Chapter 22
The floor is cold where I lie.
The ache in my ribs hasn’t stopped since that prick left hours ago. The wheeze to my breathing is concerning, but nothing I’m going to unhealthily ignore it with terrible coping mechanisms. As I lay here gasping for air like a landlocked fish, I try and fail to come up with something witty and scathing to say. The pain might actually be too much for me to think straight. Yet still too much to keep me from sleeping. I just want to pass out, I want to sleep. I want to sleep and never wake up… just make the pain stop.
I wake up in a cold sweat.
My hands fling out, I’m confused about where I am. While the vestiges of sleep still cling strongly to me, I try to remember how I fell asleep or why I’m on an actual bed. I was back there. In my mind, I was back there, in that cell.
My hands check my wrists and my neck to ensure that the collar and chains aren’t back on me.
The dimness of the bedroom slowly makes me register that I’m in Daniel’s house, in the bed that I share with Anya. But where is she? My hands splay over the fabric just to be sure that she’s not actually there. I don’t hear her in the connected bathroom either. It’s too early for her to have gone to breakfast. I crawl out of bed to look for her.
I pull on the same clothes I had on yesterday, with some difficulty. I need to change the bandages on my chest and ribs, but that will have to wait. I don’t have the luxury of time until I find Anya. A sense of dread starts growing like a lead ball in my gut as I pad out of the room and down the hall in bare feet.
Silence in every direction.
I pause in front of the bedroom door where Helena and Daniel are sleeping. That makes me feel better. If something was amiss, they would be awake too, wouldn’t they?
I head to the kitchen next, the sense of dread growing with every step. The lead turns into molten fear the moment I find the kitchen barren and the door to the garage open.
Déjà-vu grips me hard. It’s happening again. History is repeating itself. The wheel of terror just keeps on fucking spinning. First Lilian, now Anya. I know that she doesn’t want to be back in his arms. She doesn’t want him. Yet, the doubts creep up fast. With Lilian, there was and always will be a part of me that thinks that she was only using me, that I was only a distraction for her in the moments when she needed to hide from Nikolai. That in the end, Lilian was always going to go back to him, no matter what.
I refuse to think that way about Anya.
I know why she ran. I know where she’s going and why. Of course, she wasn’t going to wait for us to come up with a plan to keep them both safe because she wanted to be the only one at risk. Foolish girl to think that we wouldn’t go right after her, that I would just stand here while she went off into the belly of the beast. Absolutely not.
Still, I don’t want to be right. This is one of the very few instances where I would like absolutely nothing more than to be totally and utterly wrong.
I know how things ended up with Lilian when she could no longer hold Nikolai’s interest. When Lilian started using the brain in her head for her own purposes, that was when Nikolai flipped on her and she ended up dead. He might not have been the one to do it - but he bought and paid for that execution order. He’s the reason that she’s dead.
I run into the garage, finding a car missing and set of keys. No time to wait. I was too slow to save Lilian. I wasn’t able to get there in time to stop her. I couldn’t talk sense into her and by the time I caught up with her, she was dead. I’m not going to allow that to happen to Anya. This horrible pattern needs to stop here and now.
I grab the next set of keys off the peg board and find the car, something sleek and fast. Pure luck. Something else that I’m not used to having. But, if the tides of fate are finally turning in my favor, I’m not going to turn them down. Growing up, the only luck I ever had was what I made for myself. My father used to say that luck always favored the overprepared. He had the sort of cunning mind that could see the game three chess moves ahead and act accordingly. It didn’t ever come as naturally to me, but I made up for that deficit with pure, unrelenting dedication.
I couldn’t make a difference with Lilian, but I can with Anya. I have to. I press the buttons on the screen in the car to pull up the GPS tracker up that Daniel has in all his cars. Anya likely was too panicked to even think about something like that. Again, fortune is on my side. She’s not in Houston yet. It seems that she’s stopped moving at least. Too much of a head start for my liking but I press down the accelerator and see how fast this car can really move.
The motel that I stop at is exactly the sort of seedy place that makes you wonder what sort of diseases you might catch by walking barefoot on the carpet. I can practically smell the musty pillows and comforters from the street. Anya’s stolen car is the only one parked at the back of the building. The engine is off but still slightly warm to the touch. She’s been here for a while. I just have to hope that she’s still safe and sound inside of a room.
I reach into the glove compartment of Daniel’s car and find a gun, just like I was hoping. I should have taken the time to raid his stash before I left so that I would not walk in under armed, but there was no time. Already my heart is an erratic drum beating in my chest as I throw the car into park and ease out of the driver’s seat.
Training takes over, soothing my mind into a lethal sort of calm. My muscles move on memory. They forget the aching soreness they’ve suffered in the past weeks and all that remains is my focus on the target ahead. Nothing but my need to get Anya and kill Nikolai once and for all.
I’ve been trained as a marksman since birth. One of the best assassins in the world. Unlisted by any government. In private it might not seem that way, so I have to hope that seeing the business side of me isn’t going to scare Anya away. I wanted to keep this from her. She’s still healing. We both are, but I have no choice.
I slip a master key from a maid’s cart and start clearing rooms one by one with lethal efficiency. It doesn’t take me long to find an occupied room. I hear the voices from just outside of the door speaking harshly to one another. They are in there. I don’t know how many people might be in there or if Nikolai was arrogant enough to not have brought anybody else with him. Seems a bit optimistic to think that way, but the cocky bastard never disappoints.
The door beeps as I open it, sliding in with my gun drawn and ready -- but I’m not the only one with an aimed weapon. My blood runs cold at the sight before me. Anya, pinned to the bed with a knee by Nikolai as he grasps her chin in his face. I can’t hear what he’s whispering but I can see the tears rolling down her face plainly enough. He’s hurting her. Hurting. Her.
Horus stands just behind the bed toward the bathroom area with Henry held by the bicep. The child has tears rolling freely down his face as he claws and claws at the hand holding him without any result.
The gun Horus is holding in his hand is what does it for me - it’s what makes something inside of me snap. The tether to my kindness, my humanity, simply disappears and I become the monster that Nikolai knows very well that I am. What sort of man holds a gun to a child?
At least he has the decency to shift the gun in my direction when he realizes who has just interrupted their little party.
“No!” Anya yells from where she’s pinned to the bed. “Please, don’t!”
Her eyes are wild and crazed.
“Why do you care what happens to him?” Nikolai pushes her face down further and Anya grimaces. “Tell me that this is a product of your bleeding nurses’ heart and nothing else, Anya.”
Nikolai’s lip curls upward into a sneer. I cock the gun aimed at his head.
Horus does the same at the one pointed to mine. It’s just a matter of who shoots faster now.
“Because you need to convince me that you do not care if this man lives or dies, Anya, and you need to do it right now.” Nikolai seethes into the side of her face.
“Get off of her Nikolai, your fight is with me.”
“There will be plenty of time for you once my wife has learned her lesson.” Nikolai taunts before shoving back and away from her. “Unless she would rather see you die first? Perhaps, again, the lesson of who owns her hasn’t really set in yet.”
For a moment, it almost looks like Nikolai is going to go for his belt buckle, right here in front of all these people. Bile rises in my throat as I take a step closer. “Don’t even think about trying it, mother fucker.”
Nikolai’s brow lifts in amusement. “You think that you actually pose a threat to me?”
“I think I’m less afraid to die than you are.” I answer. My words are clipped and bitter as I spit them at the man across from me. Arrogant prick thinks that he’s got the only upper hand here. He’s wrong. It’s just a matter of time.
“Is that so? I think it’s less about fear, and more about the fact that you are little more than a roach, Alek, who is just too stubborn to know that he has been beat.” Nikolai stalks toward me, armed with only his fists. If that’s how he wants to play it, then I’m more than game. The only reason he ever got one in on me in the first place is because I had my hands tied.
All I need to do is buy time.
If I can get my gun to Anya, then she and Henry have a chance to get out of here. That’s all that matters to me now.
“Please, Nikolai, you can’t hurt him… let us go…” Anya begs.
“Why should I?” Nikolai laughs cruelly.
“At least let Henry go!” Anya yells, attempting to focus his attention back on her.
“I don’t think so, but thanks honey.” Nikolai says in a patronizing voice.
“He’s Lilian’s son!” Anya blurts.
Nikolai freezes. I freeze. Time itself seems to slow down and fracture as the lines of tension melt from Nikolai’s face. He looks at me, curious, and then realization seems to dawn on him at the same time as Anya.
Lilian’s son, yes.
But also Nikolai’s.
Time speeds back up, my blood a roaring stampede in my head. I can hardly think properly as everybody in the room realizes the weight of that comment. I would have been happy to let Henry grow up thinking that he was mine or even that his real father was dead. It would have been simpler. At least nobody would have said it out loud. I would have thought that with the level of fear on Henry’s face, he would have fainted.
“Wait…” Horus interrupts. “This is Ms. Lilian’s son?”
He looks down at the boy, horrified by what he was just doing and then releases him. Henry runs straight to the bed where Anya lies and she quickly scoops him up into her arms, cradling the boy into her body as if the force of her love alone is enough to shield him from any further fear.
Henry glances up with tear-stained cheeks at the man who had been holding him, nodding once to confirm that while he had never met his mother, he did know her name well enough.
“And you?” Horus turns his focus to me. A muscle in my jaw feathers as I struggle to keep the rest of those words from his mouth. Some truths are better left forgotten. “You were helping her all of those years ago?”
“I never hurt Lilian. Ever. I loved her.” I confess. From the corner of my eye, I can see something soften in Anya’s expression as she watches the conversation unfold in front of her. “I only wanted to help get her away from you.” I angle the gun to nod in Nikolai’s direction as I speak. “She hated you.”
“She couldn’t stay away from me.”
On the bed, Anya covers Henry’s ears. I hope that it helps but I’m sure that the damage has already been done.
“If you weren’t behind her murder…” Horus trails off as he puts the pieces together. He and I both know that if he thought that I was the one behind Lilian’s death, he never would have allowed me out of that cell. He would have supported everything that Nikolai did to me.
I dip my chin in a nod, signaling to Horus that yes, his thoughts are correct. It was Nikolai all along. It has always been Nikolai.
Horus looks at his boss, something darker than rage painted on his features. Some emotion that I don’t dare to give a name to as Nikolai’s eyes widen fractionally. The gun in Horus’ hand shifts from where it’s pointed at my chest- to Nikolai’s.
He pulls the trigger.