Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Alyona
“It’s hard not to take offense that you left us to live here with him,” Rodion sneers down his nose, looking at Jeremiah’s small cock.
“It’s complicated,” I offer weakly.
Oddly, seeing Jeremiah like this doesn’t make me feel anything. Just mad about what the repercussions will be. I wish she hadn’t killed him.
“Uncomplicate it,” he demands. The tone from last night is back in his voice.
Hurt. Anger. Hate.
My stomach twists, and a lump forms in my throat. I don’t want him to hate me.
“I would always choose you, Ro, you and Z both over any man if given the choice. But choices aren’t something I have the luxury of.”
It’s as close to the truth as I can get.
“You’re talking in riddles,” he growls, smoldering with bitterness.
Dragging Jeremiah’s body from the bed, with little effort, he allows it to thud to the floor without care.
I blanch, shaking my head. “Yuri sent a fucking nun assasin who tried eliminate me. Can we get this done and talk about the rest later?”
He snarls at me. “I don’t know, dezertir.” Deserter. “Are you going to be around later?”
Am I?
That’s fair. I ran last time things got bloody.
“I didn’t mean to hurt either of you. I didn’t want to leave you,” I say in defense, guilt swelling in my chest.
I wish I could have stayed.
“Yet, you left anyway. And don’t flatter yourself.” He scoffs. Fucking scoffs. “I’m not hurt.” He bares his teeth, snatching the duvet from the bed and rolling it up into a trash bag.
Swallowing past the tightness in my throat I shrug my shoulders, “I’m sorry, anyway.”
I hand him the pillow soaked in Jeremiah’s blood to add to the bag.
Swiping it out of my hand he says, “Don’t be. Z and I have always had each other and that’s all we’ve ever needed. You were a nice addition for a time, but we all knew it wasn’t going to be permanent.”
Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
I would take a thousand cuts of that nun’s blade over the pain his words cause.
“And for the record.” He jabs a finger in my direction.
“It’s not that you left. It’s the way in which you left.
” Turning his back on me, he almost vibrates with rage.
“Z didn’t deserve that. I won’t let you do that to him again.
” He ties the bag and then looks over his shoulder at me, lines forming on his brow.
“We’re helping you because it’s partly our mess, but make no mistake, Alyona, this doesn’t make us right. ”
My hand clutches at my chest to hold my heart together. I can feel every tedious beat crash against my rib. He does hate me. They both do.
I hurry out of the room, the rising mix of emotions overwhelming me.
I’m ready to burst like a dam in the wake of a storm, and I can’t do that. I can’t break. If I do, my sadness will engulf this place and everyone in it, sweeping us all away in the wreckage of my own making.
“What is this thing?” Z asks me when I enter the kitchen, jarring me from my inner turmoil.
He looks like someone straight out of a nightmare or sexual fetish fantasy, I can’t decide.
He’s created himself a boiler-type suit made from trash bags.
He’s wearing scuba goggles and a pair of my cleaning rubber gloves that are pink with painted finger tips that I found online and had to have.
He looks ridiculous, and yet he’s still one of the most beautiful men I’ve ever laid eyes on.
“Your fashion is really suffering tonight,” I say in jest, and then I realize what he’s holding and the question he had asked.
Seizing the sippy cup from his hand, I chuck it in the sink and shrug. “It stops me from drinking my wine too fast.” Liar, liar, house on fire.
Silence drags on for several beats.
“Do you own a funnel?” he asks, finally accepting the wine comment.
“What are you doing with all this stuff?” I ask, cringing at the mess he’s making rather than cleaning.
He points at each cleaning product he has littered the counters with, and before he can speak, Rodion says from behind me, “He’s making oxygenated bleach. It cleans and leaves no trace of blood, unlike normal bleach.”
My jaw drops. “You can make stuff to do that?”
“If you have enough of a selection of cleaning products, then yes, “Rodion says, nodding to Z and handing him a funnel from the cupboard under the sink.
The way they move around each other is mesmerizing.
They’re like two bodies with one mind, one soul.
And being around them reminds me how easy it is to love them.
Every look, every trickle of their voice is like remembering them from more than just this life.
They’re so familiar, it transcends beyond the months I spent with them before I fled.
“How do you know this stuff?” I ask, trying to distract myself from begging them to forgive me. It feels like I have an open wound that’s oozing out my soul.
“Because it’s useful information. You should know how to make it too. I’ll teach you when we have more time.” Zahkar answers this time.
Will we get more time together?
“Alyona,” Rodion barks, making me start. “Get the clothes Jeremiah was wearing tonight. We need to dress him.”
He’s found a bottle of Jeremiah’s expensive whiskey and is pouring it into two glasses, sliding one across to his brother.
“Won’t the clothes just burn up anyway?” I say, not seeing the point.
“It must look real.” He drains the glass and re-fills it. “We can’t risk leaving a detail out.”
“Clothing fragments are often recovered on bodies even after fires,” Z interjects.
“Fine.” I nod to the bottle. “Can I get one of those?”
Ignoring me, Rodion drains the glass and walks off.
Blowing out a breath, I follow him to my room and dig through the laundry hamper while he wraps Joy’s body into a sheet and then hoists her onto his shoulder.
“We’ll stash her body in the garage and then when you call Adam to come over to help with Jeremiah being missing, we will transfer her body into his trunk.”
The idea makes my heart skip. It sounds risky doing that here, but we don’t have a choice.
“So, you’ll be hiding in there too?” I sound hesitant and he must pick up on that.
“Someone needs to move the body, Alyona. Are you going to do it?” He says my name like he’s mad at it. Hell, I know he is. What an absolute shit show this all is.
Before I can reply, he’s already left the room.
Getting clothes on a dead person is a lot harder than it seems, especially when you have wounds all over your body that make bending and lifting agonizing.
“Why won’t you freaking move?” I grumble, trying to put his leg in the pants.
“Rigor mortis sets in within the first two hours,” Z says, putting down the bottles of bleach concoction and easily lifting Jeremiah’s leg. It crunches when he bends the knee, and vomit churns in my gut.
“You don’t seem that bothered that your lover is dead,” he states, shifting the other leg into the pants. “Did you love him?”
Even though he’s still wearing those stupid scuba diving goggles that he must have found in Jeremiah’s stuff, the piercing blue of his eyes focuses on me and renders me breathless.
“Did you love him?” he repeats when I don’t answer.
“I didn’t love him.” I shake my head and rub at my forehead for no other reason than to not have to return his stare. Guilt niggles at me for the truth of my words. Because of me, Jeremiah is dead, and I didn’t even love him.
“Have you loved any man in your life, Alyona?”
Fucking hell, there’s so much hurt in his voice it seeps into me like black smog snaking around my organs and choking me.
“Yes, Z, I have.” I sit on the edge of the mattress and watch as he makes quick work of getting Jeremiah’s pants fastened.
“Do you think you’ll ever be able to forgive me for leaving like I did?” I murmur.
Is it selfish to ask for it?
Please forgive me. Please forgive me. Please forgive me.
Pausing his movements, he cocks his head to the side and studies me, the intensity of his gaze making my skin tingle.
“Forgiveness is action, right? I’m here cleaning your lover’s bodily fluids off your mattress. Is that not forgiveness?”
Frowning at him, I groan, “Why word it that way?”
“What way?” he teases with a raised brow and a twist of his lips.
“Like it’s sexual, when it’s anything but.”
He taps his forefinger to his temple and chuckles, “Don’t blame me for your interpretation, love. That’s your mind in the gutter, not mine.”
“Yeah, right.”
Pointing down at Jeremiah, he asks, “Where’s the shirt he was wearing?”
Oh fuck.
Wincing, I look down at myself wearing said shirt. It’s only then that I remember I’m still freaking naked from the waist down with only the shirt covering my upper thighs. Dried blood still coats my skin.
Z seems to come to the same realization because his gaze drags down my form, lingering on my legs and his hands fist.
“I grabbed his shirt when I fled,” I say quickly.
“Take it off.” He holds his hand out to me.
I stumble to my feet and waver, but he continues to stare at me with his hand outstretched. Lifting the shirt, I get it to my waist and cringe, sucking in a breath.
Fucking shit.
The cut under my rib is super tender.
“Let me help you.” He goes straight into action without waiting for me to reply.
It’s not fair how tender he touches me, coaxing my arms through the armholes without raising them so as not to pull on the glue keeping my wound together.
Once he lifts it over my head, he roams a lazy observation over my now exposed tits, down to my cut and then dipping lower.
Despite myself, a heavy throb pulses in my lower stomach.
There’s seriously something wrong with me.
“Z.” Rodion’s voice cuts through the almost suffocating tension. I jolt and nearly trip over Jeremiah’s corpse, trying to put space between us.
“I was, he was, we were…”
“I don’t care,” Rodion snaps, his stern glare moving from me, and softening when landing on his brother. “Z, I need you out here for a minute.”
Great. I’m finding new ways to piss him off. Going to my closet, I rummage through my clothes and want to kick myself for only owning uncomfortable but fabulous outfits. Opting to just sling on my bathrobe, I listen out for the twins and then panic washes over me.
Crap. Crap. Crap.
Darting from the bedroom, my feet skid on the tiled hallway floor as I race toward the other bedroom. “What are you doing?” I bark out, panic in my voice. “You can’t be in here.”
It’s too late because they’re already standing in the middle of her room.
“Whose is this?” Rodion asks.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
“Alyona! Whose room is this?” he repeats when I don’t speak.
Zahkar is silent, and my head swims trying to find an answer.
This isn’t happening.
“You have a baby?” Z whispers.
Boom. Boom. Boom.