All Chapters of THE COST OF SAVING HIM : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

47 Chapters

A STRANGER

Nadia's POV --- "Yuck!" I muttered it under my breath, kicking a pebble off the narrow path as I walked. The shortcut through Delvin Road smelled like wet concrete and bad decisions — which was exactly why I never used it. Except tonight my brain decided to betray me. *Take the short route, Nadia. You might meet your soulmate.* I don't know what part of my subconscious thought that was helpful information at 10:47 PM after a twelve-hour shift at the teaching hospital, but here I was. Tired, hungry, and walking down a road that hadn't seen proper streetlights since probably 2009. "Yuck," I said again, louder this time, because the ground was damp and my sneakers were not built for damp. I don't need a soulmate. I need a shower, a full plate of rice, and eight hours of sleep that nobody interrupts. I am twenty-three years old, one semester from my medical degree, and I have a plan. The plan does not include soulmates. The plan includes graduating, passing my licensing exams, and

MAN

Nadia's POV --- Getting him off the ground was its own ordeal. He was heavy in the way that had nothing to do with dead weight — all of it was solid, deliberate, like even his body resisted being helped. He made it to his feet on the second attempt, one hand braced against the car, the other hanging at his side with a rigidity that told me he was absorbing pain and converting it into stillness. I'd seen that before. In soldiers. In people who had trained themselves to feel things privately. I didn't comment on it. "Arm over my shoulder," I said. He looked at me like I'd suggested something offensive. "I'm not going to drop you," I said. "I'm stronger than I look and you're worse off than you're admitting. Arm. Now." A beat. Then his arm came over my shoulder — carefully, with a control that told me he was managing exactly how much weight he put on me. Even half-conscious and bleeding he was calculating. We moved slowly. Four minutes stretched into seven because I set the pa

THERE'S A PROBLEM

Nadia's POV --- He was not a good patient. Not in the dramatic, thrashing way — Kane didn't move an inch he hadn't calculated first. But there was a stillness to him that wasn't cooperation. It was tolerance. Like he was enduring me rather than accepting help, which was a distinction I felt every time my hands moved and his jaw tightened and he said absolutely nothing about it. "Breathe," I said. "I am breathing." "Deeper. You're holding it every time I touch the wound and that's making your muscles tense and that's making this harder than it needs to be." A pause. He breathed deeper. I worked quickly, cleaning the wound thoroughly, irrigating it with saline until I was satisfied, then packing it carefully with gauze. The bullet was seated deeper than I wanted — too deep for what I had — but I could stabilize him enough to buy time. That was the goal. Stabilize, close the surface, manage bleeding, prevent infection. "You've done this before," he said. "Treated a gunshot wou

FINAL

Final Nadia's POV I didn't hear everything. But I heard enough. I set the last of my supplies down slowly and watched him end the call and turn toward me with that look — the one that had shifted somewhere between the beginning of the call and the end of it. Like I had changed categories without being consulted. "What," I said. Not a question. A demand. Kane looked at me for a moment. Then he crossed back to the chair and sat, one hand pressing against the bandage briefly before dropping. "There were people on that road tonight," he said. "They saw you." I blinked. "Saw me do what? Help you? Yes. I did that. Openly. In the middle of a road." "That's not the part that matters to them." "Then what part—" I stopped. Something was assembling itself in my head and I didn't like the shape it was taking. "What exactly are you saying to me right now?" "I'm saying you were seen. With me. Tonight." He held my gaze. "That makes you a problem for certain people." I stared at him. Th

NO MORE NORMAL ROUTINE

Nadia's POV I don't know how long we sat like that. Him in the chair, me on the couch with my face in my hands, the apartment sitting in a silence that had too many things moving underneath it. I was running calculations I didn't want to be running — exits, options, how fast I could get to my phone if I needed to, whether any of this was actually as serious as he was making it sound. Then my window exploded inward. I was on my feet before I understood what had happened — glass across the floor, curtain rod swinging, cold air rushing in where the window used to be. My brain caught up a half second later. Gunshot. "Down." Kane was already moving, already across the room, one hand grabbing my arm and dropping us both below the window line in a single motion. The pain from his wound didn't slow him. It didn't even register on his face. Another shot. The wall above us cracked. "My apartment—" I started. "Is replaceable." His hand was firm on my shoulder, keeping me low. "You're no

NADIA

Nadia's POV---Nobody spoke in the car.Lev drove. Kane sat beside me in the backseat, jaw set, one hand pressed against his side in a way that told me the wound was screaming even if his face wasn't. I watched him do it and said nothing because I had already said everything there was to say and none of it had changed anything.We were moving through Velmoor's streets and I didn't recognize any of them."Where are we going," I said.Lev didn't answer.I looked at Kane. "Where are we going.""Somewhere safe.""You said that already. I want a specific answer.""You'll see it when we get there."I turned to look out the window and pressed my back against the seat and reminded myself very firmly that losing my temper in a moving vehicle surrounded by men I didn't know was not a strategy.Three minutes passed.Then five."I just want to go on record," I said to no one in particular, "that I saved a man tonight. That's all I did. I was walking home, minding my business, and I stopped becau

BACK TO THE CRIME SCENE

Nadia's POVHe came out ten minutes later.I was still in the car, arms crossed, staring at the warehouse wall like it had personally offended me — which, at this point, everything connected to this night had. Lev was outside leaning against the hood, doing the thing where he existed without making it obvious he was standing guard.The door opened and Kane walked out.He looked the same as he always looked. Composed. Like he hadn't just been in a room with a voice that made the air change.He said something to Lev that I couldn't hear.Lev nodded once and pulled the car door open.I sat up. "What—""He'll take you back," Kane said.I stared at him. "Sorry?""Lev will drop you home." He said it the way he said everything — like the decision had been made three steps before he opened his mouth. "The area is clear."I looked at him for a long moment.Then I laughed.Not the funny kind. The kind that comes out when your brain genuinely cannot produce a more appropriate response."Take me

CAUTION

Nadia's POV---I didn't mean to fall asleep.One second I was sitting on the couch staring at the dried blood on my coffee table and the next my eyes were closed and the apartment was dark and quiet and I was gone — the kind of deep, boneless sleep that only comes when your body has decided it is done asking for permission.I don't know what woke me.A sound. Movement. Something wasn't right. I opened my eyes and there were torches.Three of them. Cutting through the darkness of my apartment, sweeping across the walls, the ceiling, the floor — and behind them, shapes. Figures in the doorway moving with the kind of deliberate efficiency that I recognized from earlier tonight and my body was already moving before my brain had finished processing what my eyes were seeing.Police.The word landed in my chest like something cold.*Don't move. Stay where you are. We just need to ask you some questions.*I was already off the couch.I don't know what I was thinking. I don't know if I was t

WHERE IS SHE?

---Lev drove the last two streets without headlights.The roads were empty enough that nobody would notice, but habits like that stayed long after they stopped being necessary. He pulled over half a block from Nadia's building and shut the engine off.For a moment, he just sat there looking up at the apartment complex.Fourth floor.No light.Then he got out.The air smelled like rain and wet concrete. Somewhere farther down the street, music played faintly from an open window before cutting off again. Otherwise, the neighborhood was quiet.Too quiet.His gaze landed on the caution tape stretched across the building entrance.So the police had already come and gone.Lev walked past the front slowly, not stopping long enough to attract attention. The downstairs door had been repaired badly — fresh wood around the frame, new screws, uneven paint. Somebody fixed it in a hurry.He looked up toward Nadia's apartment again.The broken window had been covered from the inside with dark plast

NADIA

"Ahhh!"I screamed before I could stop myself, jumping back against the wall as something small and dark shot past my feet the second I pushed the door open.A cat.It was a cat.I stood in the doorway with my hand pressed flat against my chest and watched it disappear into the darkness outside and told myself very firmly that I was a final year medical student who had kept her hands steady through a gunshot wound tonight and I was not going to be undone by a stray cat.I pushed the door open the rest of the way and went in.Dark. The kind of dark that meant no electricity or no one had bothered to turn anything on in a long time. I stood still for a moment and let my eyes adjust — shapes emerging slowly, the outlines of things. A small room. Low ceiling. Smelled like dust and old wood and something faintly metallic that I decided not to investigate.A storage unit. One of the unlocked ones in the row behind the green space — I'd noticed them before without ever having a reason to car

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