Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 118309 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 592(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118309 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 592(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
He hurt my husband.
He hurt the man I love.
He almost took him from me.
If that isn’t bad enough, he drugged me so I wouldn’t remember that Dr. Sidorov had discharged Yulia until it was too late. Her organs were halfway across the country by the time I woke, and her body was cold when Maksim found her.
That is unforgivable, and I refuse to pretend it isn’t.
“Ma’am?” Felecia says, shifting my focus from Ivan’s rapidly whitening face when he spots my gawk. “Was there something you wanted to order?”
I’m so stunned by her nonchalant reply to a customer she recently served being on his knees, fighting for his life, I sound in a trance when I reply, “No.” My tone improves somewhat when I return my eyes to Maksim and say, “I think we should eat in tonight.”
He takes a minute to assess my soul from the inside out before he asks, “Are you sure that’s what you want, Doc? I’ll never force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
I scan the other restaurant-goers, who appear as uneager to help Ivan as I am, before nodding. I’m not the only one sentencing him for his crimes. Most of the patrons in the restaurant were victims of his. I recognize almost every one of them since I never forget a patient or their family members’ faces.
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“All right.” Maksim excuses the waitress from our table with a tip far too generous for general service before he guides me out of the restaurant via the kitchen instead of the main entry Ivan’s rapidly dwindling frame is blocking.
My heart whacks my rib cage when our veer through the kitchen has me stumbling onto a profile that’s had my grief in a constant state of despair the past six hours. I’ve struggled to move past my sadness since Yulia’s funeral, so I have no idea how Mr. Petrovitch arrived for his shift today.
Guilt crashes down on me when I remember the tiny little cherub nestled on his wife’s chest when he took the blame for their daughter’s death. Just like me after my mother was murdered, he has to work.
You can’t choose not to when you’ve already spent the money that has yet to come in.
Lev never shifts his head my way, but I know he feels my watch because the heaviness weighing down his shoulders shifts as much as mine does when the frantic shouts of the waitress for help silence at the same time Ivan’s chest stills.
One of the men responsible for the murder of his daughter is dead, and he is as relieved as I am.
After staring up at the ceiling long enough for my heart to recommence beating, he pulls a bowl of potato and leek soup off the serving counter. “Don’t serve that,” he instructs a sous chef before he moves a soup pot off the cooktop and pours it down the sink. “I think some of its ingredients curdled. I’ll make a new batch.”
As he scrubs the pot to ensure not a single residue of the poison he used to avenge his daughter’s murder remains in the pot, Maksim places a suitcase I didn’t realize he was holding until now onto the stainless steel counter between Mr. Petrovitch and us before he ushers me outside.
I rear up to protect Maksim as ruefully as he will forever protect me when our exit is eyeballed by the second half of the duo investigating the wrong people. Lara is standing next to an unmarked police cruiser, scanning notes in the notepad she is rarely without.
When she notices she has caught my watch, she stores her notepad away before straying her eyes to Maksim. The interrogation I am anticipating doesn’t happen. She accepts Maksim’s chin dip as if he spoke a thousand words before she calls in a possible officer in need of assistance on her radio.
Her words aren’t hurried, and neither are her steps when she approaches the restaurant where one of her colleagues lies slayed.
“She knew you weren’t lying about being drugged with a benzodiazepine,” Maksim murmurs as he signals for Ano to pull up at the curb in front of us, “because your symptoms mimicked hers to a T.” As he assists me into the back seat of his ride, he says, “She got too close, and Ivan wouldn’t let anyone stand between him and his share of the proceeds.”
We make it halfway home before my bewilderment lifts enough for me to speak. I don’t take our conversation in the direction you’d anticipate for someone who took the Hippocratic oath. “How much of a tip did you leave the chef?”
Maksim smiles like he’s as obsessed with my nosiness as he is with my body before he replies, “Enough that he’ll never have to work another day in his life if he doesn’t want to.” When I rest my head on his shoulder, needing his closeness, he tugs me over until I sit side-straddled on his lap. “It won’t ease their pain, but it will give them time to grieve.”