30. Lena
CHAPTER 30
Lena
H e is wrapped all around me, his body against mine, as we lie here, my head on his chest. His hands on my back hold me tightly, as if I might up and leave at any moment.
It’s strange in the way that it feels so right.
We haven’t spoken, not uttered a word since my phone went off, and I’m sure I heard his phone buzzing somewhere on the floor.
Some might say that’s weird, but who knows? I take comfort in his silence.
He’s bled through his bandage, and I’m certain I’ll need to buy new sheets, but right now, I don’t care. I’m too scared to ruin this moment.
But I feel like this is the only moment.
“What’s on your mind, Lena?” he asks, not even opening his eyes. He just knows I’m watching him. And how could I not? He’s so beautiful. Not that I’d ever tell him that, because it’d inflate his ego too much.
“Tell me about the gloves, Alek.” I need something from him. Anything to show me that this is deeper than some one-night stand, because right now, I’m terrified of the way we gravitate toward each other.
I know he’s bad news.
But can something so bad truly feel so right?
“Why do you want to know?” he asks, and it surprises me that he’s opened up, if even a little. His eyes open now, and he’s watching me in the same way that I am him.
I lick my lips, wanting to kiss him all over again because I sense the tenderness beneath. Or maybe I just want there to be something underneath. Something I can use to justify his actions. No matter what it is, it doesn’t justify killing another. Yet here I am, being ignorant of those sins.
“Because I want to know you, Aleksandr. I need something if you expect me to give you anything.”
I hold my breath, so certain that he’ll deny me.
But to my surprise, he licks his lips, and I see the swallow of his throat before he replies, “You won’t like a lot of the answers I have to your questions, Lena.”
“Will they be the truth? ”
“If you want it, then yes.”
“Then tonight, we’ll start with one.”
He licks his lips again. “Not even Anya knows.”
“And it’ll remain that way.” My heart breaks at the way he says it. Whatever burden he’s carried has not even been shared with the one person he shares everything with.
He looks up at the ceiling, as if thinking as to where he even should start. “When we were four, our parents moved from Russia back to America. We were born here. We don’t remember much from that time. We were just thrown into an orphanage and foster carers when our parents disappeared.”
Oh shit, I didn’t know they were abandoned. My heart twists.
“Our first foster parents were able to finally conceive their first child after we’d been with them for two months, and they took us back to the orphanage. Our second foster father…” His jaw grinds.
“I walked in on him with Anya when we were six. We were small then, but I was filled with so much rage and desire to protect her that I attacked him. I hated being touched even then, but I tried to dig his eyes from his head. I shoved him back hard enough that he cut his hand on the corner of the side table. Not enough to do any serious damage but it provided just enough time for Anya to run. But I froze.
“The blood… I don’t know how to express it. Something that was suppressed in me was triggered by the blood. I just remember crying in a pool of it. Screaming for my mother to wake up. That swirl of terror and abandonment all over me, filth clinging to me. On my hands. My skin. Every part of me. I’m certain as distant as it feels, it might be the memory I have of finding my mother dead. But it’s so foggy, that I don’t know if it’s something my mind made up. It’s why I’ve never told Anya of it. It’s only recently that my suspicions were confirmed that they were murdered. But I’d never been sure, especially after having this… defect from such a young age.”
“Oh my gosh, Alek,” I say as tears leak from my eyes. He seems almost surprised by them as he wipes them away, fascinated.
“I can stop,” he says, as if the hardship is on me rather than him. I shake my head because I want him to keep going. I’m happy to carry this burden with him if I’m the only one who can share the weight. But my heart breaks, especially for his inability to connect emotion with it. For him to understand. Or perhaps he’s outright denying the trauma of his childhood .
“Don’t look at me as if I’m a broken man, Lena. Or I won’t tell you anymore.”
I offer a small smile and graze my hand along his jaw. “No, I was thinking about how incredibly strong you are.”
His eyebrows furrow, but he doesn’t look away. The intensity in his gaze is as unsettling as it is sincere.
“After that, I started wearing gloves, because if I touched anyone…” His body trembles of its own accord. “It’s just like going back to that moment, being dirtied, sullied. I don’t mind killing or bleeding, but touching someone is like my personal hell. Until you,” he confesses.
My heart breaks a little more as he focuses on where he’s stroking his thumb over my cheekbone.
“It wasn’t until our third foster mother, a woman named Meredith Forks, took us in that I learned the power in killing. The art of detachment and intimidation. She was a woman with tremendous money, power, and ambition. She trained us from a young age to become who we are now. She ran her own illegal businesses and auctions, and was cutthroat in her ambition. Our empire and the beginning of the auctions started because of her.
“It was, however, just this year that Anya discovered the old bitch had been the one to kill our parents so she could adopt us. Driven by the notion that having children would make her look more ‘approachable’ to new clients in town. So Anya buried her while I was off chasing Cinita in Russia.
“I failed her.”
The admission catches me off guard.
“That’s a lot of fucked-up shit to happen to a person,” I breathe out, because I can’t even comprehend half of it. His gaze is locked on mine as he traces my cheek, jaw, and lips.
“Perhaps. But I don’t look at it that way. I’m a killer, no matter what way I was forged. Don’t think of me as a broken man or a good man, Lena, because I am neither.”
“I don’t think you’re all that bad when you don’t want to be.”
“You’d be the first to say so,” he says.
“Yes, but I was also the first to tell you the truth that you look like an old man.” I laugh as his expression goes solemn.
“You think you’re hilarious, don’t you, sunshine?” When I stop laughing and look at him, I see how he watches me tenderly. With the eyes of a killer that I know I’m falling for ever so slowly but undeniably.
And it’s terrifying.
I shouldn’t. I can’t .
But I’ve already given part of myself away to him.
I don’t even know how to process everything he’s told me, but I put my hand on his jaw, stroking the stubble, telling him in the only way I can that I’m here for him. For now, if he’ll have me.
He pulls me in closer, and I rest my head on his chest again. “For now, I’d like to rest, Lena.”
“Do I need to put some porn on?” I ask, biting my bottom lip with a smile.
He squeezes me, but when I look up, I see the crooked smile on his lips. And it fills me with satisfaction to know that somehow I can make a man like this, who’s been so haunted by his earliest memories, crack even the smallest of smiles. That I can give him one moment of peace.
It’s not long until his breathing evens out, but his hold on me doesn’t loosen. Soon, I hear a soft snore leave him, and I stay there wrapped in his arms and feel the most protected I have ever in my life.
How can that even be, to feel so protected by someone who is a killer?
That can’t be real, right?
Yet, in my own way, I want to protect him as well.
I lift my head to look up at him. His eyes and mouth are closed. I gently touch his lips. I want to believe all of this is real. That our bubble won’t burst, and I’ll discover this isn’t real.
His eyes open slightly, and he peers down at me.
“Lena.” He says my name quietly, and his lashes flutter.
“Aleksandr,” I whisper. “Is this even real?”
“It is, sunshine. Now, go to sleep.” He reaches down and lifts one of my legs over his hip. Pulling it up, he holds it to him while the other stays locked around me.
I’m scared the moment my eyes close, he’ll be gone, but it’s not long until I fall asleep in his arms.