A Little Too Much, A Little Too Deep

Chapter 28

I must be going crazy - I must be hallucinating what I just heard. I look between Dimitri's pained face and Abe's furious one with a gaped mouth.

"What did you just say?" I gasp and Dimitri looks down to our laps.

"Tasha. She was here with Robert; she was telling him what to say. She was having him compel me to kill you, and when I did, to forget everything," he whispers brokenly, and I shake my head.

I knew that she didn't like me, but to go the extreme and try to make Dimitri kill me was mind-boggling. Of course, nobody would see it coming if Dimitri had succeeded. I rest my head on Dimitri's shoulder while I try to absorb.

"Baba, you said Tasha as well, what did you find out?" I ask exhaustedly. Dimitri gingerly wraps his arms around me again and I kiss his shoulder to let him know it's ok.

"We got her fingerprints on one of the photos, and inside the wooden box. Someone scrubbed her prints from the Moroi database, but not from the human's. She would have had to register when she started working at the martial arts studio," Abe says gruffly, taking his jacket off and tossing it on the couch. I scoot out of Dimitri's lap and sit next to him, tucking myself into his side while looking over the others in the room.

Pavel and Adrian have left the room, I assume that he is with the feeder right now. I stretch my feet out in front of me and groan a little, feeling a small twinge in my back. Mom is crouched in front of me in a flash.

"When you fell, did you fall directly on your back or did you twist to the side?" She asks.

"I ended up twisting onto my back, but hit the table more on my hip," I say and she pulls a face. She pulls out her phone and put it to her ear.

"Hi, this is Janine Hathaway. I know that the clinic is closing soon, but I need to speak with Dr. Chu, it's urgent." Mom says into the phone calmly. She listens for a few moments before speaking again. "Tell her there was an incident at the house and Rosemarie needs to be looked at."

Ending the call and shoving her phone back into her pocket, she takes my hands gently and pulls me to stand. I cast a look down to Dimitri before following Mom into the downstairs bathroom.

"I need to see your back," she says helping me lift my shirt up. She moves me around gently and palpates my back, making me gasp loudly and flinch away from her touch. "Sorry," she whispers before continuing to look over me.

"How bad is it?" I ask hesitantly and she meets my eyes in the mirror.

"It's not great. You're going to be sore," she says and angles me so I can see. Bruises already forming over my hip and lower back and disappearing under my pants. My shoulder blades look bad too, from where they ground into the glass and floor while I struggled.

"He can't see these," I whisper quietly and Mom gives me sympathetic look. Dimitri is already a mess, if he sees the bruises on my back, he will feel even worse. Mom sighs as she helps me pull my shirt back over my head,

and walks back out of the bathroom with me to see Dimitri sitting on the couch with Abe talking adamantly. His eyes are haunted, and I know that he is going to have a hard time forgiving himself even though I have already done so. Seems like we are repeating history a little.

"How do you feel?" I ask Adrian, who is slumped in the armchair, clutching a tumbler of clear liquid, but from the smell, I'm assuming it's gin.

"I'll be ok. Are you alright?" he says lazily, looking up at me with a raised brow. I nod and move to sit in the other chair, curling up with the pillow. I close my eyes and try to alleviate the pounding in my head.