Henry
A throbbing cracked through my skull like a sledgehammer against concrete. A low groan slipped from my throat before I could stop it. I tried to blink, but my eyelids felt fused shut, thick and swollen. When I finally managed to open them, light stabbed straight through my brain.
For several long seconds, I didn’t move as I tried to get my bearings.
The last thing I remembered was being in that cold, damp room as Mikhail and his goons interrogated me. How one of them received a phone call. Then how Mikhail stood over me, blood speckling his boots, the knife glinting beneath the fluorescent light.
A part of me didn’t expect to wake up.
I’d often heard people say their life flashed before their eyes during near-death experiences.
And I’d been in my fair share of near-death experiences.
But I’d never known what that was like… Until now.
Because in those last few moments before unconsciousness overtook me, my life did flash before my eyes. Not in the way I’d expected, though.
Instead, I saw Ariana.
Her laugh. Her smile. Her hair blowing in the wind.
It made me wonder if maybe she was my life now.
A sudden jolt snapped me back to the present, and my stomach lurched, bile rising in my throat. I quickly pushed it down as the world shifted. I blinked again, and my vision gradually cleared. I turned my head an inch, not trusting my stomach to move any more than that.
I wasn’t in a cement room.
Wasn’t tied to a chair.
Wasn’t dead.
I was sitting in the passenger seat of a moving car.
No hood. No restraints.
I forced myself to sit up straighter, ignoring the way my ribs screamed in protest. Every muscle felt as if it had been peeled back and reattached incorrectly.
I glanced to the left to see Mikhail behind the wheel. His posture was rigid, both hands gripping the steering wheel hard enough that his knuckles had gone pale. The lights from passing street lamps swept across his face in intermittent flashes, revealing his tight jaw. And on his right fist was dried blood.
I studied it for several long moments.
Was it mine?
Or someone else’s?
“I always thought being family meant something,” Mikhail remarked quietly, his eyes still fixed on the road.
His voice was different now.
Not the commanding Pakhan who’d stood in the shadows while I was beaten within an inch of my life.
This was something else.
Something I wasn’t quite prepared for.
“My father taught me that,” he continued. “Friends come and go. Women come and go. But family…” His fingers tightened even more on the wheel. “They’ll always have your back. They’ll never betray you. At least they’re not supposed to betray you.”
The engine hummed beneath us as the city lights blurred past, but I remained silent. Instinct told me he wasn’t looking for a response.