Page 193 of Mile High Ex's Dad
The world doesn’t go dark. It goes distant.
Sound stretches. The air feels thick. My vision blurs at the edges while I lie on the floor, unable to make my arms move the way I want them to.
Then I hear Maksim’s voice. “Thank God you’re here.”
The words come from somewhere above me.
I blink hard.
My head pounds. My cheek burns. My stomach feels like it has been cut open all over again. I push myself up on one elbow, dizzy and shaking, and look toward the doorway.
Viktor is standing only a few feet away.
For one impossible second, relief floods me so completely I almost sob.
He’s here. He found me.
But then I see his face.
There’s no relief in it. No softness. No immediate movement toward me. He stands in the open doorway, still as stone, eyes moving from Ethan unconscious against the wall, to Maksim bleeding from the mouth, to me on the floor with my hand pressed to my abdomen and blood on my lip.
Maksim wipes at his face and staggers upright.
“The nurses at the hospital alerted me that Sienna had gone missing,” he says, breathless, almost frantic. “So I had the CCTV checked.”
My ears ring.
No.
No, no, no.
“Maksim,” I whisper.
He doesn’t even look at me. “Imagine my surprise,” he continues, voice breaking in all the right places, “when I saw her leaving on her own.”
Viktor’s eyes cut to me.
I try to speak, but nothing comes out. My tongue feels too heavy. My head is spinning too badly.
Maksim steps closer to Viktor, one hand pressed dramatically to his side as if I’ve done terrible damage to him. “I tracked her here,” he says. “It’s all her plan, Viktor. Hers and Ethan’s.”
The room seems to tilt.
Ethan is still unconscious. I can barely sit up. Maksim is lying, and he’s doing it with the calm confidence of a man who has practiced saving lives long enough to know exactly how panic sounds.
“They were planning to lure you here and kill you,” he says. “She wants you dead.”
I stare at Viktor.
Please, I think.
Please know me.
But my mouth won’t make the words. My whole body is too full of shock, pain, and the horrible realization that Maksim has built this moment carefully. Ethan on the floor. Me outside my restraints. Him bleeding. Viktor arriving just in time to see the wrong picture.
Maksim turns his head toward me at last, and there’s triumph buried under the fear he’s pretending to feel. “She tried to hurt me,” he says.
I shake my head, but it’s weak. Useless.
