27
The price of disloyalty
N ikita twisted my fingers, threatening their integrity.
We moved far enough away from the group to avoid any eavesdroppers. Knowing her, I wouldn't be surprised if she started yelling at me like a madwoman.
Okay, Irene wasn't exactly her favorite person, and we agreed on that, but I didn't understand what had gotten into her to react like this. She even suggested that what I really wanted was to sleep with Irene, when all I was trying to do was tell her that Irene had offered to treat my injuries. Could it be jealousy? The possibility that such an emotion could erupt in her gave me hope, because it might mean she had begun to love me.
I liked the simple idea of it so much that I was tempted to push her to the limit to make her confess.
I was dying for her to tell me she loved me. I understood that everyone has their own timing and that I couldn't rush things. That's why I hadn't pressured her into making an open declaration. When she did, when she admitted that she harbored the same feelings that coursed through me, it would be one of the happiest days of my life, and I was willing to wait until she was ready, even though the need to hear it was agonizing.
I made a quick move to prevent the damn woman from dislocating my fingers.
As messed up as I was, both physically and emotionally, Nikita had the knack of squeezing my groin harder than a fucking bag of flour. Her hellhound attitudes excessively turned me on, not to mention I'd gone too many days without intimacy.
I turned the tables and pinned my wife against a tree, trapping her with my body. I hardly cared if she felt my erection against her belly, if some of my stitches popped, or if my burns hurt. Her touch was downright miraculous.
"Let go of me, or I'll gouge your eyes out and cut it off!" she exclaimed, trying to wriggle free.
"Tell me what I'm seeing is my wife dying of jealousy, and I'll consider it."
"Jealous? You haven't lived enough lifetimes to see that," she spat back.
"So what do my eyes see then?"
"A woman tired of being taken for a fool," she bucked.
"I might take you for many things, but never a fool." She slowed her movements a bit. "You've misinterpreted my earlier words, and I don't blame you; I omitted information that I should have given you." Nikita stopped dead.
"What information?"
"I'll give it to you if you assure me I can let you go without fearing for my physical integrity."
"I can't guarantee that, unless you're completely honest and I believe your answer, which is quite difficult." Her threat made me smile.
"Okay."
Nikita was not a woman you could easily lie to. I didn't want to, either. I would tell her what happened, and she would see that there was nothing to worry about.
I stepped back a few paces, not too many. My wife leaned against the trunk. Dressed all in black, she was stunning, reminding me of a black mamba ready to strike.
"Let's start from the beginning to give you the context," I said. Nikita waited silently, and I rubbed the back of my neck. "Before we went to Santorini, the night you and I argued because you wanted to take Adri to St. Petersburg, when you found out he was your nephew, to be raised by your mother and away from me, I went to the bar to talk to Dante."
"You mean you went to rant about me."
I shrugged. "I was angry; you wouldn't expect me to sing your praises."
"Go on."
"I was venting when Irene came in."
"How timely!"
"She was also friends with Dante."
"And I'm sure she walked into a bar full of bikers just because of that."
"No, she did it because she had just finished her shift and saw my bike parked outside. She wanted us to talk and clear things up."
"Of course. Such a deep conversation that you ended up burying your dick in her mouth. I know those kinds of talks." I wanted to have one of those talks with her right now. Jealous and angry, she was beautiful.
"You're wrong, all we shared was a hug of reconciliation. I've known Irene for many years. We've always had a friendship with benefits and established certain boundaries. We both knew it would never go beyond that. She helped me a lot when Adri came through the door, and I didn't handle your entry into my life well. If I didn't end the arrangement with Irene, it was because we agreed that each of us would move on. I hadn't considered that things between us might flourish."
"But they did, and I'll remind you that we changed the agreement," she retorted.
"That's true, but I never communicated that to her."
"You could have sent her a legal notice. What next, are you supposed to pay her alimony for your unconceived children who died at the bottom of a condom?" I swallowed the smile threatening my lips.
"Do you know that these kinds of things you come up with kill me?"
"The one who's going to kill you is me if you don't continue."
"Then let me focus, because all I want to do is prove to you that the only belly I intend to swell is yours."
I saw horror cross her face at the prospect of a potential pregnancy, which gave me a momentary respite to continue.
"I didn't call her or respond to her messages since the 'non-wedding night,' and I should have. As soon as she had the chance to take the bull by the horns, she did. She came in to clear things up and for us to define our new status. It actually went much better than I expected. She understood everything perfectly and supported us." Nikita let out a dry laugh.
"And you believed her? That redhead is a wolf in sheep's clothing; she would never settle for being off the menu."
Her assertion wounded me. I did believe in Irene, just as I believed in the rest of my friends who had shown their loyalty. It was Nikita who distrusted even her own shadow.
"Why do you have to doubt everyone?"
"And why do you have to be so gullible? Maybe I have reasons to suspect everyone who approaches me, have you ever considered that?"
"Everyone acts based on their experiences, maybe you just surround yourself with people who are all an act."
"God, Romeo, don't mess with me, because when you realize what you're saying, the curtain will fall from your eyes and you’ll see that you're the main actor in this play." I ignored her words.
"Irene encouraged me to woo you," I continued. "She even suggested destinations..." My wife snorted.
"Well, you could have told her to fuck off a bit, did she also tell you how to eat me out? Because that's all I need to hear."
I closed the distance between us and went straight for her tempting body.
"I don't need instructions for that, if you want, I can show you," I murmured near her mouth.
I slipped my hand between our bodies to slide it inside her pants' waistband, offering her a live demonstration. I stopped when I heard the click of the hammer.
"Don’t you dare lay a finger on me."
My wife was pointing her gun at me, her gun!
"Damn it! Nikita, put that down."
"Clearly, you think I'm an idiot. I'm not that simple, I might love how you fuck me, but not how you lie to me, Capuletto. "
"I'm not lying!" I exclaimed.
"Of course, you are! All the 'I love yous,' but you didn’t hesitate to kiss her during my kidnapping."
"I didn't" I stopped. Because the image hit me with the force of a whip.
That happened on the day they revealed where my wife was. It was true that Irene kissed me and I did nothing to stop her. But how had she found out about that?
"Now you're silent? Why? Because you know it's true."
"That meant nothing," I excused myself, pondering the revelation.
"To whom? Because, for me, knowing that my husband was fooling around with his lover while I was about to be raped was significant."
"God, love. I got there in time!" I tried to touch her face.
"Don’t you dare or I'll make another hole for all that shit you hide inside to leak out."
"Is that what you want? To kill me?"
"It might be the only solution for us."
I looked at her with determination.
"Then do it, shoot if that's what you need to believe me."
"Believe you? You've confessed!"
"I didn't say I kissed her."
"It wasn’t necessary."
"She kissed me."
"Wow, silly me, as if three plus one and one plus three aren’t the same. I must have missed that math class."
"I was very drunk, desperate, and needed comfort. And I didn't resist, that's true. But I was so messed up that I didn't even consider that it wasn't the right thing to do, it was just a few seconds."
"Well, for not remembering it, you seem to know the timing quite well."
"I didn't act right. Accept my apologies for that. And if you push me, I'm also sorry for having forgotten it, and that you had to be the one to bring it up. I swear it was so insignificant to me that if you hadn't mentioned it, I wouldn’t have thought of it."
"And am I supposed to thank you for that? Oh, wait, that’s why you wanted to bring her into our home and have me watch, to get out of your selective amnesia."
"You're wrong again. I was referring to the treatments! Irene is a nurse, she came to the hospital yesterday and offered to do them herself instead of hiring someone I didn't know."
"And you thought I would be thrilled and that it would be ideal, after her attempt to win you back while I was out of the game. You're either naive or a fool."
For a moment, I reflected on what she was saying.
"Okay, maybe I was quite foolish in this matter. That's why I didn't tell you about it, I wanted to talk to you, even though I guessed the answer, and I didn’t have time." The barrel of her gun was still pressed against my abdomen. "Believe me or not, I love you, and I can't think of any other woman but you. You've completely consumed my mind, and if you had said you didn't want her coming to our house, I would have accepted it."
"I don't believe you."
"And what do I need to do for you to believe me, besides admitting I was wrong? Do you want me to tell her I never want to see her again in my life?" I was desperate, I would have done or said anything to get her back. "I'll do it. Do you want me to buy her a plane ticket to the other side of the world? I'll do it. Tell me, what? What do you need to forgive me and for everything to go back to how it was?"
"Kill her." Her response left me cold.
"For a kiss, Nikita? Damn."
"It wasn't just a kiss. You'd kill her because she caused you to break your promise. You'd kill her for trying to take what's mine. You'd kill her for letting her tongue caress the place where mine should always be. You'd kill her for believing her lies and being foolish enough to fall for them. You'd kill her because if it were the other way around, she would already be underground." Her eyes shone and my heart pounded in my chest. "Tell me, Romeo, what's it going to be? My bullet in your chest, or yours in hers?"
I stepped back from her, breathing heavily, my mind racing and my pulse skyrocketing. I didn’t need long to make a decision.
I drew my gun, disengaged the safety, aimed at the sky, and roared: "Irene, come!"
We waited several seconds in silence. With our breathing erratic and our blood flowing feverishly.
What made me make that decision was putting myself in her shoes and understanding that Nikita was right, that I wouldn't have tolerated what I was expecting her to accept, and if the price to pay for being with my wife was to carry another death on my shoulders, so be it, I wasn't going to lose her.
My former lover appeared in the clearing with a frightened look. She jumped back slightly when she saw that I was pointing the gun at her.
"Romeo, what are you doing?" she asked, not understanding anything.
"Justice," Nikita spurred from the tree. "My husband just realized that you've been lying to him from the start, that you are a traitor." She clutched her chest. "Tell him that all you've sought since we got married was to separate us, that on our wedding day I attacked you in the club because of what you told me in the bathroom. Explain that you took advantage of his good faith, that he's a man and they are not as deceitful as us. Tell him that you waved the flag of friendship when all you wanted was to get back into his bed, not as his lover, but as his wife. Make it clear that the Judas kiss you gave him when I was kidnapped and your willingness to heal his wounds were just ways to stay close because deep down you always wanted to be Mrs. Capulet." The one I had considered my friend shifted her pained eyes from one to another. "Confess, and maybe I'll consider whether I pity you and let you live."
"I... I..."
"You, you. I'm sick of the damsels who don't have the ovaries to show themselves as they are! Who hide and strike from behind? Have the guts and confess. Did you sleep with him?" she asked, ignoring that I had already told her no.
"No! I only kissed him."
"But not for lack of desire, right?"
Her eyes were filling with tears.
"I... I made a mistake, I let myself be carried away by the past, I swear it won’t happen again, I won't try it again. I know he loves you, not me."
"Of course, you know. But you won’t try again because my husband is going to kill you." Her brown eyes looked at me pleadingly.
"No, please! I admit everything, you have my confession and my promise that I will leave you alone; if necessary, I will move to another city."
"That’s not necessary, really, I’ll find you a niche with a view of the sea."
Irene burst into tears. I didn't like the situation because, although Nikita was right, I could have also refused that kiss, and none of this would be happening.
The problem with making decisions, or being dragged into them, is that, whether you like it or not, you have to pay the consequences.
"Romeo," Nikita spurred me on. I closed my eyes for a moment, knowing that what I was going to do would weigh on me forever, but not as much as losing my wife. I was ready to pay the price.
"Irene, look at me. I'm sorry." She looked up with tearful eyes. "I promise it will be quick."
Boom!