Antonio gave the hands digging into his flesh a disdainful look. “It’s clear your need to keep her here is blinding you to her needs. But I feel her need to leave.”
“You might be an unequaled genius, Tonio, but not even you are omniscient. Hell, you didn’t even suspect what your own lover would feel if she knew the truth.”
The moment the words were out, Ivan could have happily cut off his own tongue. The surge of self-loathing that came into Antonio’s eyes would remain one of his stupidest, cruelest mistakes.
Ivan dropped his hands to his side, exhaled heavily. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”
Antonio waved his qualification away. “I did know how she’d feel and that’s why I hid the truth. That was my mistake.”
“I’m not making one. She needs to stay here longer.”
“If you think so, then you’re having a serious judgment malfunction. She may not have asked to be discharged, but I sense she can’t wait to bolt from here.” Before Ivan could flay him with another contradiction, Antonio folded his arms over his white-coated chest. “Let me remind you that your specialty is ending lives, not saving them like me. Including yours, many times as I recall. So I’m the expert here.”
“Not where Anastasia is concerned.”
“Actually, in her case, your verdict is even more suspect, since you’re clearly what I thought was impossible—emotionally involved. Even if it’s in a way I can’t fathom. It makes you even more ineligible to make decisions on her behalf.”
Ivan felt his frustration rising to a suffocating level as his friend’s eyes emptied of all agitation and became ice-cold blue.
Great. In his attempt at taking Antonio’s mind off his estranged lover, he’d only brought out the immovable surgeon in him. To his own detriment.
He exhaled, pissed off at himself, at Antonio and all of existence. “Is this your roundabout way of forcing me to tell you about my involvement with her? You think you’ve found the best leverage to satisfy your curiosity?”
Antonio gave a disgusted shrug. “Right now I couldn’t care less if the whole world, including you, disappeared, ended or even went to hell. But the one thing still functioning about me is my surgeon side.” Yeah, like Ivan had just thought. “Professionally, I am obliged to tell her she’s well enough to go. After that, she can choose to stay longer, or you convince her to stay. But I will tell her the truth. I won’t let you hold her hostage to your own ends and convictions.” Ivan started to protest, but Antonio raised a hand in a gesture of finality. “Either you give me a good enough reason not to discharge her, Ivan, or get out of my way.”
So this was it. The only way Antonio would budge now was if Ivan played his last card. Much as he hated it, he had to tell him everything.
“Fine, I’ll give you the reason.” Feeling as if he was about to jump off a cliff, he inhaled a bolstering breath. “Got something stronger than coffee around here?”
Antonio turned away and started walking back toward his office. “I have medical-grade alcohol.”
He fell into step with him. “Yeah, I forgot for a second there that you don’t drink.”
“Even if I did, I wouldn’t keep my vices around my place of work.”
“Yeah, well, for me to finally tell you what happened in my life before we met, we’ll probably both need something.”
“I have intravenous morphine.” Antonio walked through his door, left Ivan to close it behind them. “Though I probably need sodium pentothal if I want anything approaching the truth. The maximum dose, for an elephant. You’re the most drug-resistant ogre I’ve ever encountered.”
Ivan threw himself on the black leather couch while Antonio sat in his preferred armchair. “Still harping on when you wasted three times the dosage of anesthetic to put me under when you had to pull the shrapnel out of my thigh? I’d told you to do it with me awake. You’re the one who wouldn’t listen.”
“I’ll listen now.” Antonio leaned forward and reached for the carafe on the table, poured one cup of black coffee. Ivan knew it was for him when Antonio added three spoons of sugar, as he knew he took it.
Grumbling that it was a poor substitute for Scotch, he took the cup from Antonio, at once taking a gulp, letting its contents scorch his throat.
Antonio sat back, leveled his gaze on him dispassionately. “So are you going to talk, or are you again going to be the elusive son of a bitch who never told even me anything about your past?”
Ivan snorted. “As if you were any better. You found out everything about your family and kept it to yourself, hatched this moronic vengeance plot that is now costing you the love of your life. If you’d told me, I would have probably saved you from making that catastrophic mistake.”
“Yeah, sure. You would have saved me from myself.”
“As I recall, I did, on a few notable, potentially fatal, incidents.”
Antonio’s frown took on a defensive edge. “I didn’t want to share specifics until I felt I had something worthwhile to share. Besides, it’s different. I didn’t spend the last thirty years hiding the truth about my past from you. I didn’t know anything about it until recently. But you came to The Organization old enough to know everything about yours.”
“Touché.” Ivan’s grunt acknowledged the inequality of their positions. He’d always felt Antonio didn’t like that he kept him, of all people, in the dark. But he’d never pushed.
He was pushing now. And maybe it was just as well. Maybe he needed to purge the poison bottled up in his system. And who better to help him do it but his best friend and the world’s leading healer?
When he didn’t start talking at once, Antonio started to rise. “Seems you do need a shot of sodium pentothal to help loosen that calcified tongue of yours.”
Ivan barked a mirthless laugh at his friend’s threat and gestured for him to settle down. “I’ll talk without a truth serum. But when I do, you’ll end up doing what I demanded. So maybe you should just save yourself listening to the heap of crap that is my life story and just do as I say.”
Antonio sat back, waving nonchalantly. “What’s new? I’ve been taking your crap since I was eleven. Talk already. But whatever you say, there’s no guarantee it’ll change my mind.”
“Oh, it will.”
“No guarantee.”
“All right, fine. Here goes, then.” At Antonio’s encouraging nod, he felt he got a glimpse of his oldest and closest friend again. It made it easier to start. “I was born Konstantin Ivanovich in Russia before the collapse of the Soviet Union.” He paused as understanding flared in Antonio’s eyes. Every member of their brotherhood had explained why he’d adopted his current name, except Ivan. “Yes, that’s why I chose my name. Very predictable.” He inhaled, went on. “During the upheaval leading to the collapse, my father found himself in a dangerous position. He’d inherited his job as a bookkeeper in Russia’s organized crime and he needed out—out of the mob, and of the country. There was one great opportunity
