Chapter 64: I was making a point

"Hospital," she said immediately, to whoever was driving, to anyone who’d listen. "He needs a hospital, real doctors, not..."

"No hospitals," Viktor cut in, breath catching as the car took a hard turn. "Too many questions. Marco knows people. Private. Quiet."

"You almost died, and you’re worried about paperwork?"

"I didn’t almost die," Viktor said, with the wounded dignity of a man currently bleeding through someone’s good cloth napkin. "I was making a point."

"You were shot. It might have hit a vital organ."

"I feel great."

Sienna let out a short, disbelieving laugh despite herself, sharp, half-hysterical, the kind that came from a body that hadn’t decided yet whether it wanted to cry or scream. "You’re unbelievable."

"You keep saying that like it’s an insult," Viktor murmured, eyes finally starting to slip closed despite his best efforts, "and I keep choosing to take it as a compliment."

"Hey." Sienna’s hand found his face, turning it back toward her, sharp with sudden fear. "Don’t do that. Don’t close your eyes. Stay with me."

His eyes opened again, slower this time, finding hers in the dark of the car with something unguarded in them that hadn’t been there back at the party, something that looked, for just a moment, like a man who hadn’t expected anyone to ever say that to him and mean it.

"Wasn’t planning on going anywhere," he said quietly. "Not yet."

The city blurred past the windows, and Sienna kept her hand pressed to the wound, to his face, to whatever part of him she could reach, holding on like letting go was the one thing she truly couldn’t survive.

By the time they arrived at the house, Manuel had already called a doctor, who stood waiting in the hallway with his bag open and his expression carefully neutral in the way of a man who’d clearly done this before and would do it again without asking too many questions about why.

Sienna stayed close to Viktor as the men carried him inside, her hands still stained with his blood, her mind already racing ahead to the next step, then the next.

"Get me a towel," she said, voice clipped and sure in a way that surprised even her. "And he’ll need blood... he’s lost a lot. I can get the bullet out."

"Relax," Manuel said, stepping into her path with a hand raised, not unkindly. "You’re shaking. The doctor’s already here. He’ll take care of the boss." He held out a glass. "Here. Have some milk."

Sienna stared at the glass, then at him.

I’m not a child, she wanted to say. I don’t need milk. I don’t need calming down. I’m not even worried about him I just need him alive long enough to get me out of here.

She didn’t say any of it. There was no point explaining herself to a man who clearly thought warm milk solved problems that had nothing to do with milk. She took the glass anyway, her dress soaked through with blood, Viktor’s blood drying stiff against her skin.

It felt like a long time before the doctor finally stepped back out of the room.

"He has a fever," the doctor said, wiping his hands. "We’re trying everything right now."

"You must save him," Marco snapped, one hand pressed to his own side, the same wound from the night before, looking worse for all the running he’d done since. "He’s the boss. He doesn’t.."

"Get him checked too," Sienna cut in, nodding toward Marco’s hand, toward the dark patch spreading slowly under his fingers.

She was calm now, strangely, suddenly calm, the kind of calm that came from having a job to do instead of nothing but fear to sit with.

"Viktor’s fever needs to come down," the doctor said, turning back to her, urgency sharpening his voice. "If it doesn’t, he’ll be in danger."

"I’ll take care of the fever," Sienna said simply. "Just check on Marco, his wound might have reopened."

"How will you do that?" the doctor asked, frowning, clearly unconvinced that the woman in the blood-soaked dress and milk mustache had any business making medical promises.

Sienna only smiled.

They don’t know the half of it, she thought, the years of training that had nothing to do with hacking, nothing to do with the alias she kept buried, the quiet education that had taught her more about the body than most people ever learned outside a hospital.

She nodded once and went to work mixing a handful of herbs she found in the kitchen with practiced, efficient hands, soaking the paste into a cloth and pressing it against Viktor’s forehead.

It worked almost immediately, his fever beginning to break within the hour, his breathing easing into something steadier.

For the first time since the party, Sienna let herself breathe too.

Staying with Sienna through the quiet, with her thoughts unguarded now that the adrenaline has nowhere left to go.

The house had gone quiet by the time Sienna finally let herself sit down.

She’d pulled a chair close to the bed without really deciding to, the herb-soaked cloth still pressed to Viktor’s forehead, his breathing slow and even now in a way it hadn’t been an hour ago.

Marco had been patched up two rooms over, grumbling the entire time about being treated like an invalid twice in two days. The doctor had gone. Manuel had finally stopped hovering in the doorway with that glass of milk like it was some kind of peace offering.

And now it was just her, and the low hum of the house settling around her, and Viktor’s face gone slack and unguarded in sleep.

He looks almost human like this, she thought, studying the line of his jaw, the furrow between his brows, even now, like even unconscious, some part of him refused to fully relax. Not the kind of human who burns down a man’s empire over dinner conversation. Just... human.

She didn’t trust the thought. Didn’t trust the soft, traitorous thing curling in her chest every time she replayed the car ride, don’t close your eyes, stay with me, and the way he’d actually listened, actually stayed, like her voice had been the one thing in the world worth holding onto.