Bargains and Betrayals Read Free Page B

profanity.”
    Against profanity, contact with the outside world, and freedom of thought.
    Dr. Jones stood. “I’d hate for you to be placed on restriction.”
    Words curled up in my throat, spiraling around as uselessly as dry leaves. There were a few things I’d learned over the three days since I’d agreed to come to the institution to keep Dr. Jones’s guards from killing Pietr …
    … from killing Pietr …
    I struggled for focus. Of the things I’d learned in the sparsely populated Pecan Place, when to keep my mouth shut was the most vital lesson.
    But that lesson was being tested.
    “Pietr Rusakova’s situation has nothing to do with your mental health.”
    “His situation has everything to do with my mental health.” The chair was suddenly too confining, so I stood. “ I’m the reason he was attacked.”
    “I disagree,” Dr. Jones said, her tone level and cool while her eyes flicked down and forward. I followed her gaze to my hands—gripping her desk so hard my fingers were splotched red and white. “He is the only one responsible for his behavior and the results of that behavior.”
    “His behavior was an attempt to protect me.”
    “ Protect you? From what? From achieving better mental health? He was obviously obsessed with you.”
    I twitched. Obsessed? Hardly. In love? I hoped. But the word that bothered me most in that sentence? Was .
    As if Pietr was firmly in the past tense.
    “Put me on restriction—I don’t care! Just tell me if Pietr’s okay. Is he alive, or did your guards— my guards—did they kill him?” With a growl I pried my fingers from the lip of her desk long enough to clear it with one violent sweep of my arms. Files and papers of all shapes and sizes flew off its surface and snowed down around us in deceptively slow and gentle arcs.
    She grinned and took one hard step forward, her shoe slapping the floor.
    An alarm sounded.
    Behind me the door burst open and a nurse rushed in, flanked by my mountainous guards.
    The nurse paused, eyed me—judged and weighed me and pulled a hypodermic needle from behind her back. She nudged the syringe’s thumb rest slightly so a brief trickle of amber liquid dribbled down the needle’s sharp tip before slipping onto the syringe’s transparent shaft.
    “No!” I dodged to avoid the guards’ grip, but their fingers hooked into my arms like icy sausages. “Just tell me,” I begged, throat tightening, tears fuzzing my vision as they burned free of my eyes. “Tell me if Pietr’s alive!”
    But the needle was in, the plunger was down, and everything wobbled in my sight like heat waves hovering above blacktop.
    “Tell me.” My tongue slow, the words were thick, as blurred as my vision. I fought to focus, desperate for an answer …
    “What does it matter? You’ll never see him again.”
    And the darkness chewing at the edge of my failing vision finally stole my senses away.
    Alexi
    In the foyer, Pietr readied to again sneak off into the night, to hope for still winds and calm air and a few precious minutes to press his face to the thick glass that separated him from the girl he adored. To stare at her a mere moment before the dogs caught his scent. “What good comes of this? Does she want to see you—like this ? Knowing the danger you put yourself in? Does she even know you visit?”
    He turned away, unmoved by my question except for the telltale rise of a single vein near his temple. “ I know I’m there. Jess needs me.”
    “Jessie, even locked away in an insane asylum—did you not say she’s been sedated? She makes more sense than you,” I stated. “She would not want you there if it meant you risked your safety.”
    His hand was already on the door, his mind made up. “Maybe I’m not doing this just for her,” he said, his eyes a cool blue though I knew he seethed within, “maybe I’m doing this for me.”
    “Then you’ve finally succeeded in combining stupidity with selfishness,” I congratulated him. “You