After a moment, Vanya complied, switching on to a station seemingly picked at random. Johnny Cash burst from the speakers above and behind us, halfway through Ring of Fire. Crina shook her head in dismay, while our driver pulled out of Atlantic City, gunning for the parkway and the distant hope of home.
Chapter 16
By the time we reached Vanya’s safe house, the sun had risen and the worst of Vassily’s bleeding had stopped. Crina and I hauled him out—grim, stoic, and pale—and helped him into the building.
“I still say we should be taking you to the hospital,” I said. “I can only do so much. You could get an infection, you could—”
“No. No fucking hospital,” he growled through gritted teeth. “You might as well just take me straight back to jail.”
“Can’t you just, like, fix it?” Vanya said. He was trailing behind us, mopping his face with a handkerchief, seemingly unaware that he was wiping someone’s blood onto himself.
Short of me sacrificing Vanya on the spot and hoping his saggy ass was enough to power the same kind of magic I’d used on Carmine’s goons, there wasn’t anything I knew that could help Vassily. “I left my magical leg-fixing wand in my other set of robes.”
Crina made a choked sound in the back of her throat. Vanya glared at me before kneeling down beside Vassily. “How’re you feeling, Zmechik?”
“Give me a shot of horilka and ask me after that.”
Already halfway to the back room, I stopped and turned. “No. No alcohol. You cannot drink.”
“Fucking hell.” Vassily looked up at me hollowly. “Do you know how much this hurts?”
No, I’d only had my knee smashed in with a baseball bat not half a week ago. Exasperated, I left in frustrated silence for the kitchen, pawing around the freezer for icepacks. I collected a pile of clean towels and then a folded sheet of plastic, the kind you used to line car trunks for transporting bodies. The plastic went down on the tiled floor. It was going to be a messy job. “Bring him over here.”
Crina and Vanya carried Vassily from the sofa to the sheet. By the time they laid him out, Vanya, sweating and red-faced, was puffing, and he wore a look of strain nearly equal to Vassily’s own. “Look uh… Alexi. You need any help? ’Cause blood and me don’t—”
“Yes. Get me the two chairs from the kitchen, please.” It was my turn to glare. No way in hell was he leaving now. The big man nodded, scruffing his hair, but he went off to get them anyway.
“Dreksnest,” Crina said, with feeling. She puffed a lock of sweaty hair from her face. She was bloody with small cuts and scratches, her dress ripped, her stockings ripped beyond recognition. Her hair hung raggedly around her face.
“I can handle this,” I said. “There’s an en suite in the last room down the hall, if you want to clean up.”
“Later. I’m fine.” She waved a hand. “What else do you need?”
“Make sure he stays here.” I snorted and stood.
“Fuck you. Asshole.” Vassily rubbed his face, sniffing. “Can I at least have a smoke?”
“No.”
Vassily, too exhausted to argue, nodded and slumped back down.
I got the largest medical kit we had from the back room and opened it up, extending the metal trays, and used the kitchen sink to strip my gloves and scrub up. I came back with them still damp, shaking them to dry. Crina went to do the same thing while I got my tools ready.
“Hey…” Vassily looked at me dully. The shadows around his deep-set eyes had spread, dark with stress and pain. “I don’t even know what happened back there, Lexi. Us fighting.”
I had a good notion what had happened and was about to tell him so when Vanya reentered. He grunted, setting the chairs near our place. “Fucking drama queen mobsters, haha. You handle this. I wanna try Lev’s office, see if he’s okay.”
“Fine.” Crina would be a better assistant anyway. I exhaled heavily and pulled out two pairs of latex gloves. I covered my hands and held the other pair out for Crina as she returned.
“Thank God they weren’t throwing hollowpoints around, or I wouldn’t have a leg.” Vassily shifted on the tarp with a grunt of discomfort. “Can you get it out?”
I made a motion with my shoulders, agreement, and then took up the short serrated scissors in the kit. First, I cut high around the tacky flat stain, the dry blood a palm-sized spread through the dark fabric of his slacks. I used one of the small saline bottles in the kit to dampen the stiff bloody fabric. “Crina, in the bathroom, you will find a spray bottle for the plants. I need it half-full of water from the kettle. Cold water, not boiling.”
Crina heaved up with a sigh. “Sure thing, Doctor Sokolsky.”
Under other circumstances, it might have brought a smile, but I was far too busy judging the wound. It had no streakiness, no signs of infection—yet. Vanya left in the midst of the exam, his actions audible from the bedroom.
“Like I was saying… look. We’re both exhausted. This is all about being tired and fucked up.” Vassily’s eyes reddened as he stared fixedly at the studio lights above us. “You know it is. I don’t want to fight with you. We can sort shit out. We’ve done it before.”
I glared back down at him, unwrapping a needle and two syringes, a drip bag, tubing—the paraphernalia of the medic, almost as familiar as the tools of war. The gun and knife were not dissimilar to the syringe and scalpel. “Maybe.”
Vassily frowned, pushing some of his hair over his face, back over his tacky forehead. When he spoke, his voice was low, soft enough that Crina wouldn’t be able to hear. “Look, I’m sorry I put words in your mouth. I respect you, Lexi. You’re my main man, my brother. I don’t know why the fuck you weren’t named standing Avtoritet.”
“Because I put my father down.” I set out a small surgical tray. Tweezers, forceps, gauze. I poured antiseptic over everything that needed sterilizing and left them to stew while I prepared two syringes of different antibiotics and a bag of fluids. “The rest of them thought I was out to steal their positions when I killed him.”
“Well, yeah.” Vassily turned his head so he could look at me, his blue eyes dull. “But like I said back home. You’re the hardest man in this crew besides Nic. You came out like fucking Rambo tonight.”
“If I don’t finish the job I started, it won’t matter. Not that you care about that.” My voice was tense, and I barely stopped the next words that wanted to bubble out from my lips. That I wasn’t sure I wanted any of this, anymore. The Organizatsiya. The fighting and the politics. I had always disdained the infighting, and because I’d tried not to get involved, I’d stayed alive. But now? It was wearing me out faster than my body and mind could keep up.
“Look, I do care. You didn’t tell me any of this shit. You didn’t tell me about the breakin, nothing. I’ll speak for you.” Vassily’s eyes darkened for a moment. “We’ll stop Lev from arranging whatever he’s arranging, and I’ll speak for you with Sergei.”
“We don’t even know what Lev and Jana and everyone else are—”
We fell silent again as Crina came back.
She set the spray bottle down with a thump. “Done. You need anything else?”
Levelly, I looked up at her face. “Yes. Sit beside him, on the other side. You will need to hold him down.”
The operation couldn’t be done with any strong painkillers: not with coke in his system. Vanya hid while the screams pierced the air of the apartment, but it wasn’t long before I had the bullet out, the fluids and antibiotics in, and Vassily was sleeping off his blood loss. Crina was as exhausted as I was by the time we were done: we went to the bedroom, where she got the bed and I took the floor.