Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
Alexei
Ilight the cigarette until the flame burns my fingertips, taking a deep inhale that I feel all the way down into my bones as the smoke fills my lungs.
My brother's old den is filled with stale air, lit only by the gaps between the curtains where sunlight pierces inside.
I settle back into his green sofa, making myself comfortable as I watch the footage play on the screen.
Security camera footage from the other night when Sage ambushed me.
There's a particular part of it that's my favorite.
That I find I must watch on replay since discovering it.
I'm standing on the sidewalk at night, talking to my men.
Sage appears out of a nearby alley and tries to stab me, but I notice her at the last second.
When I spin and grab her by the throat, her green eyes light up enough to be seen by this camera.
It's the part where her eyes go wide, and for a second before the terror comes, they look lustful. Curious but cautious. Unsure. With her mouth making that little round 'o' shape.
I shift forward on the couch, taking a long drag of my cigarette as the image of her burns into my retinas. I squeeze her throat harder and her eyes water as she gags. The whole thing brings a dark smile to my face.
I replay it several times over, inching closer to the screen each time I do. Just to see the look of disgust on her face.
I can't pretend she isn't beautiful.
Makes her pretty neck all the more a shame to cut.
But I can't wait for the moment I do. When my knife tears across her flesh and the life bleeds from her eyes. I hope she makes the same look that she's making as I watch her right now.
I clench my jaw as I imagine that moment, hatred pouring over me and sizzling me alive. I take another swig of the vodka and reduce myself to watching this footage for the rest of the day.
The door swings open, bringing with it an ungodly amount of sunlight. I hiss as I shield my eyes from the blinding light.
Isla steps into the room and suppresses a gag, surveying the mess until her disappointed eyes land on mine.
She's had a busy morning. Her clothes are disheveled, droplets of blood coat her sleeves and wisps of hair escape her ponytail.
A reflection that running my brother's empire has mostly fallen to her while I finish my task.
"Fucking hell. How long have you been in here?" Isla asks as she covers her mouth with her sleeve.
I take another long drag of my smoke and settle back into the cushions. "A day or so."
"It smells in here, Alexei," Isla says, shaking her head as she comes up to me and rips the cigarette out of my mouth to stub it out in the ashtray on the coffee table.
I turn calculating eyes on her.
"God," she says, shivering when she sees the look on my face. "You never used to look that sinister before either." Isla paces about the room, picking up after me and cleaning around the spot I sit. "I'm worried about you, Alexei. I see more of Victor in your eyes every single day."
A surge of feeling, something I don't want to acknowledge, rises, and I clench my jaw, running my hand over my mouth and breathing to offset it.
Hearing my brother's name out loud is nearly enough to tip me over the edge.
So I force myself to repeat it. To not allow myself the weakness of being defeated by just the thought of his name.
Victor. Victor. Victor. Victor.
I close my eyes and repeat the chant.
If I were to look at my face in the mirror, I couldn't see how I've changed. I've always had a lot of anger inside me. I can't seem to see the change in me that Isla does.
She said she could see my brother in my eyes. As if that were a bad thing. Victor could be kind sometimes. He was my brother after all. But there was always a certain look on his face when he was losing it. When he was descending into madness. I see that look in my own eyes now.
I know it's me. I can reach out and touch me. Yet I feel so far away. I am aware enough to see that this look should scare me. But not aware enough to change my path.
Victor. Victor. Victor. Victor.
I can't let this feeling take over. The flushes of grief that roll through me never seem to go away no matter how much time passes.
Every single day I wake up with a knot in my chest, reminding me that something must be done.
I've always been angry, and I'd always learned to live with the knot in the past. Since my brother died I can't ignore it.
I am untethered. I never had peace, but I lost whatever was left of it.
Whatever parts were still holding me together.
When Sage is gone… dead, by my hand, I'm sure this feeling will go away. I know from experience I will never have peace. But maybe I can quieten the grief that threatens to consume me. Maybe I can regain control and maybe I can learn to live again.
But only after I see her burn.
Isla is back in my face, clicking her fingers when I snap my eyes open. She backs off on a shiver, and I hate to think how much darkness she's seeing in me to make her recoil like that.
If it were anyone else intruding on this space, they would regret it. But Isla is the only other person in the world I would die for. So for her, I make an exception.
I head to the makeshift bar in the corner of the room, pouring myself a shot and downing it in one go.
"I don't like you being in here," Isla says, whispering as she watches me with a hung head. My hand pauses around my next shot of vodka. "After everything that went down in this room, I don't think you should be spending so much time in here."
I crack the glass and the shards dig into my skin.
But that's the most reaction she'll get out of me.
I wipe the broken glass off on my pants and head back for another tumbler.
"Because Victor died here?" I say, pouring myself another shot, keeping my voice even and calm even as Isla narrows her eyes at me in suspicion.
"Because that little bitch snuffed his life out right here on this fucking green couch? "
Looking at it from this angle, the angle that I first saw Victor's lifeless body, has my breath quickening.
I put the glass down and turn away in an attempt to calm down.
A warm hand brushes my shoulder, one that I glare at but don't shrug away right now.
"You can't push away your responsibilities forever. "
I scoff and this time I do push her away.
"I'm holding down the fort, Alexei," Isla says, disappointment bleeding into her tone again. "But you're the pakhan now. I can't hold this spot forever."
I fiddle with another shot of vodka, daring not to look at her where she stands behind me judging. "I have bigger problems."
Isla gives me a condescending laugh. "Sage DeMarco is not a bigger problem than everything else that's going on. If you just put your shit aside for one second you'd see-"
I down the shot and smash the glass against the wall in a fit of unintended rage. All in my pursuit of making this room more trashed than before. "Do not!"
She gets in my face, as if getting closer to me will get this incessant message through to me any better than the first thousand times she pitched it. I will admit, Isla is rarely passionate about much, and right now her brown eyes are screaming at me.
"I am not the pakhan, Alexei. You are. We have much bigger problems than Sage DeMarco. Or any of the DeMarcos, for that matter. And if you ever took your eye away from her, you'd see that."
I eye her up and down, seeing the plea in her. But like a fog has formed over me, I can't reach out, and I can't see past it. All I see is my anger. All I see is Sage's face in my mind. Playing on a loop over and over.
Isla sighs and clenches her fists. "I wish I could make you listen to me." She slumps down on the couch, scrunching her face at whatever she feels when she sits there. "Something isn't right. It scares me. I can feel something... coming."
I hear her words in the background, but that is all they are.
Background noise. They're behind the fog.
I stand with the remote clutched in my hand, playing that footage over and over.
Just so I can see the way her throat bobs.
I can't look away from it. For a moment, it's the only thing that quietens the screaming in my head.
Isla scoffs behind me. "Fine. If there's one thing you've always been, it's obsessed. First with her. Now with killing her. I can't watch you waste away in here."
She storms past me but I grab her arm, leveling her with a look that I can tell only makes her worry more.
"Until I've avenged Victor, my entire being exists in this room.
My life's purpose belongs here. Until Sage DeMarco is dead on this floor, bleeding out just as she left Victor to bleed out, this is where I will be. "
Isla makes a clucking sound with her tongue. She doesn't need to speak for me to know she disapproves. Problem is, I don't give a fuck.
Not about what she thinks.
Not about my life.
The only thing I really need is to feel Sage Fucking DeMarco take her last breath beneath my hands.