Junior rolled his eyes. “It was perfect, and you’re just mad I got it first.”
“True,” she grumbled.
My family was insane!
Smoke billowed out of the house. “Valerian!” I screamed, and then I ran. He was in there, and he had to be alive. He had to be.
Ash ran in with me because, of course, Ash would run toward danger. That was how both of us were programmed, Dad’s fault.
I coughed and turned toward the billowing smoke coming out of the closed office door.
“Wait!” Ash felt the knob and snatched his hand back with a curse. “Vi, I don’t know if this is a good idea.”
“KICK IT OPEN BEFORE I KILL YOU!” I shrieked.
“Fuck, you’re insane!” He shoved me behind him, then kicked open the door and jumped back. Black smoke roiled out in waves, quickly filling the hallway. The flames were just getting to the ceiling after climbing up the curtains.
And my husband was lying lifeless on the floor.
“Valerian!” I rushed toward him.
“I’m s-sorry,” he croaked. “Love… you.”
Ash shoved past me and felt for a pulse. “It’s slow.” He coughed. “But he’s alive.” As some of the others rushed into the room with us carrying fire extinguishers we kept in the SUV, Ash grabbed Valerian by the shoulders and dragged him out of the smoke into the entry hall. “Time to be the doctor you were born to be and save your husband, Vi.”
I gave him a shaky nod. “Um… umm. Gr-grab one of the med kits from the car, and search the house for where they keep their emergency supplies. Most of the Italian families have them in their training rooms, but I never saw his. You have to hurry; I don’t know how much smoke he’s inhaled he needs oxygen.”
I swear I lost years off my life in the minutes it took for Junior to bring me one of the med kits we always traveled with. I pulled out the small O2 tank and covered his mouth and nose with the mask then tested his oxygen levels.
My hands shook as I checked his eyes; they were dilated, was he poisoned by something?
Junior left me and joined Tank, Annie, Izzy, and King, where they were hopefully able to put out the fire. Then Ash was back with another med kit, a larger one that looked like it belonged in an emergency room. Without waiting for instructions, he tore open the IV.
“Vi,” he barked. “What next? We need to know what next?”
Abruptly my sense of calm kicked into gear. “I-I think he should be responding. His oxygen levels are still in the nineties, so he didn’t get too much smoke. I think he’s going to recover. He wasn’t in there long enough to pass out from lack of oxygen. There’s something else! I glanced toward the door where the smoke drifting out had slowed and now looked more grayish white. “Look at his desk, see if there’s anything he touched, a syringe, anything that can help me figure out what’s in his system.”
I searched Valerian’s arms for any puncture wounds, then his neck, behind his ears, but nothing was there. His pulse was strong, but it was slow.
Maybe not poison; maybe drugged.
Drugged. That was it. If Sancto wanted him alive enough to die in the fire or pass out, he wouldn’t kill him with poison first.
Ash ran back with a small glass. “This was on his desk; it smells like whiskey but—”
I took the glass from him and sniffed inside. Something was off, and if my guess was correct, he either dumped in a shit ton of sleeping meds or added a cocktail a true doctor would give…
“Nikolai,” I murmured.
Growing up, we had all seen way too much, but something that had stuck with me was seeing Nikolai in action, and he’d pulled off some strange medical miracles without blinking an eye. One of which was to kill a man while he remained alive.
Ash stared at me. “Nikolai?”
“Don’t you see? It’s a particular expertise of Nikolai’s, drugging—” I grabbed Ash’s arm and tugged. “It’s something Sancto would have had access to. He flew in Nikolai’s plane— Ash! Call Nikolai now. I think this is his drug, it’s his own special concoction. He calls it JR88. It paralyzes you but makes it possible to feel everything; too much of it causes shallow breathing, hallucinations, and you can even pass out from it. If I’m right, he should know what counteracts it because right now, the only thing we can do is hope his body processes it.”
Ash was already on his cell before she finished speaking, and within minutes Nikolai was on his way. He stayed on the line with Ash holding the phone on speaker as Nikolai told me what I needed to do.
“Adrenaline,” he said calmly as though the love of my life wasn’t dying in front of me. “A good old fashion shot to the heart should do it.”