Page 21 of Blazing Embers

“Tara.”

Pavel is screaming into the phone, and I hear, “ETA six minutes, and there’s blood. A lot of blood. It’s coming from her… uh…” He glances in the mirror. “From her woman parts. More blood than should be coming from there.”

Her body stays limp. “Tara.Ptichka, look at me!” I squeeze her hand—no response. “Tara!”

I reach for her neck—her pulse is there, but very weak.

And then it hits.

A sickening wave of fear crashes through me.

But it’s not just Tara I see.

It’s another body. Smaller. Lighter. Cold.

I’m back in that fucking village, in the dirt and smoke, my wife already gone from a sniper’s bullet—and my daughter in my arms, her blood soaking through me.

She was only one. She hadn’t even said her first word. The bullet had gone clean through my wife and into her. I held her as she bled out, whispering the same words I’m saying now. Stay with me.

And she hadn’t. She couldn’t.

Now Tara’s head lolls back against my chest just like my daughter’s had.

And I break.

“Tara.” I slap her cheek gently. “DON’T SLEEP. DO YOU HEAR ME?”

She blinks, fighting against her eyelids to open her eyes.

“Just want to… sleep,” she slurs. “So… tired.” Her head sags again.

“No…” My voice cracks, fury and dread crashing together inside me. “Don’t you fucking dare die on me. Do you hear me?”

Not again. Not this time.

I won’t lose another woman I love in my arms.

We screech up to a private clinic, and uniformed guards are already outside with a gurney. Blood hits the ground in a thick spatter as I wrench open the car door and heave her into waiting arms. Two nurses and a doctor in scrubs are shouting, rolling her away as her head jerks from side to side, lips forming silent, broken words. I don’t let go of her hand until I hit the doors, and a nurse physically peels my knuckles off her wrist.

“You have to wait here,” the nurse barks at me in Russian. “Fill in the forms and we will find you as soon as we can.”

Pavel is ghost-white, standing a pace behind me. “She’s strong,” he mutters, voice shaky. “She’ll make it. Women—uh, they do.” He looks sick. “They… uh…” He indicates with his hands down by his crotch, suggesting a flow. “You know. They can bleed a lot longer than we can.” He swallows and runs a bloody hand through his hair, not caring he’s just smudging his temple with it. “Fuck that was a lot of blood. How did it all… You know… just whoosh out so quickly…” I see him heave.

“Fuck, Pavel. You’ve shot men and done much worse to them,” I point out, my own hands shaking, and I too have to stop my stomach from churning as I try to fill in Tara’s details, then my payment details. I walk over and give it to the nurse, who points us to a private waiting area.

I want to hit something, throw a chair, tear the goddamn hospital apart, until I am sure Tara is alive. Instead, I pace. Another nurse brings in a tub of sterile wipes for me and Pavel to clean our hands.

“What the fuck happened?” I look at Pavel. “She was fine.”

Pavel shrugs. “She was dishing up a plate of food, telling me she was starving. Then she stopped. Frowned. Put the plate down and leaned against the table. Then she grabbed her stomach. Her knees buckled. The next thing I saw was blood pooling on the floor. Tara dropped, dragging the tablecloth with her.”

He lets out a shaky breath. “At first I thought, you know, maybe Tara just had a regular period. But it was way too much, and she didn’t look like… You know… she didn’t look right.” He wiggles his fingers in the air, brow furrowed. “Boss, I’ve been shot andpatched up with fishing line and half a bottle of vodka, but this…? I’ve never seen blood come out of a person like that and not have them dead in two minutes.”

My knees go weak, and I sit. The cold vinyl creaks under me; my hands are stained to the wrist and nothing in my legal or criminal training has prepared me for sitting helpless in a plastic chair while the woman I just married drowns in her fucking blood two sets of doors away.

The clock on the wall ticks a deafening rhythm—every second is a sledgehammer. Pavel sits across from me, face slack and pale, looking for the first time like an old man instead of a weapon. The chair next to me is empty, and I keep glancing at it, wild with the urge to punch the vinyl to pieces, as if it’s the chair’s fault and not mine.

She’s not going to die. She’s not. There’s no fucking way—how would that serve the universe’s sick sense of irony, that after eight months of hunting her, after bending every rule and breaking twice as many to get her in my bed and under my thumb… she just dies? I clench my jaw so hard my teeth grind together, a taste of copper in my mouth.

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