CHAPTER 22
ALEXIA GREEN.
Russia feels like a distant nightmare by now.
Why?
Christian Volkov hasn’t stepped into the house since I saw him last at the airport.
Since he kissed Millie on the forehead, smiled, ordered his men to get me home and hopped in a black vehicle, disappearing.
The only signs I have that he is alive and well is…
“You can’t keep doing this. I know it’s your job but this is getting out of hand. You’ve barely had time to rest for weeks”, Juana complains feeding Millie her bottle of milk.
I wipe the hair from my daughter’s forehead.
As long as my baby is safe, everything else is okay.
“I’ll rest later. I’m fine, Juana. Really, I’m fine.”
“Being pale and stitching men twenty four seven does not look fine to me. You are pale and thin and the idiot doesn’t seem to care while he runs his businesses God knows where.”
“Juana—” I start to warn her.
Her eyes are scalding hot when she says, ”I might be his servant and I tolerate a lot of the things he does but this is unacceptable. Vicious is out of his mind.”
Before my throat can open up and release lies from my mouth ‘that I’m fine and I’m doing okay’, the doorbell echoes into the air.
The sound is enough to wish that I was in a coma and not in this hell of a mansion.
I have already treated around seven men today and it’s barely five o’clock.
Yesterday they were fifteen.
The day before, a lot more than fifteen.
Smiling weakly despite Juana’s approval, my feet shuffle to the door and when I open it another bleeding man stands on the other side of the door.
Oh God.
Now this…this is working for a million dollars.
If I keep working like this maybe I’ll be able to pay Rhett’s debt in two months or less.
Twenty five minutes later I’m adding gauze to the ribs of the blonde-haired guy who looks like a kid trying to play gangsta.
“What really happened? This cut is so precise it doesn’t look like you got it in a bar fight.”
The kid rubs the back of his neck awkwardly.
“Thanks for patching me up, Doc but I really have to go.”
I discard my gloves.
I might be exhausted but that exhaustion is slowly starting to delve into anger.
“Do you know how many guys I’ve had bleeding in here today?”
He nods a ‘no’.
Hands on my hips, my left foot tapping the ammonia squeaky clean floors, I give him the truth.
“Seven but I guess that makes you the eighth one. Hell I bet by the time I get to bed, I’ll have seven more men to stitch up.
Wanna know the most interesting thing too? Every man that walks through here has the same precise cut. Not enough to cause damage or God forbid death but enough to need stitches.
The way I see it someone is setting me up with a tremendous workload as punishment and you are going to tell me who.”
Because I’m freaking tired of this.
It’s my job yeah but why punish me like this?
Why do this to me, Christian?
Because I shot you?
“I don’t know what you are talking about—”
“Don’t lie to me right now. You do not want to lie to a woman who’s been cleaning wounds for a week. And worse you do not want to cross a doctor who’s half exhausted half functional.
What happened?”
The kid lifts his hands in defeat groaning at the pain from his torso.
“Okay, Okay. I don’t want any trouble but the boss finally spoke to me today and I was excited.
He asked me if I wanted to train and of course I said yes. He’s the boss you’d be mad to decline a chance like that.
Rumors in the club are he’s been in a bad mood for weeks. I didn’t think he was in a bad mood when we started training but then he started saying weird stuff ya know?
That I could take punches to my face and any cuts to my body because he had a doc on the go to fix me up.”
What the hell?
“You let him fight you and cut you because he told you he had a doctor to fix you?”
“Ummm, I didn’t let him cut me. I fought him with a knife like he instructed and I ended up here.”
“The other guys who’ve been here, did he send them too?”
I don’t know why I’m asking, the answer is in the air itself.
“Boss has been the one training everyone since he came back from Moscow. Day and night, he beats the shit out of us and calls us weak. I mean we are weak yes but Jett and Nico weren’t brutal with training like he is.”
Oh God.
These stupid stupid men.
But there’s one man who’s ridiculous in all this and that’s Volkov and the control he has on these men.
What type of loan sharks are these men?
“Why do you all do this? Why want to join forces with a madman?”
“A madman? Our boss is the—.”
The sound of a phone ringing interrupts us. The kid takes his phone from his pockets, color draining from his cheeks as he picks it up.
“Boss”, he starts.
My heart skips for absolutely no reason.
“No. No, I’m done. Yeah. Okay. Straight away, boss.”
He hangs up.
His eyes fall on me.
“Boss wants to see you.”
Weeks of silence and he wants to see me?
I’d probably be lying if I said my heart isn’t pumping and traveling up my throat all the way to my mouth.
****
The club labeled ‘Lux’ on the outside with big neon lights looks magnanimous on the inside.
It holds more than one DJ booth, a dance floor bigger than any small apartment I’ve ever lived in, rock and punk music
flowing through the speakers, neon lights blinding and spectacular, and bar counters holding all kind of drinks any city has to offer.
Jude, the kid who brought me here, talks to the beefy security guard into letting us pass.
Two minutes later we are trudging through drunk and rowdy bodies.
Some drunk, some too high to give a hoot where the night will take them.
Jude leads me to the center of the dance floor that holds a few expansive velvet grey couches.
Maximo’s face comes to sight first and disappointment hits me in the chest.
Where is Volkov?
“Nurse”, he acknowledges me with a nod as the women who were sitting on his lap a few seconds ago disappear.
“Thanks for fixing me up, Lexy. I owe you one”, Jude winks at me, disappearing to the club too.
I sit opposite Maximo feeling out of place.
I’m wearing the same dress I wore when I last saw Christian.
The only other dress I have in my closet because I burnt the rest.
Music blasts between us.
Maximo’s gaze is hard but not scary enough to bite.
“What does he want me to do?”
Why did your boss want me here if he’s not here in the first place?
I shout over the music.
“Stitch him up but by the looks of it he doesn’t need your help anymore.”
I follow Maximo’s line of vision.
Upstairs where no one else seems to occupy, where there is an opaque room made of glass, Christian Volkov takes a few steps into what I’m assuming is the VIP section.
My eyes are on the woman giddily running behind me to catch up.
She looks pretty. Real pretty with make-up, a skinny Victoria’s Secret model-like figure, let’s not forget the fact that she is a one hundred percent lookalike of every guy’s fantasy.
It doesn’t matter.
It shouldn’t matter.
It matters.
As soon as I turn to face Maximo, my cheeks are lined with red fury, my throat clogs up and I reach for the drink in front of me.
I dunk the entire liquid from the glass down my throat and it burns me all the way to my stomach.
God, what is that? Alcohol? Gin and tonic? Vodka?
That’s pretty strong.
“You shouldn’t have drunk that, Nurse. The drink wasn’t for you.”
“Why did he call me here? To humiliate me? To beat ten more men up and I could patch them up while he watched?
No, you know what? Don’t answer that. I’ll ask the boss myself!”
My feet are already up by the time Maximo calls my name.
I feel dizzy.
Yap that drink was not for me but I don’t let a little alcohol bring me down as I climb the stairs or as I make my way to the VIP section.
A few groans leap from the other side of the room.
My hand hovers over the glass door that won’t let me see anything.
Alcohol pushes me to do the unthinkable.
I push the door inside slightly.
I peek my head in, oblivious to the sight awaiting me.
No one could have prepared me for this.
His hair is the first thing that comes to sight.
Volkov is seated in a chair that’s big enough to be classified as a medieval throne.
His back faces me, his thick head of dark hair meets my eyes.
He can’t see me because I’m behind him but I can see everything.
I can see what he’s watching.
Who he is watching.
The woman from earlier is bent over his desk. Naked, spread, her ass cheeks red. She looks like a meal placed on a plate to be devoured.
Except as her knees shake, and she lets out all kinds of moans, anger hits me square in the chest.
That anger simmers down to something fuzzy when I spot something inside her core.
Is that a vibrator inside her?
“P—please Sir. I just…want you…inside me.”
Passion drips into the air like perfume and I smell it till it consumes me, till it threatens to fill me up to the brim and sink me into the ocean like the Titanic.
I want to be the one on that table.
Bent, filthy, spread apart.
But I want this man behind me, hands on my back smashing my naked form against the wood of his desk to hold me steady as he slips in and out of me.
I want this woman out.
I want to be the one watched like that with something vibrating between my legs.
The alcohol is taking over. That must be the case.
I’m not sane.
Christian Volkov doesn’t speak and maybe that’s what has the woman coming harder with every vibration and with every sound.
Gagged, blindfolded and bent over a desk is fun but what’s more fun?
Being in the eyes of a predator.
Not knowing if the predator is going to hunt you or not.
Being scared and thrilled at the same time of what will happen next.
Him not speaking builds anticipation, builds tension, builds…
I lean against the side of the door, my hand slowly tries to lift my dress up.
I just need touch.
Touch to burn the jealousy coursing through my veins.
Touch to remind me every mold this man is made of and forget it.
“You should know by now you are mine, Little Nurse. No one gets to touch what’s mine except me. Not even your little greedy fingers.”
I sober up.
Panic and embarrassment coat my skin like sticky syrup.
I should…
“Don’t even think of running, Little Nurse. Do not run.”