Chapter 4
There is no telling what is a dream and what is reality.
It has all started to blend together. There is no longer any difference between being awake in these chains and drifting through my memories like they are really happening. Sometimes they feel more real than where I actually am. I only wish that more of my memories were happy so that I could disappear into them peacefully.
Guess this is just what I get for living the life that I have.
The sun would be up in a moment. I had to get Lilian home but she was being stubborn again. She should have known better. She knew how cranky she tended to get whenever she didn’t get enough sleep. In truth, if she hadn’t told me that she was pregnant, I would have booked a doctor’s appointment for her on account of her damned mood swings.
She had dropped the baby bomb on me like it was nothing.
And yet she still had insisted that we go out clubbing tonight.
Got even more mad at me when I stopped her from drinking. My child in her belly and she thought that she could just do whatever she wanted without consequences? That I would just stand by and let her put both herself and my child in danger? The first fight of the evening had been about her thinking that I was suddenly trying to control her life.
I’d always controlled her life. She’s never had a problem with it before.
She was hiding something. Telling me about the baby was nothing more than a smoke screen. There was more to it. Damn right she should have told me… but the only reason that she did was because she wanted to keep me distracted from whatever the real reason was that she was so upset. I was going to get it out of her one way or another.
“Alek… my feet hurt… slow down…” Lilian whined from behind me as she attempted to slip her dangerously high heels from her legs. It was too cold for her to be in a dress that short. Though, that was not a fight that I would ever win. Lilian had said a dozen, no, a hundred times how she only felt like herself with skin on display.
“Slow down?!” I shouted at her. I couldn’t stop the fire in my chest.
Her gaze sharpened at my tone. Her arms wrapped around herself as she lifted a brow at me, ready for the second round of our fight.
“Because your feet hurt?” I continued. Normally, that was the part of the conversation where I laughed at her pain and scooped her up into my arms to carry her back to the car. She loved the princess treatment. Not that day. I couldn’t do it. I could barely even look at her right then. My temper was being held up by such a fragile string that I didn’t trust myself at all. “Lilian, I just asked you to leave with me… to run away from all of this with me and you turned me down… tell me why I should do anything for you right now?!”
My heart would not stop hammering in my chest.
I couldn’t tell if I was more angry or heartbroken. I didn’t want to investigate that too deeply for fear of the answer to that question.
“Just because I don’t…” Lilian huffed and stomped her heel on the sidewalk out of frustration. I knew she was looking for the word that she wanted. “Just because we aren’t… because I don’t… doesn’t mean that we can’t be friends… does it?”
I laughed humorlessly. “Are you kidding me right now?”
“Alek… I don’t… you don’t understand.”
I didn’t understand? Did she not know who she was talking to? Sometimes I thought that she didn’t really appreciate the depth of the things that I’d done for her - the sacrifice that I’d made. I’d changed my whole life for her, for us…and now this?
“This changes everything. Lilian. You looked me dead in the eye and told me that you don’t love me anymore. You told me that the child is your business and not mine… and apart from calling my fucking lawyer right this minute, I don’t know what the hell you’re expecting me to do!”
“Then maybe you should!” Lilian yelled right back.
“Then I will!” I matched her energy. Ah – it was heartbroken. That was what that feeling was. “You can play this game all you fucking want. Lie to me, hurt me, push me away and it”s going to fucking work, Lilian! You are forgetting that out of all of the sorry bastards in this world, I’m the one who knows you. Really knows you.”
The timing of everything was just too perfect.
Dealing with Nikolai and then breaking up with me again? Dropping the baby bomb and telling me that she woulnd’t let us be a family? Pulling me close to her because she felt like she needed to be protected and then pushing me away when it wasn’t convenient for her? I’d never let a woman this close to me before her, and she was only reminding me of all of the reasons that I’d always held myself away from relationships. They were just distractions. Telling me that she didn’t know if she wanted to keep the baby when I knew how badly she wanted to be a mother? Whatever the truth was… she was drowning in it and she was trying to keep from pulling me under with her.
She knew I would do anything for her.
“This is for the best… Alek, I promise it is what’s best.”
“You don’t get to choose what’s best for me, Lilian. I don’t need you to protect me.” I was so close to begging. Pride had left the building. I pulled my jacket off and slipped it around her shoulders. “I’m not a man who scares easily. You fucking know that, Lilian. That’s my baby… our baby. Our family. I don’t give a fuck what anybody says.”
Lilian’s eyes swam with tears that slowly started to fall down her cheeks.
“I’m scared Alek… I’m so fucking scared.”
I pulled Lilian into my chest and wrapped my arms around her until the trembling stopped. “Whatever you want to do, Lilian, wherever you want to go… I’m right here with you.”
Reality shifts.
The light of a thousand suns burns into my eyes so suddenly that I scramble back and away from the painful sensation with a groan of discomfort. This version of reality hurts more. Less emotional pain, but way more physical pain. Just moving to scramble away from the light is intense enough that it makes me want to puke.
“Fuck, I’m sorry… shhh… I’m so sorry…”
Not Nikolai then.
Nikolai would never apologize for anything.
A soft female voice whispers to me and for a moment, I can’t shake the image that Lilian has crawled out of my head and into this version of reality because they always blend together… and then I realize that I’m awake. Freezing, shaking, and awake.
How many days has it been since Nikolai was in here last? My tongue automatically starts to probe the space in my mouth where he knocked a damned tooth loose this last time. Maybe it’s only been hours… everything is so swollen that it’s basically impossible to tell. At least there have not been any new injuries. Nikolai is a very neglectful kidnapper, it would seem.
The woman in front of me is even more beautiful than my mind’s eye remembered.
I groan as I push myself up into a seated position. Funny how the chains somehow feel heavier now that I’m starting to recover just a little bit. It’s a mixed blessing. Feeling better when he comes back means that it’s just going to hurt worse than the last time. At least when the pain is a constant, everyday thing, you can kind of get used to it a little bit.
“Nice dress,” I comment as the woman squats down in front of me and then shifts her slight weight onto one knee. She smiles up at me softly and something in my chest loosens. Something hopeful and sad, a deeper part of me that’s likely only that close to the surface because of how raw that dream I just had was. Memories tend to make everything just that much harder. Her hands are warm and soft as she checks me over. Looking for fever and wiping away some of the grime caked on my face. I try to pull away from her actions, it’s a pointless endeavor anyway. She’s wasting her time here. “Careful, you’re going to see how handsome I am if you keep going.”
“Charmer” She offers half a smile and then frowns. “I don’t like the rattle in your chest.”
I shrug. Not much I can do about that. “You’re telling me. Feels about as good as it sounds.”
I lean my head back against the cool concrete wall and let her go about her business. Part of me wants to tell her that there’s just no point. It’s not like I’m getting out of here alive, and all of her hard efforts are only prolonging the inevitable. I keep those sorts of grim thoughts to myself as she wipes and disinfects.
“Why do I get the feeling that you’re used to this kind of thing?” She asks me finally, in a resigned voice.
I lift a brow. Perhaps it would be too obvious to tell her that this is exactly the sort of thing that I’m used to. I’m sure that she can see the sheer number of scars littering my body, only some of which are covered by tattoos. The majority aren’t. Nikolai clearly didn’t give me all of these. Though, he does tend to leave a physical mark on me every time that we meet.
I choose not to answer her question, but rather ask her one of my own.
“Aren’t you going to get in trouble for being down here?”
“How noble of you.” She chuckles. “Staring at death’s door and worried that my husband might be a little angry with me?” She shakes her head.
Husband? I had thought that she was a prisoner here like me. Or worse. Perhaps just the newest of the many women that Nikolai coaxed into his bed and then trapped there. Though, I suppose that being his wife does mean that she still technically fits that description.
“He’s not here.” She answers to my prolonged silence. “Not that he would care what I did anyway.”
The bitterness in her voice when she speaks surprises me, but I don’t think she’s going to give me any additional information even if I press the subject.
“Well, I’m better company anyway,” I grin with my bloodstained teeth.
She laughs and hits at my knee playfully, although the resulting hiss of pain makes her instantly apologize.
“Shit! I’m sorry… shit shit shit…” She starts checking me over for blood and only seems to calm back down when she’s certain that there’s nothing freshly torn from my sudden movements.
“Came down here to use me as a punching bag?” I laugh, teasing her sudden panic. It’s not like it hurt that bad. “I’ve heard that it’s very therapeutic. Might as well vent away too.”
“Like you want to hear about my drama.”
“I’m chained to a wall, gorgeous, I would listen to flies buzzing right now and be entertained. I’m certain that anything you have to say will be the most interesting thing that I’ve ever heard.” I flex and rattle the chains attached to the wall to emphasize my point.
“There is something that you might… want to know…”
I blink at her curiously. “Will the news guarantee that you will be in trouble? Because I think you’ve put yourself at enough risk here…”
It’s the truth. I have enough blood on my hands without adding this woman’s as well.
If she’s about to tell me something that would end up in Nikolai rage-killing another woman… I couldn’t live with that. I couldn’t.
She doesn’t hesitate before answering, like her fate isn’t something that she’s worried about in the slightest.
“Helena’s pregnant….”
Ice seeps into my veins. A lethal sort of frozen rage over the notion that my sister is pregnant… she’s going to have a baby and Nikolai is searching for her as we speak. I don’t even know whose child it could possibly be and it doesn’t matter. I shake my head, but the woman doesn’t move. It’s the truth then.
Fear and rage merge into a lethal sort of toxic acid in my body as I push away from Anya and pace the cell, limping deeply as I try to dispel some of the horrible energy in my body. Once wasn’t enough for Nikolai, was it? He couldn’t end one woman’s life and leave yet another orphaned child. Now he’s trying to land that cruel fate onto another? Killing them both?
“He’s doing it again…” I mutter, mostly to myself, before my fist cocks back and knocks into the concrete wall hard enough to crack bone.