Page 38 of Vows of Blood
ALEXEI
“Are you sure he’s going to be all right? He’s still not awake.”
“He lost quite a bit of blood. Give him a little time. His vitals look good…”
Someone’s speaking Russian around me. As consciousness comes back to me, I struggle to open my eyes. They feel glued shut. I try to talk, to answer them. “I’m fine,” I say in Russian. The words come out rough, scratching my throat, which feels as dry as the desert.
I get my eyes open and immediately have to squint for the light shining in my face. I go to raise my hand, but a deep, throbbing pain stops it. I turn my head away instead.
“There he is,” I hear a familiar voice say in English. The light is turned away from me, leaving my eyes to adjust in the remaining dimness of the room. As it does, I recognize the cabinets on the walls and the pale blue counters underneath almost immediately.
I’m in Dok’s office. I look around for the window and see the sky is starting to darken. Shit. Have I been here minutes or hours? It was still dark out when I went to the restaurant.
I feel a warm hand touch my wrist on the opposite side of my sore shoulder as Dok rolls into view on his chair. He holds my wrist up as he looks at this watch. “That’s a strong pulse. Good, good.”
Pavel walks into my line of sight. He’s pacing the floor, our father’s stark blue eyes large and worried. Dok leans into me and says, “Welcome back to the living, Alexei.”
I groan and Pavel’s pacing stops as he stares at me, watching as Dok waves a penlight back and forth in front of my eyes.
“No concussion,” he says aloud. “Your brother found you on the ground in a pool of blood. He wasn’t sure if you’d hit your head when you fell unconscious. You had us worried.”
I remember the gunshots and not being able to see my attacker, but not much else beyond that. Pavel looks rattled. He’s running his hand through his hair, mussing it.
“You’re very lucky,” Dok goes on. “Pavel found you and brought you straight to me. With as much blood as you lost, I was worried the bullet hit an artery. Fortunately for you, it had not. Though, it took me a little time to dig the slug out.” He slid on his chair back to one of the counters and picked up the aforementioned slug, which was just sitting in a metal pan. He scooted back over to me and put it in my hand.
“Keep it as a souvenir. It’ll make for a great tall tale to tell your grandchildren one day.”
I give him a short smile. “Thank you,” I say through the soreness of my throat. “I need some water. My throat?—”
“Right. I’ll be right back.”
With that, Dok got up and left us. Pavel shakes his head. “I should have been there. I’m sorry. My car wouldn’t start?—”
“I told you to change that battery,” I tell him in the hopes of breaking the panicked look in his eyes.
“Bah,” he says, waving me off. “I still should have been there. If I had been any later?—”
“You worry too much. It’s just a flesh wound.” I push myself up to a sitting position. The table I’m on creaks a little under my weight. Dok returns with a bottle of water and I take it gratefully. He also hands me a bottle of pills.
“For the pain,” he says. “Only take them when the pain is unbearable. They are very strong.”
“Thank you.”
“Can you leave us alone for a moment, Dok?” Pavel asks him. Dok adjusts his wire rimmed glasses and nods.
“Of course.” To me, he says, “When you get home, take it easy and be careful. You’ve got a couple of stitches. You don’t want to break them.”
“Understood.”
As soon as the door closes behind him, Pavel asks me, “Who did this? Did you see them?”
I shake my head. “It was too dark.”
He clenches his jaw. That was clearly not the answer he had been hoping on. “Backstabbing bastard. This was Pecora’s doing.”
I frown at him. “Pecora? Tony Pecora?” He nods. “That’s ridiculous.”
“You were at his restaurant?—”
