Page 162 of Bratva's Vow
Everything tasted like metal. Even water.
I lost time. Whole hours, maybe days, vanished into the haze. I’d come to with someone’s hand in mine—Maxim’s maybe—but I couldn’t always be sure. Once it might have been Jess. Nik too. But I was never lucid enough for long.
At times, I didn’t feel like I existed at all. Just a boy in a too-white bed, body breaking down molecule by molecule, while strangers tried to stitch me together with medicine and soft voices.
And sometimes, in the worst moments, when I was too tired to be scared, too weak to cry, I almost hoped they wouldn’t.
I was dying.
Probably.
Definitely.
I felt it in the way my bones ached like they were trying to escape my body, in the sour burn of my stomach, in the relentless pulse of nausea that curled around my insides like smoke. Everything smelled weird. Everything tasted like metal. My tongue felt like it had fuzz on it, and I was pretty sure my teeth were about to fall out.
And yet somehow, out of everything—the machines, the needles, the pain—another reality finally broke me.
“My ring,” I croaked. My hand flopped uselessly against the blanket, searching for the familiar silver band. “Where’s my ring?”
Maxim stirred in the chair beside my bed, bleary-eyed and rumpled. “Wren?—”
“It’s gone,” I whispered, horror rising like a flood. “Maxim. It. Is. Gone. Someone stole it. Someone in this hospital stole my ring.”
“No one stole anything,” he said gently, reaching for my hand. “They had to remove everything in case they needed to take you to surgery. I’ve got it safe.”
I blinked, wide-eyed, vision swimming. “You… you took my ring off?”
“Yes, solnyshko.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “I took it off myself.”
He opened it and tipped the promise ring into his palm. My lip wobbled. All my strength had been building toward this moment, and apparently, all that strength was about to be used… for crying.
“You kept it,” I whimpered. “You really kept it.”
“Of course I did.”
I sniffled, tears slipping sideways into my ears. “For a second, when you gave it to me, I was worried it was an engagement ring. We just fell in love. I didn’t want to be engaged.”
“No? Because it feels like I’ve loved you forever.”
“But now I kind of wish it was an engagement ring!” I wailed, already crying again.
He laughed—laughed—and I shoved my weak, trembling fist into his chest. It barely made a dent.
“Wren,” he said, voice soft and warm and maybe a little wrecked, “it is an engagement ring. We are engaged.”
I froze. “We are? I thought you said it was a promise ring.”
“You should know sometimes your Pakhan lies to get his way.”
“And you wanted to be engaged to me?”
“Yes.”
My face crumpled again. “Oh my god, I’m crying again because we’re engaged, and I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay, kroshka. Don’t cry. I’ll propose again when you get out, and I’ll make it big and no lies.”
“But I love our engagement story. It’s sweet. Evil but sweet.”
