Chapter 133 Not Like This

Chapter 133 Not Like This
❄︎ Viktor ❄︎

No!

My knees skimmed the ground hard as I caught her before her head could hit the deck. Her body jerked, her lips moving around a sound that didn’t make it out. 

My heart slammed wildly. 

“Rosa, baby… look at me,” I rasped, stroking her face.

Dahlia, the bitch I knew I should’ve ended that day she appeared in Rosa's home looking for Orlov, writhed on the floor. Her knee bled out, dark red in the spot where my bullet had torn bone apart.

I should’ve trusted my gut.

My men thundered up the deck with their guns out, faces tight. The servers standing around were frozen and wide-eyed. Confusion everywhere.

“Round them up!” I snapped sharply. “Every fucking server, cook, and cleaner. I want them locked below deck.”

Whoever had been complicit in letting that bitch get anywhere near my wife would pay. 

“Yes, boss.” They echoed, acting immediately. 

“Turn the boat around. Now! We’re heading to the mainland.”

They moved instantly, but it still wasn’t fast enough.

I looked down at Rosa again. Her skin was paling quickly, her lips losing color. 

My throat burned. Tears burned behind my lids but I didn’t let them fall. Instead, I let them burn into rage.

The nurse appeared, dropping to her knees beside me. She took Rosa’s weight from me and pressed fingers against her throat. 

“Come on, breathe…”

Nothing.

My pulse roared in my ears. I stood, walking straight to Dahlia.

She tried to crawl away, dragging her leg behind her. I stomped down on her bloody knee. She screamed, the sound tearing through the deck.

“What the fuck did you give her?” 

Dahlia laughed harshly. “You two took everything from me,” she hissed. “You took the only man who ever loved me. You took my security!”

I grabbed her by the throat and lifted her halfway off the ground. “Tell me what you used.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she sneered. “As long as she dies, I win. I don’t care what you do to me. She deserves nothing! Why does she get to be happy when I’m not!”

My vision went red.

I threw her down, aimed, and shot the same knee. 

She howled.

But she had no idea what I had in store for her. 

“Restrain her and stop the bleeding.” I snapped to my men, turning back to my wife. 

I knelt beside the nurse, my pulse hammering in my ears. 

She was bent over Rosa, fitting an oxygen mask to her face, her gloved hands moving rapidly but carefully. The hiss of air rattled me, and Rosa’s lips were still a little blue.

“Do you know what it was?” My voice came out rough.

The nurse looked to the side at one of the medical assistants who lifted Rosa’s glass. 

“There’s cyanide in this,” he said quietly.

Cyanide.

My jaw tightened until I thought my teeth might crack. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Dahlia. I could already see her face when I punished her for daring to steal my only treasure from me. I’d never wanted blood so badly.

But Rosa needed me right now. 

I moved, gathering her into my arms, her body limp against my chest. 

“Stay with me,” I whispered. “You hear me? Stay with me.”

Her skin was too cold. My heart was losing rhythm and beating in violent, uneven bursts. I couldn’t picture a world without her in it. I couldn’t lose her now. Not after everything, and certainly not like this.

I laid her on the bed, trying to keep my hands steady. 

The nurse stepped forward. 

“Keep her flat,” she said quickly. “Dont give her water or anything else. We’ve called ahead to inform the nearest hospital of a cyanide exposure.”

I nodded, but the words barely registered. 

“How far are we?” I barked at one of the guards near the door.

“Three minutes, sir.”

Three minutes. It might as well be a lifetime.

The nurse switched to a resuscitator, pressing the bag with careful, timed motions. Rosa’s chest rose and fell, over and over again. Each breath felt borrowed.

I wanted to take over, to do something, anything, but I didn’t trust myself not to tbreak her further.

Fury burned under my skin like acid. I wanted to punch a hole through the wall, to tear the whole goddamn world apart for letting this happen.

But I couldn’t move.

All I could do was stand there, watching her chest rise and fall. 

Praying it wouldn’t stop.

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I felt like I was falling through scenes. The yacht, an ambulance, fluorescent lights in a hospital corridor, all stitched together by panic. 

Now I sat in a chair beside her bed, the picture of calm when I was anything but.

Memories flitted through my mind too fast to grasp. 

The first day I saw her face, Darko informing me about his plan to secure a contract marriage. That first day in my office, her hair chopped short like she’d cut it herself.

Her stubbornness. The way she was unstoppable when searching for answers. 

The feel of her skin and the cadence of her voice.

Who would I be if I lost it all? If I lost the woman who had etched her name under my skin and brought me unparalleled joy I didn’t know i deserved?

Then a doctor walked toward me, his steps lacking the urgency the situation demanded. 

I stared him down, my attention divided between Rosa’s still form beside me, and his approach. 

If he opened his mouth with bullshit, I’d kill him right there. 

The doctor stopped three feet from me and tried to meet my eyes but he couldn’t. His face had that pale, professional look people get when they’re trying to sound reasonable and failing.

“We administered amyl nitrite,” he began. “It blunted the acute effects, but the cyanide was in her system far longer than is safe. We need to run more tests on her and the pregnancy. I’m going to ask you to…”

I closed the distance until we were nose to nose. Close enough to feel his breath, close enough for him to see what waiting did to me. 

Menace curled hotly in my chest.

“Whatever you need to do, you’ll do with me there. Or you can explain to a grave why you didn’t.” I snarled, my teeth bared. 

He swallowed. Then nodded. 

He shuffled further into the room, my eyes tracking him every step of the way.

The monitor beside her bed kept time with my heartbeat, beep… beep… beep. 

Then suddenly, the beeping stopped. 

Ice slithered down my spine.

The room narrowed to the high pitched beeping of the machine as the doctor moved, his hands a frantic blur. 

They shouted for meds, for compressions. 

My fingers found their way into my hair, pulling at my scalp as I begged her with every inch of me to fight.

Her chest gave a long, ragged gasp. For a second it seemed like air would come back.

I dared to breathe.

Then the beeps stopped.

The silence was absolute. 

My mouth went dry. 

The doctor’s face folded in a way that made me colder than anything I’d felt in my life.

One single word echoed in my head, escaping my chest in a ragged breath.

“No.”