Chapter 22: The Quiet Return
The bathwater had grown lukewarm and tinged with pink. Alexsi kept one hand on Mila’s shoulder, the point of contact steadying them both. The prince’s satellite phone, a sleek black brick, lay on the marble countertop. Alexsi stared at it, then at Mila’s profile—her eyes closed, lashes dark against paper-white skin. The burns stood out in the steam, angry and precise.
“He will come,” Alexsi said, not sure if he was reassuring her or himself.
Her head moved, a faint nod. She tried to speak, but only a dry click came out. She swallowed, winced, and tried again. The sound was a rustle of dead leaves. “Phone.”
He fetched it, his wet fingers leaving smudges on the screen. He dialed the long sequence for the secure line to his—their—private quarters at the western garrison. It rang once, twice.
“Ty kto?” Andrey’s voice was a low, sleep-roughened growl. Who is this?
“It’s Alexsi.”
A pause, then a shift in tone, immediate and alert. “What’s wrong? The party? I told you it was a fucking circus.”
“Andrey…” Alexsi’s voice fractured. He cleared his throat, forced steel into it. “I need you. Here. At the Minister’s dacha. Now.”
“What happened?” Andrey’s voice was sharp now, completely awake. In the background, Alexsi could hear the rustle of bedsheets, the thump of boots hitting the floor.
“They hurt her.” It was all he could manage. The words were too small, pathetic containers for the images burned into his mind: the cigar, the deliberate pressure, the blistering flesh.
A string of curses, vicious and inventive, spilled from the receiver. Then, tight control. “How bad?”
“Bad. Burns. Other… other things.” Alexsi closed his eyes. “The Prince intervened. We’re in his suite. But I need you here.”
“Thirty minutes. I’m on the bike.” There was a crash, like a drawer being yanked out. “Is she conscious?”
“Yes.”
“Put her on. Let me hear her.”
Alexsi knelt, bringing the phone to Mila’s ear. His own face was inches from hers, close enough to see the fine tremors in her lips, the sheen of feverish sweat on her brow despite the cool water. “Andrey wants to talk to you,” he whispered.
She opened her eyes. They were glassy with pain and the aftereffects of the vodka they’d forced into her. She leaned her head toward the phone. Alexsi held it for her.
“Andrey.” Her voice was a wreck, a torn-up whisper barely audible over the hum of the bathroom fan. Alexsi had to press his ear nearly against hers to make it out.
“Malen’kaya,” Andrey said, the nickname—little one—a soft punch in the dark. “Tell me.”
“They…” She stopped, a ragged inhale. “They used a cigar. Many times. My arms… my…” A shattered sound escaped, not quite a sob. “Alexsi came. He killed them. I think he killed them.”
“Good,” Andrey said, the word flat and final. “Fucking animals. Listen to me. I am coming. You are safe now. Do you understand? Safe. Breathe.”
“I’m trying.” A tear traced through the damp hair at her temple. “Andrey… take care of him. He’s… he’s not okay.”
Alexsi heard it. His breath hitched. She was broken on a marble slab, and she was worried about him.
Andrey’s voice, when it came again, was thick. “I will take care of both of you. Just hold on. Be a stubborn little fox for a little longer. Yes?”
A faint, almost imperceptible sound—a ghost of a laugh that turned into a cough. “Yes.”
“Give the phone back to Alexsi.”
She nodded, her strength spent. Alexsi took the phone, his fingers brushing her cheek.
“I’m moving,” Andrey said. “The suite. Top floor?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t let anyone in. Not a medic, not a maid, no one. I have my kit. Thirty minutes.” The line went dead.
Alexsi placed the phone aside and looked at Mila. She was shivering violently now, the shock settling deep. “We need to get you out, get you dry,” he said. The practical words were a lifeline. He found a vast, fluffy towel, warmer from the heated rail. “This will hurt. I’m sorry.”
Getting her out of the tub was an ordeal. Every movement pulled at the burns. She bit her lip until it bled to keep from crying out, her hands gripping the marble edge with white-knuckled force. He wrapped her in the towel, absorbing the water with pats, never rubs. He saw it all then, in the cruel, clear light. The dozen circular wounds, each a livid, blistering brand. The deeper ones were weeping clear fluid. The bruises on her hips and thighs, purple and black, where fingers had dug in. The raw, tender evidence of the repeated violation between her legs.
His vision tunneled. A roar built in his ears. He had to brace a hand against the wall, head bowed, fighting the urge to vomit, to scream, to go find his father and finish what he’d started in that sitting room.
A cold, damp touch on his wrist.
He looked down. Mila had reached out, her fingers barely making contact. Her eyes were on his face, reading the turmoil there. She didn’t speak. She just looked at him, and in that look was a shared, unbearable knowing. And a plea for him not to break. Not yet.
He covered her hand with his, swallowed the bile, and nodded. “I’m here.”
He carried her to the bedroom, a cavernous space dominated by a four-poster bed piled with down pillows. He laid her on the clean sheets, then rummaged through the Prince’s lavish bathroom until he found a first aid kit. It was well-stocked, but for embassy scrapes and headaches, not for this. The small case the Prince had given him was different. He opened it on the bedside table. Inside, nestled in foam, were pre-filled syringes of broad-spectrum antibiotics, small vials of clear liquid painkiller, glass ampoules of saline, sterile dressings of a material he didn’t recognize—silvery and non-stick. Western medicine. The kind that was illegal to possess, a fortune on the black market. A prince’s conscience, packaged in titanium and plastic.
He read the instructions, his hands steady now with a task to perform. He drew up the antibiotic, tapped the syringe. “This will fight infection,” he said, his voice low. “The burns… they are dirty wounds.” He found a patch of unmarked skin on her upper thigh, swabbed it with alcohol. “Deep breath.”
She flinched as the needle went in, but didn’t make a sound. He administered the painkiller next, a smaller dose, just enough to take the screaming edge off. He saw the tension in her body ease a fraction, her eyelids growing heavy. “Don’t fight sleep,” he murmured. “Sleep is medicine too.”
He began the meticulous work of dressing the burns. He used the sterile saline to gently clean each one, wiping away the weeping fluid. He applied a thin layer of silvery gel from a tube, then covered each burn with the non-stick dressing. It was slow, sacred work. He lost track of time, moving from her arms to her collarbone, to the terrible one on her breast. His touch was clinical, focused, but his breath caught every time she inhaled sharply.
He was taping a dressing to her ribcage when a firm, deliberate knock sounded on the suite’s outer door. Three raps, a pause, two more. Their signal.
“Andrey,” he said.
She nodded, her eyes opening halfway.
Alexsi pulled the duvet up to her chin, hiding the dressings, and went to the door. He opened it a crack, then wider.
Andrey Orlov stood in the hall, a giant silhouetted against the ornate wallpaper. He wasn’t in dress uniform. He wore faded fatigue pants, a heavy knit sweater, and a thick leather jacket smelling of cold night air and gasoline. A bulky medic’s pack was slung over one shoulder. His face, usually etched with easy humor, was a granite cliff—his jaw set, his icy blue eyes scanning Alexsi instantly, missing nothing: the blood on his shirt, the tremor he couldn’t quite control, the devastation in his eyes.
Andrey stepped in, shut the door, and locked it. He didn’t speak. He simply pulled Alexsi into a rough, brief embrace, crushing him against the cold leather. It wasn’t affection; it was an anchor being dropped. Then he pushed him back, holding him at arm’s length. “You?”
“I’m functional,” Alexsi said, his voice gravel.
“Where is she?”
“Bedroom.”
Andrey moved past him, his boots soundless on the thick carpet. He stopped in the doorway of the bedroom, taking in the scene: the enormous bed, the small figure nearly lost in it, the clinical smell of antiseptic overlying the scent of fear. His breath left him in a slow, controlled exhale.
He approached the bed, set his pack down softly, and knelt beside it, bringing himself to her level. “Hey, fox.”
Mila turned her head toward him. Her attempt at a smile was a twisted, painful thing.
Her attempt at a smile was a twisted, painful thing. “You drove like a madman.”
“Of course.” Andrey’s eyes, pale and sharp, were already cataloging what Alexsi’s dressing job had covered. He saw the edge of silver dressing on her collarbone, the careful way the duvet tented over her body to avoid pressure. He didn’t touch her. He just looked, and his face, that familiar landscape of blunt angles and sarcastic creases, went still and cold. The fury in him was quiet, a deep-geology shift. “Show me,” he said, his voice low. “The worst of it.”
Alexsi hovered behind him, a shadow. “I dressed them. The Prince gave us proper supplies.”
“I need to see.” Andrey’s tone brooked no argument; it was the voice of their field medic, the one who had dug bullets out of both of them in frozen ditches. He was assessing a casualty. “Mila? Let me see the work. I won’t hurt you.”
She gave a tiny nod. Alexsi stepped forward and carefully folded the duvet down to her waist, exposing the crisp dressings. Andrey leaned in, his breath warm in the cool room. He examined each sealed wound with a professional detachment that was somehow more intimate than horror. He gently lifted the edge of the dressing on her breast, peered at the burn beneath, and let it fall back. “Good,” he muttered. “Clean. The gel will help.” His fingers, calloused and thick, hovered over a bruise on her ribcage, a perfect imprint of four fingertips. He didn’t touch it. “Bastards.”
He looked at her face then. Really looked. Past the physical damage to the glassy shock in her dark eyes. “Did they give you anything? Before Alexsi came?”
“Vodka,” she whispered. “A lot. Forced it.”
Andrey nodded, a quick jerk of his chin. He opened his own pack, pulling out a stethoscope, a blood pressure cuff. “I’m going to check your vitals. Routine. Just need to know what we’re dealing with.” His movements were efficient, gentle. He listened to her heart, her lungs. He wrapped the cuff around her unburned upper arm. “Your heart’s racing, little fox. That’s the shock and the adrenaline. It’ll settle.” He produced a small penlight, checked her pupils. “You’re concussed, probably. From the slaps. Any blurry vision? Nausea?”
“A little. Of both.”
He grunted, stuffing the equipment back. He pulled out a vial and a fresh syringe. “This is a mild sedative. Not to knock you out, just to take the shakes off. Let your body rest. You’ll feel floaty, but you’ll be aware. Okay?”
She looked at Alexsi, a question in her eyes. He gave a single, firm nod. Andrey was the only person on earth he trusted with this. She turned back to Andrey. “Okay.”
The injection was swift. A slight pinch in her thigh. The effect was almost immediate. The violent shivering that had racked her frame since the bath began to subside into a fine, constant tremor. The stark panic in her eyes dulled slightly, softened by a chemical haze. She sighed, a long, ragged release of air.
Andrey sat back on his heels, his work done for the moment. He scrubbed a hand over his face, the sound of his palm scraping against stubble loud in the quiet room. He looked at Alexsi. “Tell me everything. The sitting room.”
Alexsi’s recitation was flat, stripped of emotion. It was a mission debrief. “Vassily, Dimitri, Zhenya. They used a cigar. Multiple, deliberate contact burns. They forced alcohol. Then they took turns. Vaginal penetration. Multiple times. I arrived after auditory confirmation of distress. I neutralized Dimitri and Zhenya. Vassily was armed. The Minister and the Prince arrived during the standoff.”
“Neutralized.” Andrey tasted the word. “Are they breathing?”
“No.”
A slow, satisfied nod. “Good. That’s one thing.” His ice-blue eyes flicked to Mila. She was watching them, listening through her haze. “And the fallout?”
“The Prince made it a condition of his arms deal. Her safety. Quarterly checks in the West. He promoted me. Full western border command. Autonomous.”
Andrey’s eyebrows lifted. It was a staggering shift in their world. “So your father swallowed it. For the money.”
“He swallowed it.”
“He’ll try to punish you for it later. Some other way.”
“I know.”
Silence settled, thick and heavy. The suite was oppressively warm, the air smelling of medicine and leather and sweat. Mila’s breathing had evened out. Her eyes were half-closed, but she was awake, watching the two men who filled the space around her bed with their tension and their unspoken history.
Her voice, when it came, was still rough, but softer now, blurred at the edges by the sedative. “You must miss it.”
They both looked at her. Alexsi’s brow furrowed. “Miss what?”
“Being physical. With each other.” She didn’t look away, though a faint flush rose on her neck. “I’m here now. In the middle. I don’t… I don’t want what happened to me to make your lives smaller. To put a wall in your room.”
The sentence hung in the air, astonishing in its raw perception. It was the fear she’d voiced, the one they hadn’t dared name. Andrey let out a sharp breath, almost a laugh, but without humor. He glanced at Alexsi, a look of bewildered surrender.
Alexsi’s face was unreadable, but a muscle jumped in his jaw. He moved to sit on the edge of the bed, careful not to jostle her. He took her hand, the one least burned, and wrapped his own around it. His thumb stroked her knuckles. “Mila…”
“We’ve had to be apart,” Andrey cut in, his voice uncharacteristically gentle. He remained on the floor, a giant folded at the bedside. “Plenty. Different postings, duty rotations, command schools. Months at a time. We manage.” He looked at her, his gaze direct. “You’re not a wall. You’re worth whatever this is.”
“We were afraid,” Alexsi said, the words seeming to cost him. He stared at their joined hands. “Of making it worse. Of you feeling… watched. Or turning what we have into another pressure on you. Another thing expected.” He finally looked at her. “The last thing you needed was to feel our hunger. It would have felt like… like them.”
The honesty was a blade, cutting cleanly through the fog in her head. They had been navigating her terror, her pain, but also this—the awkward, silent reality of the bond they all shared, now irrevocably altered by violence. They were afraid of scaring her. Grossing her out.
“It’s not the same,” she whispered.
“We know,” Andrey said roughly. “But your body doesn’t. Not yet.”
The conversation teetered on a precipice of unbearable vulnerability. Alexsi filled the space with older truths. “We have talked. Before.” He meant the sparse, quiet conversations in their garrison quarters, in the few moments of privacy they’d stolen since the state forced the marriage license into his hands. “I told you I would never hurt you. That my duty was to take care of you. I expect nothing physical from you. Not ever, if that is your wish.”
He’d said it the first night, standing in the barren room they’d given her, her face still bruised from the journey. He’d said it like a vow, a military oath. She’d thought it was cold then. Now she heard the profound protection in it.
“It was my father’s transaction,” he continued, his voice low and steady. “I will not let your youth be wasted because of it. I don’t know what you will want later. A year from now. Five years. If someday you wanted… children. Or a physical marriage.” He paused, choosing his words with excruciating care. “I would find a way to give that to you. If you wanted it with me, I would try. If you wanted it with another, I would arrange it. Your future is not a prison.”
The statement broke her heart a little. It was so utterly him. The noble commander, ready to sacrifice his own autonomy, his own desires, on the altar of duty and her hypothetical future happiness. He saw his body, his life, as a tool to fulfill an obligation. Even this most intimate of offerings was framed as a service.
“Alexsi,” she said, her voice cracking. “I don’t want your sacrifice. I don’t want you giving me your body because you feel you owe me a life. That’s… that’s just another kind of trap. For you.”
He blinked, as if the concept—his own autonomy mattering in this equation—was foreign. Andrey watched them, his head leaning against the bed frame, listening.
“I don’t want children,” Mila said, more firmly. “Not now. Maybe not ever. That’s not… that’s not what this is about.” She looked from Alexsi to Andrey and back again. “I want us. However that looks. I don’t want Andrey pushed aside. Or treated as separate. He’s not separate.”
The silence this time was different. Charged, but not with tension. With a slow, dawning realignment. Andrey’s mouth quirked, just at one corner. “Told you she was smarter than both of us put together,” he said to Alexsi, his tone dry, but his eyes were bright.
Alexsi didn’t smile. He was still working through it, the military strategist in him mapping this new, uncharted terrain. “Closeness doesn’t have to exclude,” he said, slowly, as if testing the truth of the words.
“No,” Mila breathed. “It doesn’t.”
She shifted, wincing, trying to sit up a little. Both men moved instinctively—Alexsi’s hand supporting her back, Andrey rising to adjust a pillow behind her. Their movements were synchronized, natural. They fumbled for a second, their hands brushing, then settled her. She was between them, connected to both by touch.
Andrey settled back onto the floor, but he reached out and laid his broad hand over her ankle, a solid, warm weight through the duvet. It was a claim, but a gentle one. Alexsi kept hold of her hand.
“It’s going to be a fucking mess,” Andrey stated, with a quiet, rough humor. “The gossip. The ministry. Your new command. They’ll all talk.”
“Let them,” Alexsi said, his thumb still moving on her knuckles. His gaze was fixed on that point of contact, as if it were a lifeline. “The Prince’s decree is a shield. For now. We use it.”
Mila’s eyes were closing again, the sedative and exhaustion pulling her under. “Stay,” she murmured, not specifying who. She didn’t need to.
“We’re not going anywhere, little fox,” Andrey said.
Alexsi just nodded, watching her face as sleep finally claimed her. The frantic pace of the night—the violence, the rescues, the high-stakes negotiations—slowed to this: a quiet bedroom, the soft sound of her breathing, the shared vigilance of two soldiers guarding what was theirs. The world outside, with its cruelties and its demands, was still there, pressing against the windows. But in this room, a new shape had been acknowledged, fragile and unspoken, but real. It wasn’t about sex. It wasn’t a neat declaration. It was about the space they occupied together, the touches that didn’t ask for anything, the loyalty that had just been stretched and had held. It was a beginning, carved out of an ending that had been written in fire and pain.