quiet. If that’s what she needs, he thought. Yet nothing, not even her, suggested what he did was helping.
“Tell my daughter that I love her, and her mother and I will see her soon,” Demyan said before he abruptly ended the phone call.
Vaslav didn’t take offense, and tossed the device to the middle of Vera’s bed where she could grab it if she wanted. Not that she did once she seen the screen was black again.
“You are going across the pond,” he told her before she could argue.
“Hannah’s—”
“Still not awake, kisska. And considering it’s been two weeks, and they still won’t let you into her ICU room ... I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Vera’s shoulders dropped with her hard exhale. “She’s not dead just because she’s in a coma.”
“I didn’t say that, either.”
“She’s not even brain dead.”
“Vera—”
“Who is she gonna wake up to if you make me go?” she asked. “Hannah shouldn’t wake up alone.”