Chapter 10
Blair
“Oh my god,” My chest heaved as my legs ran for dear life, zigzagging through the city. Passing through the empty streets with the street lamps barely illuminating them, bumping into a few fellow locals that hung around, apologizing in one breath, not lingering for long.
Oh my god. I can’t believe I just did that.
Why did I do it?
The muscles in my legs were straining, and my veins were burning with adrenaline, my heart drumming in my ears.
I only snuck out of the convent because I had an ill feeling something bad could happen.
“You must really love me, kotyonok. You just assaulted two men for me. That’s a confession within itself.” Konstantin's heavy breath lingered behind me, following my steps back to the monastery.
“Shut up!” I shouted, my nerves shot.
Not stopping. Not thinking. Just darting away from cops.
The unconscious cops that might be dead.
My mind replayed the scene over and over, flashing before my eyes— it wasn’t exactly my plan to have Konstantin fight that dirtbag for my honor, and hating confrontation, I slipped through his fingers, leaving him alone until he took the fight to the street.
Where the cops showed up. Noisy little fuckers.
They were never truly there when you needed them, only when they liked gossip and wanted to impose their authority.
But as they broke the fight apart and I watched him from the dark side of the alley, being confronted, interrogated, and threatened by the police, I couldn’t sit back and watch.
I wouldn’t allow it. I wouldn’t allow them to take him away… away from me.
That’s when I took the broken metallic pipe from the alleyway and began to swing, pummeling the living shit out of them until they weren’t resisting anymore.
Suddenly I grew deeply perturbed, a gnawing sensation eating at my consciousness.
Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.
The mere thought of their lifeless bodies, blood pooling from their brains, rendered me full of fear and paranoid.
Just like that fateful day.
I only did it because I had to. I had to defend him and Konstantin.
Trickles of sweat percolated around my hairline.
Godfuckingdamn, the heaviness weighed upon me as the realization hit that I had killed again. I was a murderer. A woman with blood on her hands, as the only thing I could hear was these scared laws:
Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not lie.
Two of the sacred commandments I had completely recklessly violated.
All because of this Russian stranger with midnight eyes who had a knack for deranged sin. Creating pandemonium wherever he went.
If it weren’t for him, this would have never happened. I would have never left the convent, I would have never lied — no, it’s not his fault, completely. I was the one who decided to keep his essence a secret. To play his compliance. To trust a hopeless man rather than keep my sacred vows.
Truly, not one of the finest ways to start my journey into sisterhood. However, there was also this moral obligation, whether wrong or right, to help Konstantin.
Regardless of his past actions, it wasn’t up to me to decide his salvation.
However, it was hard to tell the truth when I didn’t know what was true anymore.
Thoughts ran rampant, the shame festered on my shoulders, and self-hatred began to plant its ever-growing seed.
Spotting a big old sweet chestnut tree on an upcurved hill right behind the monastery casting an old shadow, which would be a perfect place to hide and where no one would think of visiting, my short legs spurted with an outburst of energy.
I sprinted up, stumbling down a few times and rolling over like the Pillsbury doughboy, but my conviction, my necessity to survive and escape, was greater as I got back up and ran again.
“Slow down, you little thing!” He clenched his teeth.
I didn’t.
Going as far as throwing myself on the top of the hill as I landed face down and began to roll around, landing on my back.
“Blair!” Kon agonized, his voice laced with a thick Russian accent.
A heavy sigh left my lips, relief running up my spine.
My eyes slowly trickled up to the space of leaves of the tree, catching the twinkle of the stars. Small precious diamonds that, if humans were able to grab them, they would rip the sky apart, robbing and tainting the heavens with their abysmal greed. Leaving the world to be truly a dreary place.
“How sad that would be.” I barely manage to mumble.
Just one more thing that would be taken away from me, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
The dark inky clouds enclosed the glimmering silver light, causing only darkness to linger and form around.
Yet the color of midnight blue came into my vision, and the world was full of color again.
Konstantin had arrived at a steadier pace, leaning over me as his chest rose fervently in rough contractions.
“What did I tell you, kotyonok? Now look at yourself. Chto mne s toboy delat'? Kak ya mogu tebya uberech', yesli ty postoyanno v opasnosti.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No doubt, I was a complete mess.
With dirt on my face, my dress was ripped and my knees scraped as blood leaked from the pores, my hair turned into a bird’s nest by the wind as my locks were knotted. There were small twigs and leaves; I looked like I came out of a hurricane.
“I’m… okay,” I struggled to say, still trying to regulate my breaths.
“Like hell you are.” He kneeled down, having one arm resting on his knee and the other extended.
He traced his finger against my cheek as I nudged against it a bit.
He scanned my face up and down multiple times.
His midnight blue gaze was more vivid, more intense as his eyes seemed to dilate.
His fingers ran through my hair, attempting to fix the knots, framing the curls just about right.
Maybe it was the adrenaline or deliriousness leaking into my brain, but his touch was comforting. His attention and care were long overdue.
“From this point of view, you look less scary and more convincing. I can understand why more women would like to be underneath you.” I blurted. Thinking only about what our lips had shared on the dance floor.
He turned his head to the side, looking at something in the distance. Somewhat annoyed by what I said as he shook his head in disapproval, but he couldn’t fake the smirk posing on his lips. “You need a doctor, kotyonok,” he tsked.
“Hell no.”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely not! Anytime you go, they always give you bad news, so I prefer to not hear anything.”
“Don’t be a child.”
Me, a child? Oh please, if there was one thing I knew, it was children. Trust me, Ollie was no easy baby.
“I’m not.” I lifted my head up from the ground, a heaviness forming like a cloudy fog as I faked through the pain.
“See, I’m perfectly fine.” I groaned as I sat up in one go, my spine screaming to lie back down, but I was too fucking stubborn to show otherwise.
Adjusting myself as I spread my legs out in front of me.
My bones cracked loudly at the abrupt shift.
“Izhets!”
“English, please. I’m not Google Translate.”
“Who’s the liar now, Saint Blair?”
“I’m not Mother Teresa either, so I can still be a hypocrite.
” At least that was my logic; truly, in this moment of clarity, the realization hit.
I knew I was never going to be perfect. Never expected to be.
But these last few months had challenged me into thinking if I wasn’t perfect, I wasn’t good enough. What utter nonsense.
Who was I becoming? Because it was someone I wasn’t.
And would that be the type of person God wanted me to be?
To be a caricature of someone? To submit and erase core elements of myself? Or being authentically myself with my flaws and sins?
God was supposed to accept me the way I am, not the way others wanted me to be. Even if they didn’t like it, I wasn’t supposed to impress them; I was supposed to care.
“Alright. Alright. Just sit down first.” I signaled him to calm down and patted the empty space next to me.
He clenched his fists before he looked around the area, unsure.
“Don’t worry, the cops won’t find us. Why do you think I brought you this far? If not, I would have just let the police arrest you on sight. So stop being paranoid and sit your ass down.”
He muttered something in Russian before he slid down right next to me.
His large physique amassed the digestible air between me and him. Heat burned off from him as his musk sweat numbed the senses. Making me realize the drop in my blood pressure as a shiver passed through my shoulders.
On any other occasion, it would have been suffocating, yet he felt like an impenetrable wall keeping the rest of the world out, and for some odd reason… I liked it.
My heart lurched in my throat, and my veins throbbed from the fear of the night.
Needing everything to slow down, I closed my eyes. Breathing in the night air to calm my nerves.
“Do you think I killed them?” I asked, bringing my knees closely to my chest. Resting my chin on it, little by little opening my eyes.
He angled his head at me, his tone coaxed with lenient disbelief. “Is that what you’re worried about?”
I nodded after a second.
“You’re not a killer.”
That simple word was enough to make my eyes burn with salt and rage. Rage at myself. My decisions. “You don’t know that.” My words strained against a whisper.
All I could hear at night when I was by myself was the sound of a gunshot in the wind, and when I closed my eyes, all I saw was the blood that bled through the skull of that man. That man whose face haunted me. Who condemned me to a fate without Ollie.
“I know that you’re the first person in years to treat me like a human.”
“Well, if I’m being honest, I had my reservations… for obvious reasons.” I eyed him.
“Yet you took the gamble, kotyonok. Many people by now would have fed me to the wolves, and I would be as I was. Locked up with no hope to look forward to. You gave me that again.”