“My girl. What the fu ck are you into now,” Chen said, seriously.
“Eh, we don’t have that kind of time. I’ll explain one day. Just remember, Colombians are fine, Armando is fine, anyone else means you don’t know me. Call this number if you get in trouble. Okay?”
“Got it. I’ll call you in a couple days once I have time to talk to more people.”
“Be careful, Chen.”
“Always, my girl.” He ended the call. I got up, handing Viktor his phone. Ivan had come back in during my conversation with Chen. I grabbed the bandage supplies from him and pulled him toward a vacant spot on the kitchen counter. I took his sling off and started to cut his bandage off, thinking about everything that Chen had said.
“I can tell Trino to let his dealers know that Chen is a friendly. I’m more worried about him saying your name around one of the other dealers than any of Trino’s guys,” Adrik said.
“Chen is smart. He knows I wouldn’t have said anything if it wasn’t important. It also took Chen a solid year before he would even tell me his name. I told him about his cheating girlfriend before he had told me his name. I think that’s why he eventually told me his name. He knows the importance of being anonymous,” I said, inspecting Ivan’s stitches.
I looked at Ivan. “Want to let them air for a bit? That bandage has to be getting old by now.”
“You are not kidding,” he said. He stretched his arm gingerly.
“We should make you an appointment for an x-ray this week to see how healed you are. The stitches look really good. Those might be able to come out at the same time,” I said, watching him to make sure he didn’t accidently use his arm too much.
“We thought you might want to go to the house this week, gazelle. You said you were missing the gardens the other day.” Misha said.
“I did say that,” I said, smiling at him. They surprised me sometimes with how much they could remember about what I said and did. “When were we planning on going to the house?”
“After tomorrow, we can go. Since I pushed everything from today to tomorrow, I have a long day. But we can go Wednesday and stay through the weekend, if you like,” Adrik said.
I walked to him, feeling guilty for keeping him trapped underneath me on the couch for the afternoon, since it meant his day would be even longer tomorrow. “Totally my fault. I wasn’t planning on trapping you on the couch,” I said, as I tucked myself into his side.
He looked down at me, holding me close. “I could think of much worse ways to spend the afternoon, solnishko.” He smiled at me, as I looked up at him.
I looked to Ivan, “we should get you x-rayed tomorrow then. Make it easy while we’re still here. I ha te to take advantage of the trauma that pool hospital is likely still experiencing, but I think we can convince them, nicely, to work you in tomorrow.”
Adrik said, “that hospital gets very large donations from one of my companies. They’ll do whatever you need, solnishko,”
“I love it when a plan comes together,” I said, smiling up at him.
Sephie
Stephen and Viktor came to the hospital with me and Ivan the following morning to get Ivan’s arm x-rayed. Dr. Williams was expecting us, probably with an extra dose of anxiety meds for his entire staff. Ivan was quiet on the ride there. I knew he was nervous.
I slid my arm through his good arm when we walked in. Since they knew we were coming, a nurse took us to see Dr. Williams immediately.
“Dr. Williams, thanks for working us in,” I said, somewhat ironically, since I knew he basically had no choice.
“It’s good to see you again. I can’t tell you how relieved I am to see you, if I’m being honest,” he said, shaking my hand.
I couldn’t help but laugh. The trauma was still fresh, clearly. He got to work quickly, as I’m sure he wanted to get us out of there as quickly as possible. Viktor and Stephen had walked into the room with us, but both stepped out once the doctor started to take Ivan’s bandage off. I looked at Ivan, curiously, but he just winked at me. They were working on something else, obviously.
I didn’t let go of Ivan’s hand the entire time the doctor was looking at his arm. “It looks like it’s healed really well. The stitches can come out. We just need to x-ray the arm to see how the bone has healed, but the break in the bone was the least of your worries that day,” Dr. Williams said. He looked to me, a puzzled look on his face. “I’m not sure how to do this x-ray. You can’t be with him.”
“Why not?” I asked. I could feel my anger starting to rise.
“Women need to limit their exposure to x-rays as much as possible. Especially if there’s a possibility you could be pregnant. It’s dangerous,” he said.
I just laughed. “No worries there, Doc.”
He looked at me, still concerned. “You still could be without knowing. It’s too big of a risk.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.