Chapter 34 Chapter 34
Chapter 34
DEREK POV
I was standing in the hallway outside her hospital room, listening to my wife try to negotiate with the doctor about her being discharged early so that I would not find out that she had been kidnapped and nearly killed, all because she did not want to bother me.
I understood for the first time the full scope of what I had done. Not by any single action, but by two years of intentional neglect and absence. Two years of treating her like furniture, of directing my warmth and humor and attention toward Jasmine while Selene navigated our house like a ghost.
I had spent two years of making her feel so thoroughly unwanted that her first response to surviving a life-threatening attack was to hope she could hide it from me.
She believed I wouldn't care.
She'd told her kidnappers I wouldn't care, and she'd believed it when she said it.
The doctor was insisting now, gentle but firm, explaining that standard protocol required contacting the emergency contact on file, that the emergency contact listed was her husband—
"No." Selene's voice came back, and under the exhaustion and pain there was something almost desperate.
Then, more carefully, like she was sorry for losing her cool with the doctor: "I mean—no, please don't. He's busy. It's unnecessary. I'll take full responsibility. Patient confidentiality is my right."
She was right about that, technically. I hadn't been able to go into the room. Dr. Ananya had treated Selene as a patient, and patients had protections.
The door opened and Rosalie came down the corridor toward me. She'd arrived thirty minutes ago, alerted by Dr. Ananya through the pack's emergency chain, and she'd gone straight into Selene's room with a single look at me that I couldn't entirely interpret.
She came back out now, closing the door behind her, and she looked at me for a long moment before speaking.
"She's asking me to sign her discharge paperwork," Rosalie said quietly. "She wants to get home before you get back from work."
The words landed exactly as they were meant to.
"She doesn't know I'm here," I said.
"No. She doesn't know." Rosalie studied me with those sharp eyes that had always seen more than I wanted her to. "She doesn't know you came for her. She thinks a stranger pulled her from that building. She's asking for the contact information of whoever rescued her so she can send them money."
I looked at the door.
"She's going to sign herself out," Rosalie continued.
"She'll let me fuss over her—she always lets me fuss—but she'll go home, she'll manage her pain as quietly as possible, and she'll make sure you never have to be inconvenienced by any of this." Her voice was very level.
"Because that's what she's learned to do, how to manage being staying around you. In this marriage, in this family. She's learned to make herself as small and as invisible as possible."
I didn't say anything.
"She's carrying your child, Derek." Rosalie said it without any particular inflection, which told me that Dr. Ananya had informed her. "She doesn't know that I know about the pregnancy. She was probably trying to figure out how to leave before she started showing."
I turned the evidence bag over in my hands, the black card catching the hallway light.
"The Bratva card," I said. "Was that you? Did you give it to her, as a way out."
Rosalie looked at the bag. "No. Whatever that is, it has nothing to do with me." A pause. "She's been trying to find a way out for a while now, I suspect. She's smart. Resourceful. You'd know that if you'd been paying attention."
"Grandmother—"
"Don't. I'm not interested in the conversation where you explain why things were complicated and why your feelings for Jasmine were understandable and you were forced to mate with Selene just because I said so and why the marriage was never what either of you wanted. I arranged that marriage believing you would eventually see what you had. I was wrong to force it, and I was wrong to be so certain I knew what was best." She looked at the door again.
"But that woman in there survived a car that rolled three times because she was too stubborn to die, and her first coherent thought was to protect you from inconvenience. Whatever you do next, you do it with that information."
She walked back down the corridor toward the exit, and I let her go.
I sat back down in the chair outside Selene's door. Through the wall, I could hear her voice again, quieter now, accepting whatever compromise Dr. Ananya had proposed. Rosalie would sign the paperwork. There would be follow-up care, instructions, medications.
She would go home. She would carry her cracked ribs and her broken arm and her secret pregnancy through the front door of the house we shared, and she would wait to see if I came home from work at a reasonable hour, and she would manage.
She always managed.
I looked at the black card in the evidence bag. Dmitri Volkov's personal number. She'd been trying to build resources, build an exit, build something that was hers and couldn't be traced back to my name or my money or my world.
My wife had been planning to leave me while she was pregnant with my child, and the only reason she'd failed so far was that my name had apparently made even pawnshops afraid to deal with her.
I sat with that knowledge and did not go into the room.
She didn't need to know I was here. Not tonight. Not when she was hurting and trying to manage her feelings.
I pulled out my phone and sent Marcus a text: Find out everything about the Dmitri Volkov connection. I want details.
Then I sat back in the chair and listened to the quiet sounds of my wife preparing to go home, and I tried to figure out what kind of man I was going to be when she got there.