Ian woke up to feelings he'd almost forgotten: the coolness of crisp sheets against unaching skin, the absence of the dull, low-grade ache that had been his constant presence for years, and the aroma of English breakfast tea instead of the antiseptic stench of emergency rooms and safe houses.
His host sat in a chair opposite him, regarding him with eyes that were unjudgmental throughout. The exact way the man held himself bore witness to chronic illness, and Ian saw the signs he recognized from his own mirror—the pale blue hue of lips that spoke of poor circulation, the brusque breathing of one whose heart struggled with simple tasks.
"Fourteen hours?" Ian's voice was gravel, his throat scraped raw from the convulsion.
"Fourteen hours. Your heart stabilized at about dawn." The man—Meir, he recalled—held out a cup of tea in rock-steady hands that still trembled minutely with their own cardiac rhythms. "Dr. Morrison says you need proper treatment."
"No hospitals." Ian's refusal was adamant, forged in years of running away from individuals in whose direction official doors opened. "They ask questions I can't answer."
"Then we'll manage here." The sentence shocked them both with its finality.
While they had breakfast in subdued silence, Ian studied his rescuer with professional curiosity. Mid-twenties, ill but not immediately dying, single in an apartment that spoke of loneliness and not poverty. The medical equipment scattered around—heart monitors, pill boxes, emergency contact cards—spoke a story Ian knew.
"You're dying too," he said to him, not bothering to disguise the observation.
"Genetic cardiomyopathy. I've been dying slowly for years." Meir's dry tone couldn't hide the loneliness behind. "Maybe that's why I didn't run when I found you bleeding in that alley."
"I could have killed you." Ian's confession hung between them like smoke. "I've killed men for less than you've done for me."
"But you didn't." Meir's gaze met his, and Ian felt something in them cause his chest to constrict in a way that had nothing to do with his heart condition. "And I could die tomorrow from my condition. We're both living on borrowed time."
The understanding that passed between them was profound—two broken men recognizing their mutual vulnerability in a world that had no use for weakness.
"The people who are after you," Meir whispered, "they're not going to give up, are they?"
Ian's hand automatically went to where his knife should be—one so habitual a motion he didn't realize he was doing it. "I know the Bratva does not forgive and does not forget. I heard something I shouldn't have, and now I'm a loose thread that must be sewn up."
"What did you hear?"
The memories assault like body blows: twelve bodies stacked like cordwood, blood spattering geometric patterns on concrete walls. His men, his brothers, killed for the crime of watching a deal collapse. He'd survived only because he'd been watering his bladder when the guns started, to step into a charnel house where his family had stood.
"A massacre. My entire crew, gunned down because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time." Ian's voice cracked. "Volkov looked into my eyes and smiled. Instructed me to clean it up, show him my loyalty. Instead, I ran."
"How old were you?"
"Twenty-three. I was with them since I was seventeen—they were family to me more than my own ever were." Ian's laughter was dry. "Now they're hounding me with the same fervor they once used keeping me safe."
Meir's fingers brushed against his across the small table, entwining around with surprising strength. "Sorry."
The simple words broke something in Ian's chest—not his heart, too broken already to be broken again, but some wall he'd built between himself and his feelings. When had someone last touched him without wanting something in return? When had anyone last comforted him instead of taking comfort?
"I have PTSD," Ian burst out, the confession torn from some black recess he normally kept behind lock and key. "Nightmares, flashbacks, panic attacks. The seizures make it harder—it every time I black out, I wake up thinking I'm in that warehouse."
"The tachycardia too?"
"Started after that first time they caught up with me. Three bullets to the chest, two weeks in a black clinic." Ian pulled his shirt up, revealing the scarred tissue which covered his chest. "Doc said the trauma wrecked my heart's electrical system. Now it just gallops even when I'm relaxed."
Meir's fingers traced the scars with professional delicacy, but his touch was gentle enough to take Ian's breath away. "We're quite a pair, aren't we? Your heart races, mine stumbles. Both of us too broken for normal lives."
"Is that what you want? Normal?"
Meir considered the question. "I used to think so. But ordinary people don't have any idea what it's like to have a countdown running in your chest. They don't know what it's like to accept going to die young."
"And now?"
"Me? Now I think perhaps ordinary is overrated." Meir's smile was small but honest. "Anyway, I've never been kissed like that by an ordinary person."
The memory of their brutal first meeting shot a wave of heat through Ian's body, his shattered heart pounding its already erratic rhythm. "That was not a kiss. That was a claiming."
"I know." Meir's bluntness surprised him. "And I liked it."