Doctored Vows - Chapter 24

Dr. Muhamed snorts when I purse my lips while reading my grandfather’s latest medical assessment.

“I’m not saying your reports are inaccurate. It’s just…” I’m at a loss for words now as I was earlier. My grandfather’s health is going in the opposite direction a patient with stage four lung disease should. He is still a very sick man, but his oxygen levels are back to what they were at the beginning of the year.

I prayed for a miracle, but this is still above and beyond anything I thought I could achieve.

“The pharmaceutical company must have mixed things up.”

“It could be the new trial medication…” Dr. Muhamed’s words trickle to silence when I snap my eyes to him. He nervously shifts foot to foot at the end of my grandfather’s bed. “I thought you were aware of his inclusion in the program. That’s why I didn’t mention it.” He gathers a box from a medicine cabinet similar to the ones behind locked doors at Myasnikov Private. “It’s a difficult trial to be accepted into, but for the right amount of money, Maksim found a way in. The results of the first-trial participants have been quite outstanding.”

This is the exact reason my confusion is so high. Maksim has done so many wonderful things. When forced to remember the kindhearted, generous man who has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a stranger is the same man who can take the life of another with no remorse, my confusion becomes a slab of concrete I can’t crack.

I’m so over my head instead of seeking a way out when Maksim left hours ago that I’ve done nothing but sit at my grandfather’s side and relish his alertness. His cheeks have color. His chest represents the rattle of a baby’s toy instead of the clatter of a train over old tracks. He’s smiling and laughing, and as much as I want to take credit for his second grasp at life, I can’t.

Nothing happening is thanks to me. It is all because of the money Maksim tossed into his medical care—money I am now skeptical came from real estate owned by Ivanov Industries.

I lied when I said I’ve done nothing but savor my grandfather’s alertness. It was very much still on my mind while I researched the name the detectives tossed around as regularly as insinuations on Dr. Muhamed’s Ivanov Industries–owned laptop, but it didn’t have my utmost devotion.

My multifaceted search unearthed a legacy almost as impressive as the Ivanov name, but with a heap of murky undertones.

Maksim’s father is the head of an Italian syndicate similar to the group that claimed my mother’s life. Even reading about him in print couldn’t alter my opinion of his personality. He is a tyrant of a man who ruled with an iron fist and not an ounce of repent.

Or should I say, he was.

He was killed eighteen months ago, and the young bride he wed mere hours before his death was in the process of being prosecuted for his murder when she vanished without a trace.

Part of me hopes she is still alive, but I’m doubtful. Bastian had many enemies, but he was protected under a law that has governed countries far longer than democracy.

He was sheltered under mafia law, meaning even if Maksim wanted to seek revenge for the numerous bruises and broken bones his childhood hospital records indicate were not accidental, he couldn’t. He had to accept the unfair blows of life like the rest of us—by pretending they never happened.

I can’t help but wonder if things changed because he took over his father’s reign. It makes sense as to why he believes he can trial, convict, and penalize anyone in his realm. Low-ranked gang members can get away with murder—my mother’s death is proof of this—but if they so much as give a papercut to someone high up in the underworld, there will be hell to pay.

Maksim’s mother’s time at Myasnikov Private was more damaging than a superficial wound. Do I believe the injustice deserves a murder sentence? I want to say no, but if you’d rather I be honest, I’ll need more time. Alas, I’m too exhausted for a basic excavation, let alone the mammoth undertaking required to unravel a mafia entity cloaked in centuries of criminal activities.

After closing Dr. Muhamed’s laptop, I place it on the makeshift nurses’ station at the side of my grandfather’s room and then twist to face Dr. Muhamed. “I’m going to call it a night. If anything⁠—”

“Changes, you’ll be the first I call,” he interrupts before farewelling me with a chin dip.

He probably hates my extended visits. It is hard to do anything when you have a colleague breathing down your neck. My grandfather’s last practitioner refused to let me sit in on their consultations. He spouted off the same excuses as Dr. Abdulov, saying that he was a professional with years of experience and didn’t need the guidance of a second-year medical student.

Although we followed the medical plan he designed, I replaced him as my grandfather’s practitioner shortly after that visit. I want to say I’ve given my grandfather the best medical treatment possible, but now I’m skeptical. Money is a prominent factor in any health care—regretfully—but perhaps if I hadn’t always been so tired, I could have provided the same level of service as Dr. Muhamed.

I already hate myself, so you can imagine how bad my self-loathing becomes when I automatically hit the button for the floor below the penthouse instead of contemplating where to rest my head for a couple of hours for more than a brief second.

Maksim made it obvious in the elevator that I wouldn’t get far if I decided to run, but I can’t pretend nothing happened. He openly admitted to hurting three people, and he did so without remorse. I can’t sweep that under the rug.

The elevator doors open barely a second before I jab the close doors button and then select the foyer level. Several men watch me when I detour through the foyer to the basement apartment I once shared with my grandparents, but none utter a word.

I’m reminded just how damp the conditions are when it takes me ramming my shoulder into the front door to get the lip unstuck from the doorjamb.

Mold and mildew engulf my nostrils when I enter. It is closely followed by a chill running down my spine. It is freezing in here.

“At least they kept the lights on,” I murmur to myself while walking toward the lit-up nook in the corner of the living room I once called my bedroom. Since my grandfather was bedridden and my grandmother forever used her favorite recliner to sit at his bedside, I haven’t made up the lumpy sofa bed in over a year.

A squeak pops from my mouth when a deep Russian accent says, “Do you want me to scoot over, Doc, or are you cool sleeping on top?”

My heart stays somewhere in the vicinity of my chest when a second lamp is switched on.

With my sheets thin, it doesn’t take a genius to realize Ano sleeps naked.

“Why look away?” Ano asks when my eyes drop to the floor. “If I’m going to be killed through no fault of my own, you may as well make it worthwhile by giving my ego a quick stroke by taking a look and gasping in awe.”

I don’t know where to look, but my brain has no issues replying. Words leave my mouth before they’re fully formed. “How can you joke about murder like it’s funny?”

When silence is the only thing shared, I sheepishly raise my eyes.

Ano is peering at me with his brows crossed and his midsection exposed.

After a beat, he murmurs, “I’m probably not the best person to answer that.”

I return my eyes to my feet when he scoots across the thin mattress, his modesty maintained by the scrunching of the sheet near his crotch.

I hear him walk away more than I witness it. His bare feet stomp the cold floors for almost thirty seconds before the door I forced closed is opened with less muscle.

Since I refuse to turn around, I assume I am alone.

Ano proves me wrong two seconds later. “Fuck it. From one orphan to another, you deserve to be told the truth.” He waits for my curiosity to get the better of me before he says, “You’re putting the men he killed on a pedestal they have no right to be on.” Nothing but honesty shines in his eyes when he hits me with straight-up truths. “They deserved to die. Just like the men who raped and brutalized your mother for hours deserved to die. They got what was coming to them.”

“You can’t put what Maksim and my father did in the same realm.”

Ano almost exposes himself when he holds his hands out as if to say, Why?

“Because they’re not in the same domain. The men my father murdered had done it before. They’d tortured and raped dozens of women but continuously got away with it. They’d still be doing it now if he hadn’t stopped them.”

I understand Zoya’s frustration when Ano asks casually, “And?”

“They deserved to be prosecuted for what they did! They deserved to die,” I shout, finally speaking from my heart and my head.

I hate that I was left alone and that my parents didn’t uphold the promise they made when Stefania died, but I never understood the pain my father was experiencing until I saw the hurt in Maksim’s eyes a second before the elevator doors closed.

It cut me to shreds.

The anguish on Ano’s face clears, making him look closer to his age. “Exactly my point, Doc. You’re assuming you know who the villain and the hero of this story are, but I know you’ve got them mixed up. They both have power, but it is how they chose to use it that differentiates their titles.”

“Maksim—”

“Protected the people he loves. That’s all you need to know.”

When I can’t think of a single thing to say, he reminds me that the bar in the middle of the sofa bed is back breaking before he exits without a backward glance.