The Lion in Russia (16 page)

Leo was in the car and Vries was following,
thankful that he’d been missed when suddenly it felt as though
she’d been punched in the chest--by a refrigerator--forcing the air
out of her lungs in a violent
whoosh
! In that moment
everything went from double time to slow motion. As though from
outside of herself she watched Leo pull her into the car and cover
her with his body on the floor of the car. She could hear him
yelling in Russian and even smell the acrid scent from the tires as
Pushka burned rubber getting away. She wanted to tell Leo to move.
She couldn’t breathe and it would be awful to survive the gunshot
only to be smothered by her big behemoth of a boyfriend. Boyfriend?
Where had that come from? Vries tried to ponder the
inappropriateness of that title, but her mind wouldn’t hold a
thought long enough to do so.

Breathing became more and more of a struggle.
She tried to look down at herself, but all she could see was the
side of Leo’s ash blonde head and hear him alternately swearing at
Pushka and crooning endearments to her in Russian. He was
absolutely frantic. She wanted to tell him to calm down, everything
was going to be okay, but forming words was impossible when she
couldn’t even draw a breath. Besides her tongue felt thick in her
mouth, making speech impossible. Despite the breathing and speaking
difficulties, she wasn’t frightened until her eyesight started to
fade. It began with tiny black spots, then the edges of her vision
grayed, the tunnel of sight growing smaller and smaller until
finally everything faded to black. Her last conscious thought was
it was a shame she was going to die without ever telling Leo she
loved him.

***

As Vries came to, she immediately knew she
was in a hospital. Where else could she be? The hum of the
machinery. Antiseptic smell and soft voices gave it away even
though the room looked more like the suite in a luxury hotel. The
walls were painted a warm golden hue and there was a small sofa as
well as a lounge chair and desk. Of course, her mechanical bed she
was propped up on was a dead giveaway as well. Her gown wasn’t
standard issue, either, it was made of a soft jersey knit, and she
wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think it was the backless variety she
was accustomed to. Still cataloguing events she recalled being
shot, and knew it was a chest wound. Her only question was where
the hell was she? Terrified at the thought of being trapped wounded
and helpless in a Russian hospital, she looked around the room.

She knew better than to try to sit up, the
pain from even the slightest movement threatened to cause her to
black out again, and really she didn’t want that. There were people
talking in the hallway outside her room and she strained to hear
them. Desperately hoping to hear Italian, she was almost as relived
to realize the people were speaking German. Vries closed her eyes
and almost drifted back to sleep, but her eyes sprang open on
another question. Where was Leo? Surely he hadn’t stayed behind in
Moscow? There was no one else in the room with her, and she tried
to reach for the button to ring for a nurse but fell asleep again
before she could follow through.

Leo finished up the last of his phone calls
in the business office of the medical facility where Vries was
staying. He probably would have been more comfortable back at the
hotel he checked into upon their arrival, but hadn’t slept in
since. Leaving Vries was out of the question. Each time he closed
his eyes, he could see the way her body jerked in the air when the
bullet struck her and then the blood pouring out in a hellish
stream. There was so much of it he thought she’d bleed out before
he could get her to the plane and out of the country. Lying there
on the floor pressing his shirt against her wound he’d found
himself whispering the words he’d hesitated to say before. He knew
his love would frighten her. Make her run. But now he didn’t give a
damn and he’d follow her to the edges of hell if need be.

This past week had been hellish on a scale he
hadn’t experienced since he was a boy watching his mother die.
Vries was very good at what she did, but he was no good at watching
her do it. He was, however, good at negotiation as this week’s
machinations had proven. Now if he could come up with a way to talk
her out of this line of work.

When Vries awakened again she quickly
realized she wasn’t alone. Remembering the pain from her previous
attempt, she turned her head slowly, this time expecting to see
Leo; instead she looked directly into Deringer’s sherry brown
gaze.

Though she tried to shout her voice came out
as barely a whisper. “What are you doing here? Where is Leo?”

“Don’t try to talk, they just took that tube
out. Your Big Russian is around here somewhere.”

“Were you there when--” to her horror, tears
suddenly started flowing from her eyes.

“When you got shot?”

She nodded and Deringer handed her some
tissue from the table next to her bed. She wiped her eyes as
quickly as she could, embarrassed to show weakness over her injury
when she knew Deringer had been shot several times.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. A sucking chest wound
and a collapsed lung will take it out of the best of us,” he said
softly as he leaned forward to give her a soft kiss. Just then Leo
came through the door of her room. The expression on his face when
he spotted Deringer was enough to make her regret having regained
consciousness.

“What are you doing here?” he barked at
Deringer.

“Why does everyone keep asking me that? It’s
enough to make a guy feel unwanted,” Deringer said.

“You are unwanted. Leave.”

“Hey, I have the right to visit my friend--’’
Leo’s punch lifted Deringer off his feet and he crashed to the
floor before he could finish his sentence. To his credit, he sprang
to his feet with the agility of a top-notch gymnast.

Vries rose to sitting position. This could
get deadly very quickly. Fear gave her back her voice and she
yelled at Leo. “Stop. You don’t understand. He’s--” but Deringer
cut her off with a quick shake of his head.

“That’s a helluva punch you’ve got there.
I’ve got a wedding to attend back stateside. My best friend is
getting married,” he said.

Vries knew her eyes had widened with shock.
“Someone’s marrying Nate?”

“Yeah. Hard to believe, huh?” he said with a
grin. “Anyways, I guess I’ll be off.” He walked over to the bed and
gave Vries another kiss, a longer one this time, an obvious effort
to taunt Leo. The area around his right eye was already reddened
and she feared he’d have a huge shiner within a day. He returned
Leo’s snarled response with a defiant sneer of his own. “You take
care of her,” he said softly. Then he sauntered out of the
room.

Vries stared at Leo. “I can’t believe you hit
him.”

“He deserved that. The way I’m feeling right
now, he’s fortunate I did not beat him to death. How are you
feeling? Should I call the nurse?”

Vries decided to save her energy for more
pressing matters. “Talking really hurts.”

“Yeah, that’s from the tube. They had it in
to help you breathe.”

“Can you tell me what’s going on? Why am I in
Germany? We are in Germany, aren’t we?”

“Getting you back to Milan proved impossible,
and staying in Russia was out of the question. We were still in the
air; I was trying to get permission to fly you to Paris when I got
a phone call from a stranger who told me to bring you here. I
assumed it was your people. So I did.”

Lelia nodded. So this must be one of the
secret medical facilities the Department kept. That would explain
Deringer’s presence. Presumably he’d arranged for her to be brought
here. She shivered, being obliged to the Department for anything
was never a good plan, but she was hardly in any shape to argue.
She’d told them no before and she could certainly do it again.

“How long have I been here?”

“A week.”

“Good Lord. I had no idea. You’ve been here
all this time?”

“Of course. You are here. Where else would I
be?”

Vries yawned as the tiredness that plagued
her began pulling her back into somnolence once again. Try though
she might, she couldn’t keep her eyes open.

The last thing she heard was the comforting
rumble of Leo’s voice. “Sleep, my little Vrieshka.” Before he’d
finished the short sentence she was sound asleep.

***

“I can’t believe they’re finally letting me
go home. I’ve never been so desperate to leave a place in my life,”
Vries said.

“Ten days is not a long time considering.
Chest wounds are a serious matter and you were lucky that yours
didn’t do any greater damage.”

“I know that and I swear I’ll thank God and
kneel to kiss the earth when that plane lands in Milan.”

“You will do no such thing. The doctor was
clear that you are to take it easy. You don’t want to aggravate the
wound.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.”

“Not yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Vries, I’ve never been
so terrified in my life as I was when I saw all that blood. I
thought you were dead, and all I could do was curse and pray. You
will do as the doctors say or I will tie you to the bed
myself.”

Vries’s first instinct was to bristle at his
arrogance, but one of the last things she remembered after being
shot was the anguish on his face as he desperately whispered love
words to her. She didn’t want to do anything to put that expression
on his face again. “If I promise to be good will you tie me down
anyway?”

He leaned down to give her a brief kiss on
the lips and pulled her close into a gentle hug. “Thank you,” he
said, and she knew he understood how hard it was for her to give in
on anything.

“I just want to go home,” she said looking up
at him. An emotion passed over his face too quickly for her to
determine what it was, but she was pretty sure it was grief. Of
course, she must still be under the influence of those stupid drugs
so she missed it. St. Petersburg. His beloved Pitr. “Home. I’m so
sorry you can’t go to yours, I know you miss it.”

“Home is wherever you are, Vrieshka.”

Chapter Thirteen

Three Months Later

Vries passed Leo her e-reader so he could see
an article about the continued unrest in Russia because of the
fraudulent elections. She watched as he read the article, then
cuddled up against his side in the large bed. It had become a
regular habit for them now that they were back in Milan to spend
any morning they had free cuddling in bed reading together. “You
think they were inspired by the Arab Spring?”

“It’s possible, but I think it’s more about
Putilin himself. I think he’s overreached himself.”

“What do you mean?”

“The man is pathologically greedy. No matter
how much he’s given, he must have more. He was always the power in
the country, no matter who was president, but he had to steal an
election to get the title back,” Leo said with a sigh. “I’ve spent
most of the last few months embroiled in the toughest negotiation
I’ve ever had.

Vries frowned, puzzled by the subject change.
“Really? Are you buying a new company?” He’d had no trouble moving
his base of operations to Milan. He complained about the taxes, of
course, but that made him no different than everyone else. “No, I
was negotiating the repatriation of my money to Russia in order to
end the attempts on my life.”

“What? Lyova, what are you talking about?”
How had she missed that? But she knew. Her convalescence had taken
considerably longer than she had expected. She’d spent nearly a
month in bed on antibiotics and was only now resuming her normal
schedule. Clearly Leo had taken advantage of her incapacitation to
hide this from her. No mean feat considering she’d moved in when
they returned and hadn’t left. They spoke Russian almost
exclusively at home and she had become quite fluent.

“In exchange for all the companies I still
own in my country, the president is willing to let bygones be
bygones, as you say. As long as I stay out of the country, of
course.”

“Oh my God, they took all your money? But you
earned that.”

“No, I told you, I had already liquidated
many of my companies and that money is safe. I gave him essentially
double what the companies were worth when I took ownership of them,
and kept the rest of the profit,” he said. “The few companies I had
left are still valuable, but not as valuable as the ones I
sold.

She looked down at the football jersey she
wore. “I'm so sorry you lost your team.”

“Oh no. No. I’m still the owner of Zenit.
Under no circumstances was I willing to give it to Vlad.”

“Well, as long as you have your priorities in
order,” she said, her words dripping with sarcasm.

“But that’s just it,
malyshka
, my
priorities are in order, but his are not. Here I was handing him
billions of dollars, which is what he claims he wants, but
negotiations were hung up on ownership of the team. He was willing
to lose billions for a team that’s probably worth less than a
hundred million.”

Vries studied his face closely. Something in
the tightness around his eyes and mouth told their own tale. Leo
was angry. Very angry. Not about losing his money. No, he seemed
fairly philosophical about that. Not even about being exiled. He
was hurt about it, but understood the logic behind it. No,
something more was bothering him.

“You’re going back, aren’t you?”

He caressed the slightly raised scar that
bisected her chest. It and a slight wheeze to her breathing in
really cold weather were the only traces of her near death
experience.

“
This
is why I will return. He almost
took the most precious thing in the world to me, and for this, he
will pay.”

“But he wasn't aiming for me--” she said.

“It doesn’t matter. He will pay.”