Chapter 14
Alina
On the doctors’ advice, I start radiation and immunotherapy the very next morning, and my days become all about the various treatments.
In between IVs and endless medical appointments, Valery and Konstantin visit as much as Alexei allows them, and so do Chloe and Nikolai before they return to the United States.
I don’t get a chance to talk to anyone in private again, but I think my family is somewhat reassured regardless because they can’t not see just how dedicated Alexei is to me and to my recovery.
He’s with me literally twenty-four seven.
I don’t know why he bothered with the penthouse nearby because he sleeps, eats, and works at the clinic.
The uncomfortable hospital bed next to mine was swiftly upgraded to a luxurious extra-long king, and that’s where Alexei sleeps—if he ever sleeps, that is.
Whenever I wake up, he’s always either watching me or working on his laptop, presumably keeping up with his business back home.
Occasionally, Ruslan is there too, and I overhear them discussing various projects and investments, many of which I had no idea the Leonovs were into.
I’ve always thought my husband’s family was more into shady, barely legal ventures, many of them involving weapons and the like.
But cutting-edge pharmaceuticals and AI seem to be major interests of theirs as well, and they’re big on philanthropy and supporting the arts.
My husband has apparently made a major contribution to the new opera house that’s being built in Moscow, and Ruslan is on the board of several charity organizations that oversee initiatives ranging from malaria vaccines in Africa to childhood literacy in disadvantaged areas of Central Asia.
Why aren’t they better known for this stuff? I would think they’d want to shout about their charitable endeavors from the rooftops—anything to offset their terrible reputation. Unless… they like it that people think them cruel and ruthless.
I bet that kind of reputation could be an asset in certain business circles.
Also, I wonder how much of said reputation is due to their father.
Alexei is only thirty, and Ruslan is even younger, so it’s possible that most, if not all, of the brutal deeds attributed to the Leonovs can be laid at the feet of one Boris Leonov.
Then again, maybe I’m just grasping at straws to justify my growing reliance on my husband and my increasing attachment to him. I hate to admit it, but I now crave his presence as much as I do his touch—and the latter not necessarily in a sexual way.
He’s getting me addicted to him, dependent on him in much the same way that I’d once been dependent on the painkillers that helped my headaches.
With him at my side, it’s easy to keep my word and not abuse the meds I now have such easy access to.
I don’t need the meds because he’s my pain relief, my stress reducer, my distraction from the anxiety that would otherwise consume me alive.
With Alexei, my illness is more than manageable.
At times, it’s almost… pleasant.
My mornings start with a kiss and a gentle neck massage, followed by a breakfast of my favorite foods that he spoon-feeds to me, same as most of my meals.
I don’t know why I allow this, but I do—and for some reason, his feeding me helps me keep the food down despite the still-present nausea.
On the one day I tried eating by myself like the grown-up I am, I threw up immediately, so I haven’t tried again.
Not only does his spoon-feeding me seem to be easier on my stomach, but the way he looks at me as he places each bite into my mouth makes me feel like my old self.
Wanted. Desired. Dangerously so.
My body may be battling a deadly disease, but it still responds to the dark heat in his eyes, to the scorching pull between us that nothing seems able to extinguish.
Not that he ever acts on that pull. He’s careful with me nowadays, much too careful for my liking.
It’s as if he’s afraid I’ll break if he does anything more than give me a tender kiss.
I won’t break, but I don’t know how to convince him of that—or if I should.
After all, this is a marriage I didn’t want, the culmination of a betrothal forced upon me when I was just a child.
Except, with each day, it’s getting harder to remember how it all began, to recall all the reasons why I shouldn’t let myself fall for this man who takes such tender care of me.
Is it all an act? If so, for what purpose? We’re already married. He has me where he’s always wanted me—and yet nothing is as I imagined it would be.
I try to think back to my parents and their relationship, back before it took its darkest turn.
Did my father ever take care of my mother when she was sick?
I was a child, so maybe I didn’t pay close attention, but I don’t think he did.
For all his toxic obsession with her, I can’t recall a single instance when he so much as brought her a cup of tea while she was ill.
In fact, I distinctly remember my mother being bedridden with pneumonia for a week when I was nine, and my father was entirely absent.
I know that for a fact because I spent most of that week in my mother’s room, so worried about her that I refused to go to school or play with my friends.
My brothers spent a lot of time at her bedside too, but not my father.
Supposedly, he had a lot of work that week.
I hadn’t given that incident a lot of thought—with the help of antibiotics, my mother recovered, and all was well—but now I can’t help but to dwell on it… and to analyze every other aspect of their relationship.
In the past, all I’d seen were the parallels between my father and Alexei, but what stands out to me now are the differences.
Differences that I uncover more of every day.
“Do you ever drink?” I ask Alexei on an impulse one morning while we’re waiting for the nurses to take me for a scan. “Like to the point of getting drunk?”
He considers it for a moment, then shakes his head. “Not really. As a teenager, I had too much vodka a couple of times, and I didn’t like the feeling. I prefer to be clear-headed and fully in control, so if I do have any alcohol, it’s usually a glass of wine or champagne with dinner.”
“How very non-Russian of you,” I say, half-jokingly, and he shrugs.
“That’s what my father always said.”
“Oh?” I’m extra intrigued now, as he hardly ever mentions the elder Leonov.
His expression undergoes a subtle hardening. “Yes, he’s a fan of hard liquor. Vodka, cognac, whiskey. Ruslan likes that stuff too, but I don’t.”
It’s strange how relieved I am. I didn’t even realize I was concerned about it. “What about pot?” I ask, doing my best to keep a light tone. “Or… other substances?”
“Not my thing. I smoked a joint once when I was thirteen, but I didn’t like how it made me feel, so I haven’t tried anything stronger.”
I stare at him, my relief battling with amazement…
and more than a little embarrassment. Because I’ve tried a lot of stuff.
Some more than once. Never enough to get truly addicted, but with my headaches providing a ready excuse, there were definitely times when I skated on the edge, when I stared into the abyss and knew that it would take only another pill or two to dive in and not emerge.
And I wasn’t always the one to step back from that edge.
Sometimes, it was my brothers who pulled me back, forced me to stop when I might not have on my own.
How is it that Alexei is so much stronger than I am?
He grew up with many of the same pressures, same temptations.
In our circles, illegal drugs and expensive alcohol are offered at parties as frequently as hors d'oeuvres. One would have to be a saint to resist each time, and Alexei Leonov certainly doesn’t qualify as that.
And yet… I can’t deny that there’s something perversely wholesome about my husband.
Not soft. Not sweet. And definitely not good in the traditional sense of the word.
But maybe… not entirely bad. Now that I’ve gotten to know Alexei better, it’s easy to believe what Ruslan told me about their childhood, how Alexei took care of him and their sister more like a parent than an older brother.
It’s easy to believe that because he takes care of me in much the same way.
As if I were precious.
As if I were truly his.
Weeks pass. One, two, then somehow three, four, five, eight.
Time moves both agonizingly slowly and disorientingly fast, the drag of never-ending treatments interspersed with days during which fatigue knocks me out like anesthesia.
I feel like all I do is eat (and fight to keep the food down), sleep (and struggle to sleep), and undergo scans and treatments.
And through it all, Alexei is there, comforting me, lending me his strength when I need it most.
Toward the end of treatment, he brings in Vika, and with the doctors’ approval, she uses her needles to provide me with relief from the nausea and the headaches, so I start to feel better.
Or maybe I’m feeling better because the combination of radiation and immunotherapy is actually working—something the doctors gleefully inform us of after yet another scan.
“I can’t say that all the cancer cells are gone,” Fasseau says with a big, beaming smile. “But they are not currently detectable on the highest-resolution images we have.”
At my side, Alexei’s ever-present tension seems to ease. “So the chemo—”
“Is not necessary at this time,” Fasseau confirms.
My heart leaps sideways, then begins to beat in a new, oddly unsettled rhythm as I stare at the doctor, unable to utter a word through the growing tightness in my throat.
The rational part of me understands and believes what the doctor is saying, but there’s something deeply irrational inside me as well, something that doesn’t dare to embrace so much as a sliver of hope.