Page 22

22

ALEK

I see the flicker of fear in his eyes as he looks up at me, his own blade pressing against the taut skin of his throat. I wonder what he’s seeing in my face, and I can only imagine that it’s what I feel roiling inside of me—satisfaction at having him at my mercy, and an eagerness to repay some of what was done to me.

I’ve never hesitated at violence. I was my father’s left hand for a reason, the one who enforced his punishments and went after those who slighted him. I’ve never hesitated to inflict pain or draw blood. But I’ve never felt such a sense of pleasure in it as I do now, in the aftermath of what happened to me.

The feeling of repayment, of exorcising my own pain one bloody cut and punch at a time, is almost unmatched. The only thing that feels better is having Dahlia in my bed.

“Just let me go. I’ll tell him you weren’t here.” The man twists underneath me, his breaths shallow with pain. “I won’t come back. Just— yebat, it hurts!”

“It’s supposed to.” I press the blade harder against his throat, drawing a shallow line that starts to drip blood, the way I can still feel thick warmth congealing down my back and calf. “Gregoriy sent you here for me? Why?”

“Just let me go,” the man pleads, struggling again, and I pull the knife away from his throat, pressing the tip to the corner of his ear.

“Answer the fucking question,” I snarl, and he tries to twist away from the point of the blade.

“I can’t tell you?—”

I slice the knife down, cutting half his ear off as it falls into the straw, blood spattering over the surface. The man lets out another yowl of pain, and I press the point into the bleeding wound.

“Were you there for what they did to me?” I demand, snarling down into his face. Spit flies onto the side of his cheek, and he lets out a pained moan. “Were you a face I didn’t see, while they carved off pieces of me? While they made cut after cut to see how long I could suffer before I passed out?”

“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man pants. “I—he just sent me?—”

“For what ? Speak, svoloch , before I cut off the other ear.” I reach with my other hand, shifting the pitchfork where it’s still trapping his thigh, and he cries out.

“Gregoriy—knows you’re here. I don’t know how…” The man pants, his breathing more labored now. “He wanted the woman. But I couldn’t get to her. The house is too well guarded. So he said to watch. Maybe she would come out to the stable. Or maybe I would get lucky, and?—”

“And get me?” I’m almost disappointed that he’s started spilling so much now. The more he talks, the less excuse I have to bloody him. “How lucky do you feel now, svoloch ?” I press the point of the knife to the corner of his eye, and he lets out a panicked sob.

“Just let me go. Let me go,” he babbles, and I stare down at him, a bitter near-laugh escaping my lips.

“Gregoriy is targeting my wife? Is that what I’m hearing?”

“He offered her a lot of money to bring you in herself. She refused him. Now he’s angry.” The man looks up at me with wet, bloodshot eyes, gleaming sickly in the dim light. “He said if she won’t help him, he’ll use her. I won’t be the last one they send.”

I wrap one hand in the front of his shirt, yanking him up to eye-level with me. He lets out another cry of pain as his body shifts, the pitchfork tilting in his thigh, and I press the tip of the knife more firmly against the corner of his eye.

“I’m letting you live for only one reason,” I growl. “And that’s so you can go back to Gregoriy and tell him that if he wants me, the woman is the wrong path to go down. I don’t care about her. Do you understand me? If he takes her, I don’t give a shit. I won’t come for her. He can try to catch me, if he can. But I won’t spend an ounce of energy on trying to rescue that suka .”

Acid burns in my throat at the lies, the Russian epithet crawling past my lips with effort. There was a time, when I believed Dahlia was lying to me, when I would have called her a bitch myself. But now, it feels painful to say it aloud.

“Do you hear me?” I drag the edge of the knife down his cheek, and the man lets out a pained moan as the blood drips down the thin slice. “Tell him to leave her alone. I won’t do shit for her.”’

“I understand,” he pants, slumping in my grip. “I’ll…tell…him.”

“Good.” I shove him back to the straw, standing up so that I’m staring down at him. “Don’t forget to tell Gregoriy that when I see him again, I plan to do this over his dead body.”

I yank down my zipper, grinning down at the bleeding man as I piss on the front of his shirt. The acrid scent fills the space, as the man spits and curses at me, his anger renewed with that fresh humiliation. He tries to lunge up at me, but I slam my boot down on his wrist, grinding it into the fine bones until I’m finished soaking his clothes.

I step back, a twisted smile still on my lips as I grab the handle of the pitchfork, jerking it free of the man’s thigh. He howls like a scalded cat, and I step back, his knife still gripped in my fist.

“You have thirty seconds to get out of my sight,” I hiss. “Or we’ll start all over again. This time, I won’t have any questions. Only?—”

The man is already scrambling to his feet despite his injury, scrabbling in the blood and piss-soaked hay as he rushes for the stall door. He nearly falls, scrambles up again, and makes it out of the barn just as I reach thirty .

It’s not until he’s gone that I realize that this is the first time I’ve truly smiled in years. The grin is still on my lips, twisted and nearly hurting my cheeks, and it falls away immediately at the realization.

It’s not real happiness. It doesn’t feel good , not as good as I thought it would. There was the rush of pleasure, of satisfaction while I was in the moment, but now, I feel a sick knot in my stomach at the realization that the first rush of joy I’ve felt in five years came from cutting a man up in my brother’s stables.

This isn’t what I wanted my life to be. Who I want to be. Before, violence was a necessary means to an end. A rush, yes, a feeling of adrenaline and power, and I can’t say I didn’t revel in it at times. But not like this.

That sick feeling stays in my stomach as I clean up the mess in the stall, taking both the straw and the pitchfork and knife and throwing them on a pile of old wood and other scraps further out on the property waiting to be burned. I make sure the floor in the stall is clean, scrubbed of the blood, and throw fresh hay down to cover up any remaining traces of what happened here. And all the while, that sick feeling mingles with burning anger at the knowledge that they’re coming after Dahlia.

I don’t know if my lies about not giving a shit about Dahlia will convince Gregoriy. It convinced the asshole he sent after me, but Gregoriy is smarter than that. And he’s seen a woman bring me low once before. It worked for him once, so why not again?

I’m not sure he’ll believe I’ve learned my lesson, or that I’m so hardened that I’d leave any woman—even one I wasn’t falling in love with—to his not-so-tender mercies. I’m not sure?—

I stop short, dropping the last handful of straw as that last thought runs through my head again. Even one I wasn’t falling in love with.

I can’t fall for Dahlia. There’s no capacity in me for it any longer, and even if there was, it’s a dead end for us both. She won’t want me if she knows how truly broken I am, and I can’t subject her to a real marriage with all that would entail for her. All the things she’d have to endure—from both me, and the threats that don’t seem to want to leave me alone.

I don’t love her. I’ll never love anyone again.

And yet, that pain hasn’t left my chest since I walked out of her room.

—

When the mess in the stables is fully cleaned up, and I’ve had a minute to gather myself, I head back up to the house. It’s quiet when I let myself in through the staff entrance, intending to get upstairs without anyone seeing me and clean up my own wounds and bloodied clothes. I can hear the clink of silverware in the dining room, faintly, and I breathe a sigh of relief as I head quickly for the stairs. They’re still eating—probably dessert by now—and no one will see me.

Once in my room, I lock the door behind me, and strip off my shirt as I stride to the bathroom. I grit my teeth as the fabric peels away from the wound, and I throw it and my jeans into a pile on the floor to get rid of later.

The wound on my back, as I twist around to look at it, isn’t the worst. The slash runs from the nape of my neck diagonally in a jagged line past my shoulder blade, but it’s fairly shallow. It’ll be another scar to match the rest, but it’s my calf I’m more worried about. That cut is deep and still leaking blood, and it needs stitches. But I’m not going to the hospital, and the thought of stitching it up myself makes me feel a little woozy. I can manage a lot, but I’m not sure about that.

I’m not sure where I’d even find a needle and medical-grade thread that could handle it, anyway. I grab the first-aid kit out from under the sink, setting it down none too gently as I hobble over the tiles to turn on the shower, leaving bloody footprints that I’ll have to clean up later on the floor. I grit my teeth as I step into the shower, wincing in pain as the water running into the drain immediately turns pink, and I try not to think about how badly this hurts.

I’ve had worse. But it never gets easier to deal with. The night I escaped I was a mess of wounds and bruises, old and new, and the first night in the shitty hotel that I ended up at was a fever dream of pain and trying to patch myself up enough to keep going after just a couple hours of sleep. That was worse—far worse. But in this particular moment, it’s hard to be objective about it.

Leaning forward, I press my forehead against the tiles as the hot water runs over my back, searing along that cut and dripping down my body. I breathe in and out, slowly, trying to regulate the pain as much as I can, until I feel like I can manage to scrub the rest of myself clean.

Once out of the shower, I pull the edges of the wound on my calf together with butterfly tape, wincing with every tug of the raw skin. I smear it with antibiotic ointment and cover it with a bandage, and then do a messier job of the slash on my back. It’s hard to reach, and I can’t use the butterfly tape on it. A bandage will have trouble sticking as well, considering the spot, but I get as much antibiotic as I can on it and slap gauze and tape over it, hoping for the best.

I’m exhausted, by the time I’m done, drained from the fight and the pain and the rush of tangled emotions. But instead of dropping into bed the way I want to, I force myself down the hall to Dahlia’s room.

It’s not locked, and I don’t bother knocking. I shove it open and barge into the room, only to find her coming out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her and her hair wet, slick against her head and dripping down her neck and shoulders.

Hot lust jolts through me, overriding the pain and nearly bringing me to my knees. I want to lick the droplets of water off her neck and collarbone, want to suck at the damp skin until it’s red from my mouth instead of the water, want to?—

“What the fuck are you doing in here, Alek?”

Dahlia’s voice slices through the air, dragging me sharply back to the present. I swallow hard, forcing back the dizzying wave of arousal, and focus on why I’m here.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Have you ever heard of knocking?” she demands hotly. “Or asking if I want to talk to you ? This is the third time today you’ve just barged in here, demanding I drop everything?—”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to retort that she could drop that towel, and I’d remind her of what I can do with my tongue besides talking. But that’s not why I came in here.

I came in here to make sure that Dahlia hears and believes the lies I told out there in the stable, to the man who’s going to take them back to Gregoriy. That she believes I’d never come for her, that I’d never put myself in danger for her, so that if something happens to her before I can put a stop to this, there’s no faltering. She has to believe it, so that maybe they will, if the worst happens.

Or I could tell her the truth. About everything.

A part of me wants to, desperately. But I can’t. I physically can’t—it’s as if my throat closes over every time I think of it, panic flooding me and my entire body seizing up.

“Don’t worry,” I tell her tightly, the feeling shuddering through me making every word sound exactly as taut and terse as I mean for it to. “I just came to tell you that what happened this afternoon was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come to see you at your work, and I shouldn’t have done—what we did.”

“Fucked me on my desk?” Dahlia retorts tartly, and I swallow hard.

“Yes. It won’t happen again.” I force myself to meet her eyes. “That first night was only ever supposed to be that. One night. I never planned to see or speak to you again. And now, regardless of the consequences of that night, there can’t be anything between us. I won’t touch you again. I’ll keep my distance. You can have what you need for yourself and the child, but I’ll avoid you as much as possible.”

Dahlia is staring at me, and I can’t tell if it’s hurt or incredulity that I see shining in her eyes. “You barged in here to tell me that ?”

“I wanted nothing more to do with you after that night, and nothing has changed. That’s what I came to tell you.”

Every word feels like it burns my tongue. She does flinch at that, her eyes widening slightly, but her jaw tightens, and I can tell that even if it did hurt her, she’ll never let me know.

We’re both good at that—at hiding everything that hurts, and never letting the other see it.

“Fine,” she grits out. “That’s fine with me, Alek. I won’t burden you a second longer than I need to, I promise you that?—”

“So you’re admitting that I’m your failsafe?” The accusation bursts out, eager to replace all of the hurt clogging up my chest right now, the feeling that lying is somehow worse than admitting to the truth I’m afraid to say out loud. “Go ahead, Dahlia. Say it out loud. Tell me you married me as a backup plan, because you were going to be fucked if you didn’t have someone to fall back on.”

It was the wrong thing to say—at least if I wanted a conversation instead of an argument. I don’t think I wanted either. I just wanted to say my piece and leave, but I can see Dahlia winding herself up now, fury sparking in her eyes, and I can’t seem to drag myself away.

“I’ll take care of myself,” she spits out. “I’ll go down and get divorce papers tomorrow. If that’s how you want to be, after everything—I don’t fucking care about failsafes. I’ll figure it out.”

“I don’t believe you.” The words come out more raw than I expected, and even Dahlia looks slightly taken aback at the sound of my voice, as if she can hear the hurt in it, too.

“I started to care about you,” she hisses. “After the appointment, after today…even before that…I was starting to feel something for you. I know something happened to you. I started to give a shit, and who knows? Maybe if you’d ever told me a single shred of the truth, if you’d opened up to me one tiny goddamn bit, maybe this could have been something.” Her hand tightens on the front of her towel, gripping it so tightly that her knuckles are white. “But I’m not going to tear myself apart for a man who won’t even tell me the truth about himself.”

My vision goes white. For a moment, all I feel is hot anger that burns in a flash and then turns ice cold. I can feel myself shutting down every wall that she’d started to chip away at resealing in an instant at that sentence.

I stalk towards her, and I see her flinch, but she holds her ground. She stares up at me, unyielding, and I reach out, gripping her chin between my fingers as I meet her eyes.

“You have no idea,” I say slowly, “what it feels like to be torn apart.”

Dahlia swallows hard, and I can feel her trembling. “If you can’t be the kind of man who’s honest with me,” she whispers, “then you’re not the kind of man I want to be a father to my child. We’ll both be fine on our own.” She draws in a shaky breath. “I should never have married you?—”

“Finally,” I bite out. “Something we agree on.”

And then I let go of her, turning on my heel and stalking out of the room.