Consumed by Deception (Deception Trilogy #3) - Rina Kent Page 0,3
her face and I push them back. Even under the faint glow of the flashlight, I can see that she’s pale and her lips are blue, darkening a shade with every second.
She needs medical help and she needs it now.
“Boss!” Kolya calls from the shore.
I stare up to find him, Yan, Boris, and a few of my men standing at the edge of the cliff. My senior guard throws the rope, but it’s whipped away by the water.
He does it again, and I grasp it at the last second and loop it around Lia’s middle. I pause when my fingers meet the torn material of her dress, then I carefully feel around.
My hand slows when I find a gash at her lower abdomen. A deep as fuck gash that swallows my finger.
I quickly remove my hand while keeping her immobile. This is a lot more fucking serious than I thought if she’s also injured. This complication could be fatal in her freezing state.
“Pull us out!” I shout over the current.
Kolya and Yan yank the rope while the other men stand as a second line of enforcement.
I place Lia in front of me to keep from touching her wound, one of my arms wrapped around her chest and the other holding onto the rope.
The water carries our weight as my guards drag us to the shore. Kolya hands the rope to the others while he and Yan hurry toward me.
I let Kolya take Lia’s body only so I can come out of the water. My muscles ache from exertion and my bicep wound pulses with red-hot pain. However, as soon as I’m on solid ground, I yank the rope from around Lia and pull her fragile body to me. She’s still freezing as fuck and her lips are blue and…wrong.
“One of you give me a jacket,” I order in Russian.
Yan removes his and throws it over Lia’s body, not bothering to hide his malicious stare directed at me.
“The hospital, now!” I start climbing up the side of the cliff, keeping her as steady as possible.
Life is slowly leaving Lia, and soon, it’ll be all gone.
Everything about her will be only a part of my memories.
Not if I have a say in it.
She might have jumped from a cliff to escape me, but that won’t be happening in this life.
She’s my wife.
My son’s mother.
Fucking mine.
And I’ll go through hell itself if it means keeping her there.
2
Adrian
Lia’s condition is critical.
I haven’t been able to get over that piece of information ever since Dr. Putin said it. He’s on our payroll, but since I was the one who brought him to the Bratva, he knows when he should keep secrets for me.
He won’t tell a soul about Lia’s injury. Not even the Pakhan himself. That is, if he wants to protect his family from my wrath.
Lia’s abdomen wound was indeed deep and she needed stitches for it, and fortunately, no internal organs were harmed. Her freezing temperature has returned to normal, thanks to how quickly we got her here.
But the fact remains, she’s still not opening her eyes.
Dr. Putin said there’s no brain swelling, but she must’ve hit the water hard enough to cause a blackout.
That was yesterday.
It’s been a whole day since she threw herself off the cliff.
A whole day since she last opened her eyes.
A whole day of me pacing the length of her hospital room or holding her delicate hand in mine.
After I changed into dry clothes, I never left her side. Dr. Putin had to stitch my bicep wound while I was in her room.
I thumb the soft flesh of her wrist, gliding my finger over the visible blue veins. “What have you done, Lenochka? Why?”
If she hears me, she doesn’t show a sign of it. The question is useless, anyway, since I already know the answer. I know why she thought about giving up.
To leave me.
I was suffocating her, she said.
I was torturing her.
Those words dug a deep black hole into my soul, perhaps even worse than when she confirmed that she was cheating on me.
I’ve become insufferable in the past months. Every time I looked at her, I recalled that she let another man touch her, that she was protecting him from me, and my anger grew worse with each passing day.
It mounted and heightened and I took it out on her cunt, ass, and flesh. I marked her and hurt her to chase away the red mist.