Chapter 12: The Foil Packet
Andrey’s knock was a soft, habitual tap.Morning check. He’d done it every day since Mila had been given her own room in Alexsi’s private quarters. The door was never locked—Alexsi had removed the interior bolt himself in a silent, definitive gesture of trust that first night—but Andrey always knocked. A ritual. A reminder: you are safe, and you have privacy.
There was no answer.Not unusual. She slept deeply sometimes, the sleep of someone finally allowing exhaustion to catch up with her. But something felt off. The quality of the silence through the thick oak door was too absolute. He knocked again, a fraction louder.“Mila? Tea’s on.”
Nothing.
A cold thread, inexplicable and sharp, wound through his gut. He pushed the door open.
The sight hit him like a physical blow, rooting him to the spot for one second of pure, animal shock.
She was on the floor, halfway between the massive four-poster bed and the ensuite bathroom. Not crumpled, but curled on her side, one arm outstretched as if reaching for something. The exquisite Isfahan rug beneath her was ruined—a dark, spreading pool of blood soaked into the deep red and gold patterns, turning them black. She was barefoot, her feet pale and still so visibly damaged even after weeks of care, the lattice of scars a brutal contrast to the soft skin of her ankles. She wore only a thin cotton nightgown, now plastered to her body and stained a horrific, translucent crimson from the waist down. Her skin was the color of old paper, waxy and damp with sweat. Her lips were tinged blue.
He was across the room in two strides. “Mila!” He didn’t shout, but his voice was a low, urgent thunderclap in the quiet, opulent room. He dropped to his knees beside her, the parquet floor hard under his bones. His hands, those enormous dinner-plate hands, hovered over her, suddenly terrified to touch. He pressed two fingers to the side of her throat. A pulse. Thready, weak, skittering like a trapped bird, but there. She was breathing, but the breaths were shallow, too fast.
“Alexsi!” This time he did shout, the bellow ripping through the warm, book-lined stillness of the apartment. It was a combat call, a summons for immediate backup. He didn’t wait for a response.
Soldier’s logic took over, cold and clear. Immediate threat: blood loss.Find the source. Stop it. He gently rolled her onto her back. Her head lolled, a low moan escaping her lips. Her eyes fluttered but didn’t open. Mostly unconscious.
He scanned her with a field medic’s frantic efficiency. No obvious laceration on her torso, arms, neck. The blood was concentrated between her legs, soaking through the thin gown. His mind, a relentless machine, presented the awful possibility. An injury from... before? Something internal, rupturing now? The thought made bile rise in his throat.
Alexsi burst into the room, still pulling on a shirt over his trousers, his hair disheveled from sleep. He took in the scene in one glance—Andrey on the floor, Mila in the blood—and his face went blank, the color draining from it. For a second, he was utterly still. Then he moved, his movements suddenly precise, economical.
“What happened?” His voice was flat, controlled.
“Don’t know. Found her like this. Pulse weak, breathing shallow. Blood loss.” Andrey’s report was clipped. “No visible entry wound.”
Alexsi knelt on her other side, his knees cracking against the floor. “We need to see.” His eyes met Andrey’s. The unspeakable hung between them: they had to examine her. They had to cut away the soaked fabric. The intimacy of it felt like another violation, one they were about to commit.
“Mila,” Alexsi said, leaning close to her ear. His voice was firm, not gentle. She needed to hear command, not pity. “We need to help you. We’re going to lift your gown. Do you understand?” No response, just another low moan. He looked at Andrey and gave a sharp, tiny nod.
Andrey pulled a folding knife from his pocket, flicked it open. The sound was obscenely loud. He gripped the hem of the blood-soaked nightgown. “For modesty,” he muttered, not to anyone, just a statement of intent. He sliced upwards along the side seam, from hem to neckline, with a surgeon’s careful accuracy. Then he did the other side. Alexsi helped peel the wet, heavy fabric away from her body, pulling it out from under her.
She lay there, pale and shivering violently on the rug. They kept their eyes on her face, her chest, her abdomen—anywhere but directly on the traumatic evidence of the blood. It was a practiced, desperate focus. They were looking for a wound, a puncture, anything. Alexsi ran his hands lightly over her abdomen, pressing gently. No rigidity, no guarding. No sign of internal bleeding from trauma.
“Roll her,” Alexsi instructed, his voice tight.
Together, they carefully lifted her shoulders and hips, turning her onto her side again to examine her back. The skin of her back was pale, unmarked except for old, faded bruises from a life they hadn’t been there to prevent. No wounds.
They laid her back down. The mystery was worse than a known injury. The blood was still coming, seeping slowly now.
“Get the kit,” Alexsi said.“And towels. All of them.”
Andrey was up and moving, his bulk surprisingly silent. He returned from the bathroom with an armload of thick, clean towels and the heavy green metal medical case they kept stocked in the apartment. Alexsi had already taken a wool blanket from the bed and draped it over her legs and torso, covering her from the waist down. It was an instinctive, futile gesture of decency. The blanket began to darken immediately.
Alexsi popped the case open. “IV.Normal saline. Wide bore.” He was already tearing open a package of tubing, his fingers steady.
Andrey found a vein in the crook of her elbow, taped the catheter in place with practiced ease. The fluid bag went up on a makeshift stand—a floor lamp with the shade ripped off.
“We need to clean her up, get a better look,” Alexsi said, his jaw clenched. “And we need to stop the bleeding if we can.”
It was a grim, clinical process. They worked in tandem, a well-oiled team. Andrey lifted her gently, cradling her upper body, while Alexsi slid more towels underneath her. They used warm, wet cloths from the bathroom, wringing them out into a basin that quickly filled with pink, then red water. They cleaned her thighs, working with a detached, mechanical gentleness, apologizing under their breaths even though she couldn’t hear them.
“Sorry, little one,” Alexsi murmured as he dabbed at her skin.
“Just getting you clean,” Andrey rumbled, supporting her head.
They found no tear, no cut. The blood was originating from inside. The possibilities, each more terrifying than the last, cycled through Alexsi’s mind. He kept checking her pulse, her capillary refill. “Pulse is picking up a little with the fluids,” he said, a thread of hope in his voice.
Andrey, shifting the blanket to toss another soiled towel into a growing pile, saw it. A small, crumpled square of silver foil, partially stuck to the underside of the rug where she’d been lying. It was smeared with blood. He picked it up, smoothed it out on his giant palm.
It was a blister pack. Two pills had been punched out. The printing was small, in a language he didn’t know—maybe Polish, maybe Czech. A word he recognized: “Gedeon Richter.” A pharmaceutical company. But the drug name was a jumble of letters.
“Alexsi.” He held out his hand.
Alexsi took the foil. His eyes scanned the text. He went very, very still. The tension that had been coiling in his shoulders for the last twenty minutes didn’t leave, but it changed. The sharp edge of terror blunted, replaced by a hollow, grim understanding. He closed his eyes for a second, then let out a long, slow breath.
“What is it?” Andrey asked, his voice low.
“Misoprostol,” Alexsi said. The word was flat.
Andrey stared at him, uncomprehending.
“It’s… it induces a miscarriage.” Alexsi looked from the foil to Mila’s pale, unconscious face. A new kind of pain etched itself into the lines around his eyes. “Her uncle.My father. They didn’t just send a bride. They sent a pregnant bride.” The pieces clicked into place with a sickening finality. The rushed ceremony. The insistence on no examination. The ‘purity’ checks that were about something else entirely. It wasn’t just a political union. It was a biological trap. A way to cement the alliance with a Volkov heir, born of her body, whether she willed it or not.
Andrey processed this. His huge face, usually so placid, darkened with a fury so profound it was almost calm. He looked at Mila, at the blood, at her damaged feet resting on the clean towel Alexsi had just placed beneath them. “The cuts on her feet,” he said, his voice a gravelly whisper. “To stop her from running. And this… to make sure she couldn’t run even if she did.”
Alexsi just nodded, a sharp, bitter dip of his chin. He looked at the foil packet again. Then, oddly, a fraction of the crushing weight on his chest lifted. She wasn’t dying from some hidden, tragic wound. She was bleeding from a choice. A desperate, violent act of reclamation. The blood was a mess, a crisis, but it was not a mystery death sentence.
“She did this to herself,” Andrey said, not as an accusation, but as a realization of her courage.
“Yes,” Alexsi said. He reached out and brushed a strand of sweat-damp hair from Mila’s forehead. His touch was feather-light. “The bleeding… it’s probably normal.For this. But we need to monitor. Keep her hydrated. Watch for fever.”
The frantic, panicked energy in the room shifted. It was still an emergency, but the unknowable horror had a name now. They had a diagnosis. They had a protocol, even if it was just supportive care.
They cleaned her up completely, working with renewed, focused care. They dressed her in a clean, soft sleep shirt of Alexsi’s, maneuvering her limp body with infinite care. They bundled the ruined towels and the nightgown into a sack. They changed the blankets on the bed, putting down a rubberized sheet and clean linens. Then, together, they lifted her—Andrey taking her shoulders and head, Alexsi her hips and legs—and placed her gently in the center of the big four-poster. They tucked the blankets around her, leaving only her arm with the IV exposed.
For the next several hours, they stood vigil. They took turns sitting in the leather armchair pulled up to the bedside. They monitored her vitals—pulse, respiration, skin temperature—with obsessive regularity. They changed the IV bag when it emptied.
The cramps hit in waves. Even unconscious, she would tense, a low whimper catching in her throat, her body curling inward. Andrey would rest his broad hand on her blanket-covered shoulder, saying nothing, just applying a steady, grounding pressure until it passed.
The nausea came next. She stirred, her head turning on the pillow, her face contorting. Alexsi saw it first. “Bucket,” he said, and Andrey had the metal basin from the bathroom under her chin in an instant. She retched, dry-heaving at first, then bringing up thin, bitter bile. They held her, Andrey supporting her shoulders, Alexsi holding the bucket and a cool cloth for her forehead afterward. They did it without comment, without flinching. It was just a symptom to manage.
She faded in and out. Sometimes her eyes would open, glassy and unseeing, before drifting shut again. Once, she looked directly at Alexsi, her dark eyes clouded with pain and confusion. “Hurts,” she slurred.
“I know,” he said, his voice rough. “It’ll pass. Just rest.”
She didn’t seem to recognize them, not fully. The drugs, the blood loss, the pain—it all built a wall between her and the world.
Late afternoon light, thin and winter-pale, was streaming through the leaded windows when she finally surfaced for real. The violent shivering had subsided. The awful pallor had receded slightly, replaced by a fragile, exhausted warmth. She blinked slowly, her eyes focusing on the carved wooden canopy above her. Then they tracked to the side.
Andrey was in the chair, his head leaned back against the rest, his eyes closed. He wasn’t sleeping; his breathing was too alert. Alexsi was standing by the window, looking out, his profile sharp against the grey light. He held a glass of water.
She moved her hand, the one without the IV. The slight rustle of sheets was enough.
Both men snapped to attention. Andrey’s eyes opened. Alexsi turned from the window.
She looked at them, one and then the other. Her gaze was clear now, but swimming with a deep, weary fear. The memory of the last day—the secret, the pills, the sudden, agonizing flood—was there in her eyes, along with the dreading aftermath. She saw the IV line. She felt the deep, bruised ache in her core. She saw their faces, tired, concerned, stripped of any pretense.
Her lips were dry and cracked. She tried to speak, failed, swallowed, and tried again. The whisper was barely audible.
“You’re not angry?”
The question hung in the quiet, wood-paneled room. It was so small, so achingly vulnerable. She wasn’t asking if she was okay.