All of us from the ship take our places beside tables and chairs in silence. No one knows what to expect in this new place, under new leadership. It scares me to even make eye contact with any of the Bratva brotherhood. What if someone recognizes me?
For the millionth time, I want to go with Nicolai and run. Escape the danger that threatens to tear us apart. I don’t care if we have to live in a hovel and take on new identities. I don’t care. As long as I’m with him.
The door opens and a woman comes in. She’s tall with wavy red hair, and wears glasses perched upon her nose. She’s on the younger side, probably late twenties or early thirties, and wears a stethoscope around her neck.
“Are you the nurse?” Yakov asks, his arms crossed on his chest. He can be intimidating, and right now, he’s wearing his most vicious glare. I suspect he dislikes being forced to seek medical attention, like someone’s supposed to survive a car crash unscathed.
The pretty redhead smiles widely. “Oh, no,” she says. “We don’t fool around with nurses here. I’m the doctor.” She pats an exam table. “Why don’t you hop on up first.”
Yakov quirks a brow at her, as if “hopping on up” the table is beneath him, but he does what she says. She begins examining him, then talks to us over her shoulder. “The rest of you sit and prepare to tell me in explicit detail what injuries you sustained.”
Nicolai looks at me curiously and points to a chair. He sits beside me, and Yakov’s woman sits on an exam table. Erik is apart, in another room altogether.
She swiftly and efficiently examines each of us, and quickly gives us our diagnoses. I don’t need sutures, but she uses a liquid adhesive to fix the gash on my face before she bandages it up and gives me pain medication. Nicolai thankfully only sprained his shoulder. I’m grateful he wasn’t more badly injured.
“You will return to your room and I want a follow-up appointment with all of you next week,” she orders, adjusting a brace on Nicolai’s arm.
“I’m fine,” he mutters. “I don’t need this damn thing.”
“Wear it,” she orders. I blink. I’ve never seen anyone speak to Nicolai with so much authority, and it startles me. Though his jaw tenses and his eyes scare me with their intensity, he growls his agreement.
One of the men who escorted us here stands at the door, watching everything. Nicolai walks with me, but the man stops him.
“She’ll come with me,” he says. “You two have a separate room before the induction.”
Nicolai tenses and looks to me.
They’re going to separate us? God. Of course they are. What did I think, they were going to give us a hotel room together and let us actually have some privacy?
“Where are you taking her?” Nicolai demands.
The other man chuckles. “Grown a bit attached?”
Nicolai’s jaw clenches and he doesn’t respond,
“Let her go, brother,” Yakov says in a low voice. “We have to complete our induction first.”
But Nicolai doesn’t have much of a choice. A second guard takes me by the arms and marches me off with him. I want Nicolai to think I’m okay, that I know this will all work out. So Yakov’s girl and I go along with the guard and I give Nicolai what I hope is an encouraging smile. We were apart for months. We can survive an hour or two.
The guard takes us down a hallway in silence, and I observe every detail. This place is massive and opulent, with thick, cream-colored carpet, and landscape paintings in gold-edged frames on every wall. We walk and walk, and with every step I take, a sinking feeling in my stomach reminds me that I’m getting further and further from Nicolai. I take in a deep breath. I told him I would trust him, and this is a test of that trust right now.
He found me once. He’ll do it again.
We finally stop outside a plain black door. The man who escorted us here removes a key, pushes the door open, then gestures for us to go in. He doesn’t follow.
“Make yourselves at home,” he says pleasantly. “Someone will bring you dinner soon. But a few things you should know.” His voice grows harder. We look at him in silence. “You do not leave this suite without permission or an escort from one of the Bratva men. You belong to no one, so you belong to all of us. You do not ask questions, and you refer to the authority of the Bratva. Do you understand this?”
I nod, and so does my companion. Of course. We are still prisoners, whether they lock us in an ivory tower or not.
But I trust Nicolai. I have to.
He shuts the door, and the two of us look at one another in awkward silence. We haven’t spoken a word to one another, not in the months of captivity. We weren’t allowed to.