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

30. Vega

30

VEGA

I fucking hated hospitals.

I hated the smell.

I hated the beeping machines.

I hated the fake smiles from the nurses and doctors.

And most of all, I hated the fact that it’d been three days and Jax still hasn't opened his eyes. It killed me to see him like this, in a bed that seemed larger than him, surrounded by nothing but white, while all of us waited for him to open his eyes.

The doctor said Jax was in a coma, due to the massive trauma to his body and the blood loss he had sustained. The only silver lining was the fact that there was no brain damage, but other than that, we had no idea if and when he would be waking up. If anything, with every new day that passed, I only worried more, unable to leave the hospital for the fear that we would miss something if we went somewhere.

Ethan, Dante, and Gabriela had dealt with the issue at the Academy, along with Arseniy and Dimitri who were on the other side of the institution dealing with the soldiers at the main gate. Judging by the number of soldiers that were actually there, it would seem that Dain operated alone on this particular operation, rushing into it because he didn't want to wait for his father or Heinrich. The problem was that even after killing him, even after ridding this world of his filth, I still felt unsettled, as if I didn't do enough.

Adrian sat next to me, staring at an unmoving Jax, much how I did, but there were no changes. And the fact that there were no changes only aggravated all of us, plus no one wanted to actually talk about the big elephant in the room.

What the fuck happened with Yolanda?

I still had a hard time understanding what happened, or how she could have betrayed us like that, but the more I thought about it, the more it all made sense.

She was always there, so accepting, so kind, she managed to fool me into thinking she was my friend. I had hoped it was a mistake, but the CCTV we had recovered from the admin building showed her talking with Dain, and that wasn't the only time. Her room proved to be a chest of secrets she had kept hidden from the rest of us, revealing who she truly was.

She played the part of an innocent daughter of a Swedish mogul so well and we all fell for it. Most of all, I fell for it, and I was usually better at reading people. But she played me, she pushed all the right buttons that she must have known I would have, finding her way into our inner circle. None of us were innocent, but what she did, the way she'd fought Jax on that tape—there was no way she was someone that didn't have the necessary training.

Heinrich and Gerard went into hiding, along with Yolanda, but I had no doubt that we would find them sooner rather than later. We just had more important things to take care of right now.

The Academy had become the official base for The Brotherhood, and in the days since we'd been here with Jax, the rest of the troops had arrived, training and researching to find the two men responsible for so much heartache. Even a lifetime spent in hell wouldn't absolve them of their sins.

The door suddenly opened, revealing Gabriela with her perfect updo and makeup that I envied on her. There was not a single time when she didn't look perfect, but over the course of the last couple of days, something had changed.

The snarkiness she usually graced us with was no longer there. Or, well, the usual bitchiness she graced us with was no longer there. Back at the Academy she worked closely with Ethan, coordinating with the teams to find the men we were looking for.

I didn't have a chance to ask her about the soldiers from her ranks that had betrayed us all, but Adrian mentioned that she disposed of an entire unit after she found out they were conspiring against her. What disposing meant, I didn't ask, but whatever it was I knew she would have dealt with it in the best possible way.

"Anything?" she asked as she walked inside the room, her eyes plastered to the man in the bed.

"No." I shook my head. "The doctor just left and his vitals are stable. His wounds are healing, so?—"

"So, he's just being stubborn," she huffed, sitting down right next to me.

The nurses tried kicking us out several times that first day, but after they realized we wouldn't be going anywhere, they decided to move Jax to a room that at least had a couch and enough space for all of us at the same time. That whole rule from the doctor where only two of us were supposed to be in the room at the same time pretty much fell into the water the moment we saw Jax and the state he was in.

There was gauze covering the left side of his face, where that goddamn cut was, and his upper body was littered with bandages right where the gunshot wounds were. But he was alive, and that's all that mattered.

I opened my mouth to reply, when the voice we hadn’t heard in days spoke, shocking us all to our core.

"I'm not stubborn," Jax rasped as all of our heads swiveled toward him. "I just didn't want to see your faces."

The three of us jumped up, swarming him like bees and surrounding his bed.

"Jax!" I screamed, holding on to the bed as if my life depended on it. "You're awake."

"And you're very loud," he croaked. "I need water."

Gabriela moved away from us and pulled a bottle of water open, putting it inside the cup sitting on the nightstand next to his bed.

"Just slowly," she murmured, bringing it to him. "Baby sips."

"Yes, Mom." He chuckled, bringing the straw Gabriela had added into the cup to his lips.

"I'm glad to see you awake, brother," Adrian rasped, and when I looked at him I could see a thousand emotions playing on his face. "I think we need to call the doctor to check you out."

"I'll call them," Gabriela said. "Stay with him."

She rushed out of the room, leaving us with Jax who was still holding on to the cup of water she gave him. His left shoulder and left arm were in a cast, making it difficult for him to move. The moment Gabriela went out, he looked at us, that smile slipping from his face faster than it appeared.

"Do you already know what happened?" he asked, looking straight at me.

"We do," I bit out. "I'm sorry, Jax. I didn't know. I?—"

"I know you didn't," he said. "None of us did. She played us pretty well, don't you think?"

I could only nod, unable to say another word. To know that the person responsible for him being here was the person I brought into our circle did not sit well with me, but if he blamed me for it, he didn't show it.

"How are things at the Academy?"

"Good," Adrian answered. "Ethan and Dante are there. They should be arriving in about an hour to the hospital and then I’m going there. The rest of the teams have arrived as well, so we're all ready to go once the moment strikes."

"And Yolanda?" he bit out.

"She's missing," I answered this time. "W-What—" I cleared out my throat. "What are we going to do about her?"

He smiled, the sinister look on the part of his face we could see chilling me to the bone.

"Oh, I have a plan for our little Yolanda. She's going to wish she was never born." His fingers tightened around the plastic cup he held, but the promise in his eyes made me realize that what Yolanda did to me with this betrayal was nothing compared to what she did to Jax, and I wasn't talking about the physical aspect.

That look… That look could only come from a love that turned into hatred.

That look could only come from a man who wanted to destroy the woman who tried to destroy him.