I’m racing down the hallway towards Alyssa’s room when I spot Elle coming down the corridor from the other end. If she’s here… who’s with Alyssa?
She comes to a standstill when she sees me. Then her eyes narrow into furious slits. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she seethes. “You stress your girlfriend into labor and then you disappear on her when she needs you the most?”
Polly, Dimiv, and Nikolai plow in right behind me. Pol snatches up Elle’s arm. “She’s in labor?”
“They wheeled her away like ten minutes ago!” Elle exclaims. She pauses slightly when her eyes land on Nikolai’s bloody face. “I-I asked if I could go in with her but the doctor refused to let me.”
“Which doctor?”
She frowns. “What do you mean, ‘which doctor’？ Your doctor! Alyssa’s doctor. Gregory whatchamacallit.”
“Fuck,” I snarl, running a hand through my hair. “Fuck. Which way did they take her?”
Her frown gets deeper. “That way, I think,” she says, pointing to a nearby set of double doors. “She was in pain. They were taking her to one of the operating rooms to deliver the twins.”
I don’t hesitate. I run straight through those doors, ignoring the sign that reads Access for Medical Staff Only and anyone who dares to ask me what I’m doing here. I’m about to bust right into every last room I can find when I see a doctor emerging from one of them, decked in pale blue scrubs.
I grab her by the shoulders. “My fiancée is delivering right now. Emergency C-section. I need to find her.”
“Sir, you’re not supposed to—”
“Now,” I growl.
Something about my tone must get through to her, because she sighs and her lips purse in distaste. “If you can go back to the waiting room, I’ll find out where she is and—”
“I’m not leaving here until I know where she is. So you can either help me now or I’m going to bust into every single goddamn room until I find her. Dr. Grigory Tasarov is the one delivering the babies.”
The doctor’s eyes bulge. “Follow me.” She takes me to the nurses’ station and asks the woman behind the counter to check all the surgeries taking place right now and with which doctors. Then she leans over the nurse’s shoulder and reads the screen. When she straightens, her lips are pursing even tighter. A thin slash of grim dismay. “Dr. Tasarov is not currently using any of the operating rooms. In fact, there are no emergency C-sections taking place right now.”
“You’re sure?”
She nods. “A hundred percent.”
“Then I need his pager number. Now.”
The doctor frowns. “I’m sorry, but I can only release that information to hospital staff. I can give you his cell phone—”
“No,” I growl, my desperation mounting higher and higher “He’ll have turned his phone off. Or destroyed it. I need his pager number so that I can track it.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but—”
I lean forward over the counter. “He has my wife,” I snarl. “He has abducted her and my unborn babies. And if you don’t give me his pager number right fucking now, the lawsuit I’ll drop on your head will be the very least of the problems I will bring to your doorstep.”
The doctor’s face ripples with worry as she glances down at the nurse manning the desk. At least the nurse has the sense to nod in encouragement. The doctor sighs. She grabs a piece of paper, scribbles down the pager number for me, and forks it over.
“You didn’t get this number from me.”
I snatch it from her grasp. “Thank you.” Then I twist around and rush back outside where Nikolai and Dimiv are waiting for me right outside the doors.
“Well?” Nikolai asks.
Polly and Elle appear from the side. They’re holding hands. Polly’s face is drained of color and Elle is bouncing from one leg to the other frantically like the ground is molten.
“It was Grigory,” I hiss. “He lied.”
Dimiv raises his eyebrows. “Why would he do that?”
“To cause a rift. To isolate Alyssa. To get her out of this hospital and away from my protection.”
The three of us look at each other as the puzzle pieces start falling into place. Grigory is only a pawn. The real mastermind behind this is out there, roaming free. All of us say the same word in unison, the only possible explanation.
“Sobakin.”
54