Chapter Twelve
Niamh
Laying in a hospital bed, I stared up at the ceiling, and it was kind of surreal thinking about what happened just a few hours ago.
I hated referring to that man as my father. He was no father to me. He was a monster and I hated him more than anything else in the world.
The man, Ivan Volkov, left without giving up my brother, and took me out of that hellhole. I’d been about to die. I knew my father would have gladly sent a bullet into my skull without a thought. I wasn’t dead, and I was no longer pregnant either. The doctor had already come and told me that news.
I was alone. Again.
Peter hadn’t stopped by. Neither had my brother, or anyone.
I should be used to this now but the biggest problem was there were so many unanswered questions. Who was Peter Shadows? Who was Ivan Volkov and why did I recognize him?
I couldn’t focus as the pain in my body hadn’t been quite numbed by the medication. I didn’t like to take painkillers. I’d seen too many people become addicted to them, and, well, I was in pain and could easily get addicted to them.
I had no idea who was paying for all of this. I didn’t have any health care insurance, and I certainly didn’t earn enough to pay for this kind of treatment.
Tears filled my eyes, but I quickly blinked them away as the door to my hospital room opened. I opened my eyes, and sure enough, there was Peter Shadows. He closed the door.
Only, this wasn’t the Peter Shadows I knew. This was someone different. He pulled up a chair, turned it, and straddled it.
Neither of us spoke for several minutes. I glanced at him, and then looked around the room, trying to figure out what I was supposed to say to him. I didn’t know what to say, or what to do. Everything was a mess right now. We were going to have a baby and I had thought myself in love with him, but that had been a lie. I was in love with a man that didn’t exist.
“I spoke to the doctor,” Peter said.
This drew my attention to him.
“He said you are going to be fine. One day, you’ll be able to have more child—”
“Who are you?” I asked. I already knew what the doctor had said. My pregnancy had been short and I had lost it due to the beating I took. There was nothing to suggest I couldn’t have more children, or even a healthy pregnancy. All the right words were being spoken, but I didn’t care.
“I know you’re not Peter Shadows.”
“Just like you’re not Niamh Long,” he said.
I smiled. “So is that it? I was trying to get away from my father. What is your excuse?”
“I was doing as I was told.”
I didn’t know if that was worse. I wanted to cry and I gritted my teeth. I had to keep those tears locked up inside. I wasn’t going to cry in front of him.
“It was all a lie, wasn’t it?” He didn’t say anything, but I knew it was. “You were doing as you were told, which means your boss, I’m guessing Ivan Volkov, told you what to do.”
“I was following orders, and it was simple. Get Niamh Byrne to fall in love with me, and get her pregnant.”
Pain sliced through my body, but it wasn’t a physical pain. No, this was … emotional. I should have known these past few months had been a lie. A big fat, stinking lie.
“Well, I guess it’s a job well done, and then my dad messed it up.” I wanted to put my hand on my stomach, but I stopped myself.
I didn’t think I would ever forget that moment I’d lost the baby. The pain had been … there were just no words.
They’d taken the dress from me. It was placed in a clear plastic bag, and it was in the corner on a small chair, with a few other things. Now, I was in a hospital gown, trying to preserve my dignity, although I didn’t feel like I had any left. I felt so lost, so alone.
“I’m Peter Orlov,” he said.
My attention went back to him.
“I work for Ivan Volkov, I’m one of his Brigadiers, and my loyalty is to him and him alone.”
I should have known that anyone who had any interest in me was only doing it because they’d been ordered to. Thinking back to that moment when he walked into the diner, I couldn’t help but snort. My initial instincts had been accurate. Peter had been a threat to me, but for all the wrong reasons.
“I get it,” I said. “You don’t have to keep reminding me. You will do whatever your boss says, and if that means sleep with me, get me pregnant, then you’ll do it. To hell with the consequences, right?”
He didn’t argue with me.
I meant nothing to him.
I was nothing.
Clenching my hands into fists, I sunk my nails into the flesh of my palm, doing anything to keep a lid on this pain. Did he not see what he was saying to me? I wasn’t worth caring for. He was following orders. He didn’t want me, not really. I was just a job.
The door to my hospital room opened, and this time I saw Ivan Volkov as he stepped inside. He spoke to Peter, and a second later he turned and walked out of the room, leaving me with Ivan. A stranger, and yet not.
“How are you feeling?” Ivan asked.
“Why do I feel like I know you?” I asked. At first, I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, but that wasn’t polite. No matter who raised me, I wasn’t going to be rude to anyone.
“We’ll get to that soon,” Ivan said, moving toward the side of my bed to take a seat. “Tell me, how are you feeling?”
I didn’t see the point in lying, nor did I see the point in ignoring him. I’m not rude, and besides, in a strange way, this man saved my life. I wasn’t stupid, I was aware my father intended to kill me, and it was Ivan Volkov who saved me, bargained for me.
“How’s my brother?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about him.”
It was the first time I had seen anyone get away from my father without having to give something up. Ivan had been in control, not my father, and that was kind of fun.
“Please, Niamh, tell me how you’re feeling?”
He seemed to genuinely want to know, and staring at him, I didn’t want to argue. It had been a long day and night. The pain hadn’t been fun.
“Not so good and I don’t want the meds increased. I don’t know if it would be right to say I’ve had worse, or if that would be a lie as well.” I glanced down at my hospital-gowned body. Half of me was covered by the bedsheet as well. I didn’t imagine I looked that great. With my dad pulling my hair, I was pretty sure a couple of pieces had been torn out. Then of course, I didn’t imagine my face was bruise-free. When he pulled me out of the truck and slapped me around, he didn’t stop there. Whenever he got angry, he’d come back and hurt me.
I was always an easy target for my father’s wrath, and that hadn’t changed once in the last few years, not even with me running away. If anything, it had made him angrier. I had truly believed that today I was going to die.
He’d been so angry, and there had been no stopping him. Not that any of his soldiers or men had attempted to do so.
I was trying not to think about the baby. I’d not even known for sure I was pregnant and now I had lost it, and that saddened me. I didn’t want to lose my baby, any baby. The temptation to put my hand on my stomach was strong, but I held back. Ivan was a stranger. He didn’t need to see my weakness.
“You will be able to have more children,” Ivan said. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I got the information on your father’s location too late. You were never meant to be harmed.”
“So, you and Peter knew exactly who I was?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And you planned this?”
“Yes.”
There was no sadness or regret. He just looked at me like it made him feel nothing. Tears filled my eyes as I let the experience wash over me, because the truth was, it had sucked, big time.
There wasn’t a single moment through any of this where it had felt good. All those times I thought Peter was a good ma n— a gentleman, charmin g— it had all been a lie.
“Why?” I asked. “Why go to those extremes? Why lie to me? What did I ever do to you?”
Ivan sat there in a chair and stared at me for what felt like the longest time. I didn’t even know if he heard me, but then, in slow movements, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out something I hadn’t seen in a long time.
On a cheap piece of rope, dangling in the center, was a cross. I had won it at a fair that had come to town when I was a child. The woman behind the counter hadn’t liked my mom, who’d been irritated that I had won anything. When I won that cross, it had a metal chain, but halfway around the fair, it snapped. My mother didn’t care and she was only interested in getting another drink. While she’d been distracted at the bar, I ran back to the woman and asked what I could do to fix it.
She took a piece of black rope, tiny, the kind used for crafting, slid the cross onto the rope, tied it up, and slid it right over my neck. She told me if I was ever feeling scared or alone, or worried, then I was to hold onto the cross and know I was being taken care of. That someone out there did love me.
I kept that chain until five years ago, when I was at a hospital. My mother had been drinking again, but it had gotten bad, and resulted in me having no choice but to take her to the hospital to get her stomach pumped. I’d been in the waiting room, and that was when I remembered the man before me. He looked colder now, scarier.
In the waiting room, Ivan Volkov had looked like a man ready to give up, ready for anyone to kill him.
“In my moment of darkness, of weakness, you came and sat with me,” Ivan said. “I know you remember it now. You could have left me alone. You could have ignored me the way everyone else intended to. You didn’t. You, Niamh, a young and slightly terrified woman, came to sit next to me. You offered me comfort when I needed it most.”
****
Ivan
Five Years Ago
She was gone.
I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
The pain was unlike anything I had ever imagined.
After everything I had done, this was the worst feeling in the world. This was helplessness. This was pain and torture mingled into one, because I couldn’t save her from this. I couldn’t protect her. I couldn’t even stop it. There was nothing I could do.
I had a gun. A knife. There were drugs I could get.
It would be so easy to end it all and join her.
The world didn’t need another fucked-up monster. All I wanted to do was hurt people. To hurt anyone that had lived, while she had died.
Lost in my own world of pain and torture, I didn’t realize I had been seen until someone sat down beside me. I was about to lose my shit and scream at whoever had thought they could approach. Could I not have a moment’s peace to mourn? To kill myself? To plot the way I was going to die?
“Are you okay?” a feminine voice asked.
I was ready to growl at that voice, and I was just about to do that, when I turned and saw a sad smile looking back at me. She was young, late teens, possibly early twenties. I wasn’t sure. I’d never seen her before.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Yeah, me too. My mother is in the hospital getting her stomach pumped for the hundredth time. She’s never happy when they do that. She always said alcohol is used to get drunk, not tossed down some drain or put in a medical bag.”
The woman beside me gave a sad smile.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
I wanted to ignore her. I intended to ignore her, but something just … it … I had to tell her what was going on. I didn’t understand it. None of this made any sense to me, and so I did.
“The love of my life has just died.”
“I’m so sorry.” She reached out and put a hand on my arm. “That is so awful.”
I nodded.
We both sat in silence.
“She was my wife,” I said. No one knew we had gotten married in secret. She had known who I was, what I was capable of, and yet she had still loved me. From the moment she had met me, she’d blown my world completely apart. And now she was gone, as if she never existed. The world was never going to know her, or know us.
Everything I had built and the man I’d become was because of her.
When the woman began moving, I turned toward her and watched as she removed a necklace from around her neck. It was an ugly looking thing. A faded rope, with a cross dangling from it. “I’m not the religious type,” I said, when she held it out.
“I’m not much of a religious type either. Never even been inside a church.” She licked her lips. “I won this at a fair when I was about eight years old, I think. I’ve had to change the rope once as it snapped. My dad, he’d been … well, it doesn’t matter. What matters is the woman that gifted this to me when I won it, told me if I ever felt alone or scared, then I should hold onto it, and know that I was never alone.”
It was a silly tale.
“Maybe your wife is wherever she is, and you can hold this because we share this moment together, and whenever you feel alone or sad, or in need of feeling close to her, this could help.”
I wasn’t a child. I didn’t need little trinkets.
“For fuck’s sake, Niamh, get your useless fat ass out of that fucking chair, and get over here.”
That voice angered me.
Niamh got scared, and slid that cross into my hands. In that moment, I knew a perfect stranger had gifted me with something precious of hers, in my moment of need. And in that moment, I knew I had to do something to protect her.
****
Niamh
Present Day
“You didn’t need to do anything. I didn’t give you that necklace in the hope of getting anything in return. I gave you that necklace so it would bring you peace.”
I’d never told a soul about the strange man who looked ready to kill himself. Over the years, I wondered what happened to him and whether my necklace had helped. It was easy to remember him when I had reached for my necklace, only to find my chest empty.
Ivan got to his feet and stepped closer.
Having the memory of who he was, I no longer felt afraid of him. “Does Peter know how we know each other?” I asked.
“No,” Ivan said. “No one knows anything about how you and I know each other. No one knows that I was … married. No one knows I was in love.”
This made me sad and in that moment I felt pity for this man, which was completely insane because he’d sent a man to manipulate me. I didn’t want to reason with him, or attempt to even understand him.
“What is going to happen to me?” I asked. I had to stay on track. It was going to be the only way I would survive.
Ivan took hold of my wrist and put the necklace back into my hand. “You need this more than I do,” he said.
I held the necklace within my grasp. At first, I didn’t look at it, but then, I couldn’t help but chance a glance at it. I hadn’t seen this necklace in five years. I’d given it to this strange, lonely, and heartbroken man, without even realizing I needed it. I hadn’t thought about myself. All I wanted to do was make it better for him. He’d been so lost and alone.
All that time, I’d been helping Ivan Volkov. That was insane.
“You’ve not changed anything,” I said.
“No, I never needed to.” He stepped back and took a seat. “I’m sorry about you losing the baby, but I am not sorry for sending my man to you.”
I wanted to scoff, to do or say something, but I just shook my head. “You sent me a lie. Do you have any idea what that is like? Peter … everything about him is a lie.”
“You’re going to marry him,” Ivan said.
I shook my head. “No, I’m not. I’m not going to marry a man who has lied to me. Who has completely betrayed my trust. I cannot do that.”
“You’re going to, because he is going to be able to protect you. I’m aware of your father and what he is capable of. I know he’s got some favors to call in, and he will not have a problem hurting you. Not that he knows how important you are to me.”
This felt so surreal.
“I’m not important.”
“But you are, Niamh Byrne.”