The Pretty Psycho (St. Vasili’s Academy #2)

29. Adrian

29

ADRIAN

The moment Yolanda spoke those words and told us Jax’s location, I ran.

I fucking ran like my life depended on it, because I didn't want to believe that one of my best friends was no longer here with us.

Admin building, she'd said, and I didn't stick around to hear more. There was only one thought in my head and that was to find my best friend and to make sure he was alive. She was wrong. She must be fucking wrong.

My phone started ringing just as I was about to head inside the building and as I pulled it out I saw it was Ethan.

"Ethan! Jax?—"

"Get your ass to the admin building. Now!" he barked.

"Almost there."

I had no idea how fast I ran, how much time had passed, but as I ran upstairs, keeping my phone to my ear, I could already hear them—shouting, arguing, someone was crying. The moment I stepped onto the second floor, I saw them—Vin, Ethan, and Dante standing above somebody, while a girl I’d seen around the Academy sat on the floor not too far away from them, crying.

Bodies littered the area, at least five of them, none belonging to us. But there was only one body I could look at, and he was there on the floor, with Gabriela pumping his chest, screaming at the other three.

Vin was on the phone, barking orders in some other language. My eyes connected with Dante's and I knew that I would never forget that sight for as long as I lived.

My friend never cried. Hell, sometimes I feared that the woman who was now working on our best friend stole it all from him, yet there he was, with tears in his eyes, shaking his head as if he was trying to tell me something with the movement.

Footsteps echoed behind me, and I turned around, ready for another fight, when I realized it was Vega. Vega who'd run after me.

Vega who looked equally as worried as I was.

I didn't wait for her to reach me before running toward Gabriela and sliding down on the floor.

Gabriela's dark eyes connected with mine, the terror in them enough to have my heart climbing up my throat.

"I've lost his pulse twice," she said, breathing heavily. "I need you to continue for me. Can you do that? I'm getting tired already." I simply nodded and she quickly moved away, letting me take over.

"What the fuck happened?" Vega asked the moment she came closer to us, but I couldn't pay attention to her. I looked down at Jax, at the angry red cut going over his eyebrow, his eye, and finishing halfway on his cheek. I looked at all the blood seeping from a deep wound on his body. Bleeding through the cloth the guys must have placed there. "Yolanda said?—"

"Murderer!" the girl who was sitting on the floor screamed, pointing at Vega. "She is a murderer!"

I looked at Vega, then back at the girl.

"Hailey, what are you talking about? What do you mean, Vega is a murderer?"

"No," she shook her head, crying harder and harder. "Y-Yolanda," she stammered. "Yolanda did this. She let them in. She?—"

No.

No, no, no.

She was Vega's friend. Her only friend.

She was there with us. She saved us. She?—

"You're lying," Vega murmured. "No. It can't be. You're lying!"

"I'm not lying," the girl, Hailey, stood up now, wiping her cheeks. "I was hiding in the office when I heard them arguing. Jax caught her red-handed. He fucking caught her speaking with Dain. He confronted her the moment Dain left, and she did that." Hailey pointed at Jax. "They started fighting and she cut him across the face. She begged him to listen, but he wouldn't. H-He," she wheezed. "Another guy came and shot him in the chest. That one." She pointed at one of the soldiers on the ground. "Yolanda killed him."

"No." Vega shook her head. "No. It can't be."

"It doesn't matter now," Gabriela cut her off. "What matters is getting Jax out of here and to the hospital. His pulse is weak." Vega dropped down on her knees, right next to me, and when I looked up, I saw the devastation rocking her to the core. "Where the fuck is that chopper?" Gabriela yelled.

"It's landing right now," Vin informed. "We need to go now. We need to get him out of here."

Vin, Ethan, and Dante bent down, two of them opposite of me and Dante right next to me, slowly moving Vega away. We lifted Jax, and started going down the stairs as Vega held the makeshift bandage to the wound on Jax's chest, Gabriela and Hailey trailing after us.

"I'm going to kill her," Vega said. "What I did to Dain is nothing compared to what she has coming," she added, her voice dripping with pure malice.

I looked at her as we pushed outside of the building, seeing the hatred directed at the girl she once called her friend.

A friend who worked with Dain.

A friend who had been a mole all this time.

Time was both our friend and an enemy as we sat huddled in the waiting room of the hospital in Munich, waiting for the doctor to come out of the operating room.

The ride in the chopper was a short one, but it felt as if another lifetime had passed from the moment we all got inside until we landed on top of the hospital, each of us as quiet as a mouse when the doctors took Jax away, hooking him up on different machines and leaving us behind.

That was almost two hours ago, and we still had no news.

Gabriela kept pacing from one side of the room to the other, driving us all insane, but no one said a single word to make her stop. It was her way of thinking, and seeing as her team members were the ones also betraying us, I could understand the need to pace and be pissed off.

"What's taking them so long?" Vega asked, her knee bouncing right next to mine, while her hand kept squeezing mine on and off, as if she was trying to give me her strength even when she didn't have enough left for herself.

"I don't know," I said. "He looked bad, Bambi. He was practically?—"

"No," she cut me off. "Nope. Listen to me, Adrian." She cradled my face in her hands, her eyes shining with a myriad of emotions she was still processing. "Jax will be okay. He has to be okay. He—" Her voice broke, her eyes closed, and I could see the fresh tears trickling down her cheeks. "He has to be okay."

I knew they had become closer over these past few weeks, and as much as it pained me to see her like this, I appreciated the fact that she was as close to my friends as I was.

"Yeah," I placed my hand on top of hers, "he's gonna be okay."

"I still can't believe it," Dante finally spoke, after keeping quiet from the moment we arrived at the hospital. "I just… We fucking trusted her. We took her in, showed her everything. She knew about The Brotherhood, and this is how she repays us."

"We don't know what really happened," Gabriela chimed in. "It seems as if she tried to explain."

"Don't try to defend her," Vega gritted out. "There's no excuse for betraying us in such a way. There's no excuse in lying to us, pretending to befriend me, making me believe she was one of us. If she was in real trouble, she should've told us. She should've said something. Instead, she left him there to bleed out, probably trying to run away."

"She did save you," Vin added, earning a glare from Vega. "Just saying."

"And is that supposed to excuse her behavior? She was probably banking on killing him to cover her tracks. Hell, she even lied about her lack of training, which makes me wonder what else she's lied about."

Ethan kept quiet, observing the situation, probably weighing everything we had learned from Hailey who was sitting in the corner, her eyes plastered to the floor.

"Did she mention anything else?" I asked Hailey, hoping to clear this all up. There was no way Yolanda was such a good actress. She couldn't have faked her concern for Vega and every time she came to ask for an update on her whereabouts. I just… This didn't make any sense.

"Not really," Hailey said. "She kept telling him it isn't what it looks like. That there's a reason, but…" she trailed off. "She never got a chance to explain anything. I don't know Jax all that well, but I have never seen him so angry. Although," she straightened up, "Yolanda begged him to stay with her after she shot that other guy. She tried stopping the bleeding, but she ran just moments before you guys came." She looked at Ethan, Dante, and Vin. "I just didn't think she could be capable of something like that."

"Me neither," Vega murmured.

I turned toward her to gauge if she saw anything weird from Yolanda, when the doors leading toward the OR opened, revealing the doctor who was operating on Jax.

All of us stood up, rushing toward him as a group, and I could only imagine what a sight we all made. Half of us had blood on our clothes and our faces, the other half was bruised, but the doctor stood still, not even flinching when Gabriela got into his face, asking for news.

"Is he okay?" Gabriela asked at the same time Dante asked, "Did he survive?"

"Can we see him?" came from Vin.

"What's the prognosis?" asked Ethan, while Vega and I stood behind them, our hands clasped together, waiting for the doctor to speak.

"Guys, guys." He smiled softly, looking over all of us as if we were kids. "His left lung had been hit, which we've managed to repair. The bullet missed his heart by a millimeter, and I don't know if it was luck or somebody looking down on him, but whatever it was, it saved him. He has lost a lot of blood and we are keeping him in the ICU and giving him a transfusion. We've managed to patch up the wound on his face, but…" We all waited with bated breath when he smiled widely. "He’s young and he’s strong. These next twenty-four hours are critical, but we will keep you posted." A collective gasp could be heard from all of us. "He has a long road ahead of him, but we believe he will pull through with flying colors."

"Thank you," I croaked. "Thank you so much."

"When can we see him?" Vega asked, squeezing my hand to the point of pain, but I let her. She needed this news as much as any of us. "Are we actually able to see him?"

"They're moving him to his room right now, but I don't see why not. Just, not too many people at the same time. I want him to rest, to heal, and he can't do that if he has the excitement of too many people at the same time. I'll send a nurse for you guys once they settle him in and we will let you see him then. Only two at a time, please."

We all nodded, finally relaxing for the first time tonight.

The moment the doctor left, we all huddled close, starting to deal with the issue at hand.

"What are we going to do about Gerard and Heinrich?" Vin asked. "One of us needs to go back to the Academy and deal with that shit. Gerard's soldiers are no longer there, but?—"

"I'll go," Ethan said. "I'll deal with the mess there and you stay here. Arseniy and Dimitri are still there, and they have no idea what has happened."

"I'm coming with you," Gabriela said.

"You're not going anywhere without me," Dante suddenly announced, making us all look at him. The way he looked at Gabriela told me not to argue with him, and for the first time since I met her she kept her mouth shut, simply nodding. "You'll keep us posted?" Dante looked at me.

"Of course. Let me know what's happening there."

"I will." He nodded, taking a step back. "Vin, is the chopper still here?"

"Yeah," the man in question confirmed. "It can be ready in a couple of minutes. Give me just a second to call the pilot."

We said our goodbyes five minutes later, letting Ethan, Dante, and Gabriela leave, along with Hailey, while Vin, Vega, and I followed the nurse who came to take us to Jax's room shortly after. Vin stayed back, letting us go first, but I didn’t miss the haunted look in his eyes and what was no doubt the memories of his family getting destroyed.

I grabbed Vega's hand as we walked, feeling grateful that this night didn't turn out differently, because for one second there, back at the Academy, I thought I would never be able to hold her hand again.

I thought it was the end, but in reality it was just the beginning.

Now we were going to bring hell to them .