Chapter 33 Chapter 33
Chapter 33
DEREK
I took the bag and looked at the card without removing it.
The D in the center was a particular font. The phone number beneath it was one I recognized with the same certainty I'd recognized the Blackwood pack scent at the crash site.
Dmitri Volkov.
The Bratva's regional Alpha. Who also happened to be one of the most dangerous men in the city, someone who was operating in a world that ran parallel to mine, but with different goals. He did organized crime rather than mine which was based on running a pack of 1000 members and co running multiple legal companies at the same time, allowing my pack and i to integrate seamlessly into the city without humans finding out about us, but we were both equally ruthless, territorial and archnemesis. We never saw eye to eye on anything.
I turned the evidence bag over in my hands, staring at that single embossed letter.
My wife had Dmitri Volkov's personal calling card in her purse.
Not the organization's contact line. Not a business number. His personal card, the kind that didn't circulate beyond an extremely small number of people who had either earned his trust or caught his interest.
"Where did she get this?" My voice came out very quiet.
"We don't know yet," Marcus said carefully. "It was in her purse along with her phone and wallet. No way to know how long she's had it."
I thought about the recent weeks. Selene had been distracted, quieter than usual, moving through the house with a focused energy I hadn't paid enough attention to. I'd been too occupied with work, with Jasmine, with the thousand obligations that were more important to me resolving them than figuring out what my wife had been up to.
"Find out," I said. "Quietly. I want to know when she got it, how she got it, and what the context was."
Marcus nodded and moved away down the corridor, already pulling out his phone.
I sat back down in my chair outside Selene's room, the evidence bag with Dmitri's card resting in my hands, and tried to reconcile the woman I thought I knew with the woman who apparently had connections to the most feared man in the city's criminal underworld.
Blissfully unaware of everything, the Blackwood wolf had said. Unaware that I was a werewolf, unaware that she'd been taken as pack leverage rather than ordinary ransom,
But apparently not entirely unaware that she was close to someone like Dmitri.
The door to her room opened, and Dr. Ananya stepped into the hallway. I stood immediately.
"She's stable," Ananya said, and the words hit me like cool water as i felt the tension that i hadn't even registered leaving my body, the lump in my throat getting smaller as i could breathe easily more and my head was more clearheaded.
"Two cracked ribs, broken left radius, significant bruising across her torso and shoulders, the laceration on her hairline. She lost some blood but not enough to require transfusion. She has a mild concussion from the rolling impact." She paused. "She's going to be in considerable pain when the shock wears off. The ribs especially will make the next few weeks difficult."
"But she'll recover."
"Fully, yes. She's strong. Her vital signs are better than I'd expect from someone who went through what she went through." Another pause, this one weighted differently. "Derek, there's something else I need to tell you."
I waited.
Dr. Ananya looked at me with the careful expression she used when delivering information that required handling. "Selene is pregnant. Approximately six weeks, based on my assessment. I don't think she knew I would find it—there were no prenatal notes in her medical history, no supplements in her system that would indicate she was managing a known pregnancy."
Pregnant. Selene was pregnant. Six weeks, which meant she'd known, or at least suspected, for some time.
And she hadn't told me.
I sat back down slowly, the evidence bag still in my hands. "The baby?"
"The pregnancy appears intact. The crash was severe, but she was in the early stages and it seems she protected herself reasonably well during the impact. I want to monitor her, run additional imaging when she's more stable, but there's no indication of compromise to the pregnancy right now."
I heard myself say something appropriate, something that indicated I'd understood and appreciated the information, but I wasn't entirely sure what words I used. The doctor returned to her patient, and I sat in the hallway and stared at nothing.
Six weeks.
While I'd been watching Jasmine across ballrooms and running territory disputes and treating my wife like a polite inconvenience,
Selene had been quietly carrying my child and apparently building a strategy that involved Dmitri Volkov.
I didn't know how to hold those two facts simultaneously.
Time passed. I wasn't sure how much. The hallway was quiet, the clinic running on night protocol, and I stayed in my chair outside Selene's room because I couldn't think of anywhere else to be. For the first time in my life, nothing else mattered to me, than being at my wife's side, even when i wasn't brave enough to wait inside.
I heard her wake up.
Her voice came through the door, and even muffled by the barrier between us, I could hear the effort it cost her to speak. The careful, slow way that told me she was already learning how to breathe around her ribs.
"Where am I?" she asked. The voice of someone checking their bearings, assessing the situation.
Dr. Ananya's response was calm, professional, explaining that she was in a clinic being treated for the accident.
Selene was quiet for a moment. Then: "I need to leave."
"You're not in any condition to—"
"I need to leave before my husband gets home from work." Her voice was careful and flat and determined in a way that made something in my chest constrict. "Can I have the contact information for whoever rescued me? I'll find a way to compensate them."
She didn't know. She thought I was at the office. She thought she could slip back into the house before I noticed she'd been gone.
"Mrs. Sterling, you have cracked ribs, a broken arm, and a concussion. You can't be released alone into your own care—"
"I'm alive, aren't I? I can heal at home. I've managed before." A pause. "I don't want to bother him. He wouldn't—he wouldn't appreciate being called away from work for something like this. I'm fine."
She's so blissfully unaware, the Blackwood wolf had said. How she kept telling them that taking her wasn't worth it. That her husband wouldn't care.