Chapter Twenty-Six Konstantin’s POV
Chapter Twenty-Six
Konstantin’s POV
“Greta was right,” Alina pointed out. “She said this is one of your favorites. I can see you love it.”
“I love eating with you. That about sums it up.”
The meal was delicious, but even then, it didn’t feel as good as eating with Alina beside me.
It had been a few days since the mole was caught, and she’d barely looked me in the eye during a conversation.
I knew she was thinking about the new state of things and was wary of getting too close.
Still, I was glad I found her on the balcony last night and that I told her what I did.
Eating with her had become a luxury I’d rather have, given the option. It was simple, yet so intimate. I could stare at her all I wanted as she ate. I didn’t have to bother about coming off too strong since I couldn’t do anything more than touch her hand.
“Well, you’re not exactly bad company,” she remarked.
“I’m not bad company, or you like eating with me?” I pressed.
“I love eating with you,” she confessed, chuckling.
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Liza said you’re barely here. That you’re always away. Russia, everywhere else. But you’ve never traveled since we left Russia. Why?” she inquired.
“Who travels when they have a beautiful wife in their home?” I joked.
She rolled her eyes. “I just realized it. I was just wondering.”
I dropped my fork. “She’s right, I travel out of Manhattan a lot. I’m mostly in Russia. But it’s not just because I love traveling. It's beyond that. There is a bit of a wider age gap between my brothers and I, so they were already going here and there with my dad’s men when I was still a child.”
She listened intently, her eyes not leaving my face.
“Growing up, I was what you’d call a sick child.
Nausea, low sugar levels, and light-headedness.
They were all normal for me. My dad…he hated it.
I guess it would have been better if our mom were in the picture.
But she was not. And our dad trained us the hard way.
All of us. My training was just different.
He called me weak. Said I was a waste and I shouldn’t have been born. ”
I heard her suck in a breath, but she remained silent as I went on.
“As I grew older, he was bent on forcing me to be strong. Whenever I was sick, which was most of the time, he’d stop the workers from calling in the nurse.
He’d lock me in my room and ask me to fight the sickness, like it was a fucking person.
He’d have the workers bring me water and food once a day for a few days.
Then, when he was sure I’d gotten over it, he’d give me back my freedom.
At first, it used to weigh me down. The pain I felt would make me scream and beg, asking him to let me have some medicine.
I’d stay awake all night, wishing any of my brothers were around. But that period didn’t last long.”
“I realized that begging him wouldn’t make him change his mind.
So I stopped begging. I decided to fight the pain as if I were seeing it.
I started to practice my punching skills on the wardrobe and the walls.
I didn’t stop until my hands were bleeding, and the pain I felt in my body started to feel smaller than my rage. ”
She took my hand, her soft fingers grazing over my scarred knuckles.
“One time, I beat up the worker he sent to bring me food. I punched him until he was covered in his own blood. When my dad came a while later, he was fucking shocked. At that moment, he was probably scared of me. And that gave me a kind of satisfaction I decided not to let go of. Since that day, my fists became my words. There was nothing I couldn’t handle as long as I could throw hands.
Even when he died, and he slowly became history, I starved myself and lived the rough life just in case he could still see me.
I locked myself out of everyone’s life and obliterated my feelings. ”
I turned to face her. “That’s why I go to Russia. He raised me there. I learned to fight my weakness there.”
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, bringing my hand to her face, blinking back tears.
“Don’t cry,” I told her. “I hate seeing tears in your eyes. I made you cry once. I don’t want to do it again.”
“I’m so sorry you had to go through all of that.”
“It’s history,” I dismissed, chuckling.
“Konstantin, you don’t have to carry that burden anymore. You can live the life you want to live, outside your father’s shadow.”
“Food is getting cold,” I muttered, and she giggled.
“I love the sound of your laughter.”
She simply rolled her eyes in response.
“What do you intend to do after lunch?” she inquired.
“Some work in my office. Why do you ask?”
“Nothing,” she replied. “I was wondering if you’d like to watch a movie. With me.”
“Then ask me,” I remarked.
She squinted her eyes like she was trying to gauge my seriousness. Then she asked, “Do you want to see a movie with me?”
“Yes, baby.”
“Okay, then,” she answered, smiling as she got up.
I stood and followed her, pulling her into the two-seater couch facing the television. I took the remote control from the table and handed it to her.
“So, what’s your thing?” she inquired.
“What’s yours?”
“Thriller. Sci-fi. Romantic comedy. I think that’s about it.”
“Hm. Let’s do one of those, then,” I suggested, relaxing into the chair and pulling her back with me with my hand around her shoulder.
“I won’t even bother asking which title you prefer,” she remarked, flicking through different movie thumbnails.
“Sorry for disappointing you.”
“Why would I be disappointed?” she drawled, turning to face me. “It’s just movies.”
I kissed her nose.
“You should ask me what types of firearms I know. Then we'll see who should be disappointed,” she said.
“I can never be disappointed in you, baby. You’re an angel I couldn’t have deserved even if I tried.”
“Eyes on the movie,” she directed, turning towards the television. My eyes, however, took her in. That beautiful hair, her lips, her slender neck, her breasts, which created beautiful curves in front of her sweater, every part of her was perfection.
Her eyes flicked towards me, and she caught me staring.
“Konstantin,” she practically whined. “Did you hear a word of what I just said?”
“You can’t blame me,” I told her.
She sighed.
“I was saying the movie is a romantic comedy. Too soft for you?”
“Nope.”
“Okay. Let’s do it, then.”
“Hmm.”
She pressed the remote control, and the movie started, the opening credits moving around on the screen.
The first scene was a street fight leading to a hospital emergency, so I wouldn’t call it uninteresting.
“I would love to see you in your work uniform,” I told her.
“Why? You have a scrub fetish?” she questioned, giggling.
“Not at all,” I countered. “I’ve never seen you in them before. You didn’t use them when you were with Liza. And the night we….took you, you weren’t in them. Besides, it’s a whole part of your life, I’d like to see you like that.”
“I could wear it for you,” she offered, her sultry voice going straight to my dick.
“When would that be?”
“Oh, please,” she replied, laughing. “I was kidding.”
“That’s a cruel joke.”
“You’d miss the movie.”
She leaned into my side, and we kept watching the movie. Well, half of the time I was watching her.
“See the way she shoved her? All because she's a doctor and she’s just a common nurse.”
She didn’t turn towards me, but I could see the pain in her expression. It was definitely not just the movie; it must have been her reality.
“Were you ever treated that way?”
She chuckled. “The thing is, this kind of treatment is quite a common phenomenon. It happened to me, and it happens to countless other nurses and medical assistants. Just one idolized, arrogant doctor is all that’s needed for it to happen.
During my nursing training, we used to offer our services for free on weekends to different hospitals.
We were just trainees, so you know, we were eager to please.
But even our need to be in their good books didn’t make us blind to the attitude of some demeaning colleagues.
It was infuriating at times. The funny part is, we’re not under them.
We belong to different aspects of healthcare.
There are pharmacists and radiologists. But the fact that we work closely with medical doctors and the shots are theirs to call make people, even patients, see us as their assistants. ”
“I like to believe I have tough skin, but comparison is one thing I’ve always struggled to ignore or be okay with. At the clinic, some doctors never fail to remind us that they have the final say. It used to be a big issue for me then. I struggled, really struggled.”
She paused and turned to me, her voice lower.
“I wasn’t always this sure of myself. I always found myself attracted to men like Siroc and Vitya, men who seemed untouchable and powerful, because I believed I needed them.
I felt incomplete, being a girl who moved from place to place and never had a steady life.
I thought that if someone like that was attracted to me, being with them automatically raised me up. ”
“So, working at the hospitals with people who confirmed my beliefs of not being good enough made matters worse. But when I started learning things, it began to affect me less. I just had to remind myself of the reason I chose nursing: to care for people even when the people they love don’t know what to do. ”
I didn’t know what to say to her. I wanted to tell her that she didn’t deserve to be treated that way, but I had done nothing much different from that. I wanted to let her know that she was worth more than she thought, but I’d doubted her again and again.
So I pulled her closer and kissed her. I kissed her until I felt the salty taste of her tears. Then I lifted her to straddle me, and she lay with her head against my chest, the movie forgotten.
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