Phoenix takes a step toward me like he’s going to pry my head from my body. Nikolai stops him and shakes his head.
“What the hell did you do?” Phoenix asks.
“What I had to,” I answer. “And Nikolai was only operating out of necessity. I mean, at least I didn’t have a nervous breakdown, yay me.”
“No, you’re just fucking dying!” Phoenix yells. “Do you have any idea what this is going to do to everyone?”
“It’s not like I’m dying on purpose,” I offer.
“Technically, he’s being murdered,” Nikolai says so not helpfully.
I shoot him a glare.
He just shrugs. “He won’t be himself, and the sickness will kill him eventually. We’re just speeding through the process.”
“Twelve hours,” I repeat, ignoring the horrible news he has for me. “And I won’t be… able to…” I don’t finish my sentence.
“Dissociation is a scary thing,” Nikolai says.
Phoenix groans. “This is some messed up Hollywood shit. Can’t you do something?”
Nikolai stares me down. “I wish I knew. His body chemistry was already… different from the other test subjects. Most of them are able to control the sickness with the medicine, but it’s like his brain is rejecting it.”
Phoenix seems to think about this. “Why would his brain reject it?”
“Good question.” Nikolai stares me down. “One only he can answer.”
“Look.” I swallow hard. “If I knew, I’d tell you. All I know is being able to black out—” I stop myself from saying too much and repeat. “Twelve hours. Okay. On a scale of one to ten, how pissed do you think Chase would be if I went and kissed his daughter one last time?”
Phoenix curses and starts to walk away, then yells into the night rain.
Nikolai squeezes his eyes shut like he can’t bear to look at me.
“So, is that a ten?” I ask.
Rain is coming down in droves, soaking all three of us. I can’t make out if Phoenix is pissed or just sad. Nikolai continues to stare down at the ground, his dark hair plastered across his face and neck.
Two of the most powerful men in the mafia underworld.
And nothing.
They’ve got nothing.
“I’m going to take that as it’s totally fine; you’re already dead, so what’s the harm in him killing you twice?” I shove my hands into my soaked jeans. “I’m going to go back inside. I’m going to use my twelve hours. Just promise me one thing.”
Nikolai finally looks up.
I smile. “Make sure she hates me.”
“What the hell?” Phoenix charges and grabs me by the shirt, shoving me backward until I hit the brick wall of the house. “Why the hell would we do that?”
“Because.” He can’t see the tears; thank God for rain. “I asked her to promise, but she lied. She always scratches her nose when she lies.” I swallow the lump in my throat as I remember her scratching her nose while she answered me. “And after a lot of thought… I don’t want to be another Andi. I don’t want to be someone that she has to remember, someone she has to mourn. I think it’s best if my death is something that she remembers because we were friends, not because we were soul mates. Don’t you think it will hurt less? Hating someone as they take their last breaths, then loving them as you listen to their heart’s last beats? It’s better, Phoenix.” I shrug out of his grip. “And you know it.”
His eyes search mine. “What do you want us to say?”
It kills me. Completely kills me as I whisper. “That I never loved her the way she deserved and that I hope she can be happy with her true soul mate.” I squeeze my eyes shut and finish with, “Tell her I lied—that it was never until my heart stopped beating.”
“Shit.” Phoenix turns abruptly and kicks the ground again.
“Please.” I look to Nikolai this time. “You said to get my affairs in order. That’s how I’m doing it. King already knows…” I shake my head. He was so pissed, protective-pissed, but he understood. I told him everything, confessed it all, and he didn’t judge me, he didn’t even flinch when I asked him to take care of her, to say goodbye to everyone, he just said, what do you need.
And said he’d do it.
But there’s one person he can’t do that with—one person I won’t let him do that with.
And my twelve hours are probably closer to eleven hours and forty minutes at this point. “Where do you want me to meet you?”
Nikolai takes a deep breath. “The soundproof room next to the ring should be good; I’ll have to tie you…”
“Yeah, I know,” I whisper. “I’m assuming even the medicine won’t keep me from losing my shit when you try to stick me with a needle.”
His smile is sad. “Humans have a very strong will to live, Maksim… monsters even more so.”