CHAPTER 41
ALEXIA GREEN.
Five a.m. for training.
Five a.m. before I hit my shift at the clinic at eight a.m.
Three torturous hours in the backyard of the same mansion I miss and dread at the same time.
Three hours with the same asshole who slept in my bed, giving me orgasm after orgasm till I fell asleep.
Long gone is that man though.
The man in front of me is an absolute ass.
“If I can’t see anything, how am I supposed to hit you?”
I shout over the brisk cold morning breeze.
I might be wearing a fleece jacket and leggings but I fear hypothermia does not acknowledge my attempt of trying to stay warm.
“Listen. Pay attention to everything around you.”
His voice chafes my insides as I try to pinpoint his location with a scowl and anger threatening to rip the blindfold I have on my face.
“This is dumb”, I whisper holding on to the stick and hitting nothing but air with frustration.
“Are you complaining, Little Nurse?”
Gee, am I happy that I’ve been hitting air for more than fifteen minutes?
“You wanted to train me to fight? Then fucking train me instead of wasting my time with a stick and a blindfold that will never come handy in anything. If this is your version of torture, waking me up at five for this nonsense then you’ve won, Volkov. You’ve won!”
My lungs are burning, the blindfold burning my eyelids and my frustration’s about to go at it for another round.
I raise the damn stick and hit air again.
The only difference this time is the stick is yanked from my arms and thrown off somewhere where the leaves crunch.
One minute I’m angry and the next minute, fear fills me to the brim as all the wind is knocked from my lungs.
Coming from behind him, his huge hands bunch around my waist, pulling me plush to his chest.
I collide with him like a stone falling from a ten-story drop.
Aggressively landing his face in the crook of my neck, I feel his lips against my neck, his breath skittering over the ticking vein on the column of my neck.
“I’ve won? I’ve not won yet, Alexia. This is not how winning will feel like.” His hand pulls my jacket up, and the fear escalates to another level.
On the edge of my leggings, he doesn’t stop.
He doesn’t give me a moment to say stop as he sneaks his hand inside my leggings the only thing stopping him being my tight closed thighs and my panties.
“You know how Brad and that bastard ex of yours knew they had won? When they had you just like this, Alexia. Blind, unable to do anything but cry, standing like this like a good girl about to receive everything they dish out.
My question is, Little Nurse, when I open up those legs for me, will you let me take you in every way I want to? Will you let me do whatever the fuck I please because you are blind and I’m too strong for you?
Time’s wasting, Alexia. I’m being generous here giving you time to think but your assailant? Your assailant won’t give you time to get over your melodramatic past, he’ll take it.
Take what isn’t his, enjoy it like it’s his to take pleasure in and you’ll be the same woman that night, helplessly crying, admitting you are blind and-.”
Maybe it’s his words.
Maybe it’s the cold that slaps me like a bitch.
Maybe it’s my melodramatic trauma.
I pull away from him.
I push myself off his chest, ricocheting forward with tears in my eyes and newfound courage hanging in my hands like iron fists.
I turn around and I lunge forward punching the ever-living shit out of his face.
And I don’t stop.
My fists sting, my throat wells with emotions.
“I’m not weak! I’m not blind! And the fact that…that I’m a woman doesn’t mean…doesn’t mean I have to give you…you don’t own me! You hear me? You don’t own me Rhett and I’ll never let you-,” Another punch, my tears soak the blindfold as my arms tire of throwing punch after punch.
“There’s the little firecracker”, Christian’s voice brings me back to reality.
I take a full minute to cry before I step back, taking the blindfold off of me.
The air is still as damp as when I got here.
It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the light.
A minute to stare at the grass before my eyes skid to the black boots, up his cargo pants, up that tight black shirt that looks like it’s painted on and up past that jaw to those eyes.
He has a cut on his lower brow and a bruise on his left cheek but the man looks at me and smiles.
One of those rare smiles that makes my stomach topple over and my heart beat with dumb insanity.
“You did it.”
His congratulation comes out blandly like I finally made unburnt toast for the first time.
Pride surges through me and I smile amidst my tears.
He steps forward, I throw a glare at him.
“Don’t ever touch me like that. Don’t ever touch me like my bastard ex. I don’t care what methods you use to train your men but don’t use them on me. Please.”
He can read the fear in my eyes.
He knows what I need right now.
But he totally disregards it as he takes my form in replying back to me with, “Same time tomorrow, nurse. Don’t be late.”
Then he is gone back to the house and it’s time for me to leave.
No kiss from him.
Not the hug I received yesterday when he left my apartment.
The cold Vicious is back and this time it feels like something has shifted.
Something between us.
***
“I could just eat you up, my little princess. Are you full yet or are we going for another round of feeding you relentlessly?
You little milk monster.”
I chuckle.
Millie sucks even harder, her little fists curling around the edges of my hair and pulling.
If I didn’t know she was a cluster feeder, I’d be at the hospital right now complaining that my baby feeds a little too much than your average babies.
But this is Millie and Millie is the most perfect little thing happening to me at the moment.
As Millie feeds and I recline to my seat switching on my phone and looking at my texts, disappointment gnaws on me.
Christian hasn’t texted me. Not that he usually texts but I thought…I kinda thought he would ask how I was doing.
Wishful thinking, I guess.
He’s a busy man judging from the number of his men we had to stitch up today and I was also busy so that would explain the no texts part.
‘What’s going on with you, Lexy?’
I don’t get to dwindle in my thoughts for long because my office door opens and Brenda walks in with a few bags that smell deliciously like Chinese takeout.
“You’re a lifesaver. Really, you are”, I thank her as she places the food on the table, her eyes on Millie who’s slowly closing her little eyes.
“I had to feed you guys. I won’t be home till later tonight.”
“Ooh, you are going on a date or something?”
She hasn’t been on a date since we moved into her house and honestly speaking, I’d love for her to meet someone.
She’s the kind of woman that deserves happiness.
“Date? God, no. Since my ex, I think I’ll lay low when it comes to dating. Layla, Wes, Xavier are going out for drinks. We’d invite you but like always you’ll say no so here’s Chinese takeout.”
I feel her disappointment in me with her words.
And like the usual lies I bring up, I tell her, “Millie is tired and I gotta wake up at five tomorrow, I can’t do drinks right now Bree. Sorry.”
“I liked him before but sorry not sorry, our boss is a cunt.”
I laugh.
Bree is like the mother of sainthood, hearing her cuss is a little perplexing.
“Yeah?”
“I mean you are here balancing a job, taking care of your kid, waking up at five to head to his mansion for whatever he needs while he’s what? Tongue deep in some brunette’s mouth downtown?”
I still.
“What?”
“Yeah, I mean he’s a real asshole for-.”
“No, I mean the other thing.”
“Oh.”
Brenda takes out her phone all the while my raging heart feels like it’s about to splinter.
She pulls up a video pointing it in my direction.
“You see that? Paparazzi somehow hogged his club and they took this video while Christian Volkov was kissing the pretty brunette. I mean she’s pretty not going to lie and he might be a good kisser seeing as to how I’ve never seen him all PDA with any woman but he’s still an asshole.”
He grabs her by the neck.
He’s the one who initiates the kiss.
He’s the one who’s sucking this woman’s tongue as if he wasn’t fingers deep inside me…
The one that stings harder than the bile rising up my throat and the tears piercing my eyes?
The real kicker?
The real kicker is he’s never kissed me.
He’s never shown me that type of affection.
“Lex? Lexy?”
“Can you watch Millie for me?”
“What? Where are you going?”
To let my rage fly.
***
I don’t use the front door.
The front door to the club has a bouncer trying to kick paparazzi out of the club.
The front door to the club might have his men who might have strict instructions to keep me out.
The back door that is in a creepy alley does nothing to lessen the panic, the bitterness over what I’m doing.
The door is open, sneaking in won’t be hard.
Except I’m barely in when a large bulky man cuts me off, blocking the pathway.
“Go home.”
“I want to see him”, I know I look like a mess. A cab ride and trying to hold yourself together does this to someone.
“He will not want you here.”
“Well, I don’t care, do I?”
“What are you doing here, Alexia?” Maximo asks and the question nearly keels me over.
What am I doing here?
“I don’t know.”
“He’s not worth it. Men like us are never worth it.”
I know.
“Is that the reason why you still keep pushing Cat away from you?”
“Yes.”
“You love her”, I accuse like it’s my right to do so.
Like I know what love encompasses.
“The Russian fuck also loves her and that won’t change who she is and who her brother is when shit blows over.”
I don’t get it.
“Let me in.”
He doesn’t move.
He sighs into the night, his cigarette breath almost choking me before my emotions can finish the job.
“I’m gonna let you in on a secret seeing as to how we are already sharing secrets and whatnot.
The man in there will never be with a woman like you. It’s not you, it’s not him, it’s the whole fucked up system we were raised in.
You are good, Alexia. He’s good when his demons aren’t tormenting him and that’s the difference between you two.
You are sunshine. He’s part of the dark people call the void, none of this is a fairytale, none of this is like the tv garbage that feeds you Disney happy endings and fucking magic.
Why? Because the fate of the Mafia Don has always been written down for him before he even took a gulp of earth’s polluted air.
He is the heir of the Sicilian mafia, the Cosa Nostra itself and you are—we are nothing when it comes to their lives. Take another cab back to your baby, be a nurse and repay your debt praying he doesn’t demolish your life by the time you are done.”
They are the longest words Maximo has ever spoken to me and I suspect to anyone.
The tidbits of information sink in and my eyes widen for a minute as everything becomes clear.
The whole thing with Cat and her family’s legacy.
The whole thing about how Volkov owns guns and has cabins in Russia.
Of course, he’s a criminal.
Of course, he…he…is mafia.
Of course, I should take that cab back home and stay away.
“Get out of my way.”
Maximo scoffs, “They never learn, do they? It’s your funeral, Nurse. Remember that.”
He steps out of the way.
I mingle with the crowd, hyperventilating and processing stuff just as quickly.
I see the VIP section. The same section we were in that led to another private room upstairs.
I take the stairs two at a time.
I burst into the door like a freak.
I get dished with a sucker punch to the gut because that’s how it feels like.
That’s how it feels when you watch the man you just found out you liked and is a mafia don kissing another woman and peeling off her clothes just as fast.
“Vic! Vic who’s she? Who’s the bitch?”
The woman cries covering herself with her coat or something.
Nestled on that desk of his, Vicious’ eyes land on me.
“She’s no one.”
Cut me in half, why don’t you?
“Hey, excuse you. We are all in the middle of something.”
I regain my voice and it feels like nails on a chalkboard.
“Oh sorry. So sorry, I just thought that maybe you’d like to know that the same man who’s gonna bend you on that desk and fuck you had his fingers inside me the other night after he burglar-ed his way into my apartment.
Oh, and he’s probably carrying all sorts of STDs from being a good-for-nothing-.”
“Alexia”, he growls.
I hold his eye contact and I hold my ground.
Don’t let him see you cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
“Yeah, so have fun doing that with him I guess and I’m not a bitch, bitch.”
“Don’t. Move.”
His voice comes out as an order.
I despise him. I hate him. I wish he could get his big head stuck in a…
“You want to cause drama. Do it but there’s a strict rule against you being here. Who let you in?”
He’s standing in front of me now. Smelling like that woman.
“What? Are you scared I’ll ruin your fun?”
“What are you doing here, Little Nurse?”
“Don’t call me that. Don’t ever call me that.”
“I helped you out of a nightmare. That’s all there was. Whatever fantasies you have about me, nurse. Let them remain to be just that, fantasies. I’m going to call one of my men to take you home. You’ll sit tight, you’ll remain quiet I don’t care whether you have to bite your damn tongue to do it but you do as I say.
See you tomorrow, nurse. Same time, don’t be late.”