Chapter 3 - The Fortress Walls
The needle went in smoothly.
Three years of working in emergency pediatric care had given me steady hands, even when my nervous system was screaming in terror. I cleared the air bubbles from the tubing, secured the catheter to the back of Damian’s massive, scarred hand with medical tape, and hung the saline bag containing the broad-spectrum antibiotic from the high brass post of his bed frame.
Damian didn't flinch when the steel bit into his skin. His threshold for physical pain was abnormal, almost frightening. He simply stared at the ceiling, his jaw set, his breathing slowly evening out as the cool fluid began to flush through his burning veins.
Lila hadn't left the room.
While I adjusted the flow rate of the IV, she had quietly dragged a heavy velvet footstool over to the side of the bed. She sat on it, her little yellow boots dangling three inches off the floor, watching the clear medicine drip through the plastic chamber.
Magic water? she signed to me.
Medicine to make the fever go away, I signed back.
Damian’s dark brows pulled together as he watched our hands move. The fever was still making his eyes glossy, but the sharp intelligence behind them remained terrifyingly alert.
"What is she saying?" he asked, his voice marginally less raspy now that he wasn't screaming in pain.
I hesitated, standing beside the IV stand. "She asked if the medicine was magic water. I told her it was just medicine."
Damian looked at Lila. The four-year-old caught his eye, raised her small hands, and pointed to her own ear, then tapped her thumb and forefinger together—the sign for deaf. Then she pointed at him, pressed her hands over her heart, and gave a sharp thumbs-down—heart hurts.
"She thinks... in pictures," Damian noted softly, his voice carrying a strange, analytical fascination.
"She thinks in concepts, sir," I corrected gently, gathering the plastic wrappers from the medical supplies. "She lost her hearing when she was learning her first words. To her, the world isn't made of noise. It's made of expressions, movements, and touch. She reads people faster than adults do because she isn't distracted by what they say."
Damian let out a low, dry cough that made his wounded side flare with pain. He winced, shutting his eyes for a moment, before looking back at her. "So she doesn't know who I am."
"No," I said quietly. "To her, you're just a man in a very big bed who needs a scarf."
A tiny, almost invisible twitch touched the corner of Damian Volkov’s mouth. It wasn't a smile—men like him likely hadn't truly smiled in decades—but it was a softening of the harsh, cruel lines around his lips.
The heavy oak door suddenly burst open.
Viktor stepped into the bedroom, his hand resting heavy on the grip of a concealed firearm beneath his dark suit coat. Two armed guards stood right behind him in the hallway.
"Mr. Volkov!" Viktor snapped, his eyes darting frantically from the IV line up to me, then down to Lila sitting on the footstool. "What is this? Why is the housecleaning girl in your quarters? Where is Nurse Sarah?"
"Nurse Sarah was an idiot," Damian said, his tone instantly returning to the cold, authoritative steel that commanded an empire. "And you, Viktor, are making too much noise in my bedroom."
Viktor’s jaw tightened. He cast a sharp, suspicious glare at me. "Sir, she is an unvetted employee! Bringing a child into the upper residential wing is a severe security breach! I will have them removed immediately—"
"Touch either of them," Damian said, his voice dropping into an icy register that made the temperature in the room plunge, "and I will have you stationed at the shipping yards in Alaska by nightfall."
Viktor froze. The two guards in the hallway looked at each other in absolute shock.
"Maya is handling my medical care from now on," Damian continued, raising his uninjured hand slightly to wave them away. "Clear the hallway. Increase the perimeter guards by four men. And bring a highchair and a child's meal to the main dining room for dinner."
"Sir?" Viktor stammered, entirely thrown off balance. "A... a highchair?"
"Did I stutter, Viktor?"
"No, Mr. Volkov," Viktor grumbled, bowing his head slightly. He gave me one last dark, lingering look before stepping back out into the hallway and pulling the heavy doors shut behind him.
The silence returned, thick and heavy.
I stood beside the bed, my heart doing gymnastics in my chest. "Mr. Volkov... you don't have to do that. We can leave. I can take Lila home—"
"You're not going anywhere, Maya," Damian said, closing his eyes as the antibiotic fluid finally began to cool his blood. "Someone in my inner circle put poison in my glass three weeks ago. My guards are compromised. My doctors are terrified. My nurses are mouthpieces for rival families."
He opened one eye, looking directly at my daughter, who had picked up Barnaby the rabbit from where I had set it on the nightstand and was now making it jump across the edge of his bed sheet.
"No one pays a four-year-old child to kill a man," Damian whispered. "And no woman who loves her child this much would risk her life for a hit contract. You stay here. In the guest room next door. You monitor my IVs, you change my dressings, and your daughter stays where I can see her."
"And if I say no?" I asked, my voice barely audible.
Damian looked at me, his gray eyes piercing straight into my soul. "You won't say no, Maya. Because you owe six thousand dollars to the city hospital, your rent is three months overdue, and as of this moment... I am paying you ten thousand dollars a week."
I gasped. "Ten... ten thousand?"
"A day," Damian corrected, his eyelids growing heavy as the fever finally began to break under the power of the medication. "If I live through the month."
May you like
He turned his head toward Lila, whose tiny hand was once again resting gently against the silk fabric near his knee.
Within three minutes, the most feared man in Baltimore was fast asleep.
