CHAPTER 42
CHRISTIAN ‘VICIOUS’ VOLKOV.
Thirty days and counting.
Thirty days and I would be on my knees proposing to a woman I had as much interest in as the cigarette holder on my desk.
I knew this day would come and frankly speaking, marrying some woman from my motherland didn’t do shit to unnerve me.
In the grand scheme of things, this woman, this wife of mine would be there to sire my heirs, to listen, to obey and be stuck with me till I got the final nail to my coffin.
I didn’t care then.
Right now?
The thought of marrying Athena Pallis leaves a bitter aftertaste in my veins, in my blood, in this life that has started having more meaning than it should.
As a man about to be married, I should have been celebrating but try celebrating when the bane of your existence was a mouthy five-foot blonde who told jokes about three humped camels and stared at you like you were her life.
The part of the one percent wayward males that she thought would worship the ground she walked on and love her.
Five hours and more of her presence had me nursing a very raging boner for her all day.
Another hour in my club and I wanted to sink into the nearest woman I would find to make a point.
The nurse meant nothing.
I could fuck anyone.
I could marry Athena Pallis and be back in Sicily where I belonged.
A few kisses to the woman who had enough perfume to drown the entire fish population in Japan had me raging mad.
One kiss and sunshine blonde hair came into sight.
Another kiss and this woman wasn’t going to please me tonight.
I knew it, my dick knew it and my fucking body knew it.
There was one woman.
The woman I’m staring at right now.
The woman whose blue eyes shatter right before me and I can’t console her.
Can’t console her because I can’t offer her anything.
Rhett was a dick to her; I might fall in the same caliber but pushing her away is the right thing.
The right thing.
I almost chuckle as I watch her descend the stairs, as I watch Nico of all my men take her home, escort her to the door and out of my club.
Yeah, that’s right, nurse.
Walk the fuck away from me.
Venom and stench spill from my mouth as I turn to the woman who is half naked and half expecting me to go through with this.
I have blue balls singing like crazy.
They are not for this woman though.
They are for her.
My tormentor. My insanity. My damnation.
“Vic?”
“Get out.”
“Vic, I don’t mind a little audience honestly I can-.“
I take my gun out, spiraling.
“Get out.”
She doesn’t ask for anything more.
She sees it in my eyes.
The need for blood.
The need to calm whatever is happening to my chest.
What the fuck is wrong?
The nurse cried but so what? She’s cried every damn time we’ve been together.
She ran out of here and the shitty thing is I didn’t run after her.
I can’t run after her.
Not after that night.
That sick night I buried my sister on a rainy day alone with only the picture of Rhett and his girlfriend in my trembling hand.
Catelina’s murderer and his blonde girlfriend.
I vowed to destroy him and everything the bastard owns not…
What, asshole?
What is it about her?
I leap into my pockets, taking my phone out and dialing the only one who gets me when I spiral.
“I need to let off steam.”
I need blood.
“Got it”, Maximo hangs up.
***
“I—I swear…I don’t know where Rhett is, please…please spare me. I told you everything I know. Let me go and I can…
can find him, yeah, I’ll lure him out and-.”
“Did you lure out the girls you forced yourself on to too?”
The disgusting prick snorts back tears wiping his face with dirty hands like the dirt he is.
I see him. I see Brad and I see that tall sack of bones called Rhett hurting Alexia and resentment and violence hits me like an electrostatic discharge striking a lightning rod.
“R-Rhett said they wanted it. We only did it because Rhett said-.”
I don’t let his words slip from his pervy mouth.
My shoe connects with his jaw and like the useless sack of shit he is, he falls to the ground more blood splattering over his grimy self.
“Rhett wanted you to do it? There’s something called consent you fat fuck. Consent? You know the word? Of course you don’t, you are the type of prick who went to school to chase skirts instead of some common sense.”
Another boot to his ribs makes him wince.
Down a spiral, falling without an anchor, my blood ticks and ticks, hollering, gnashing by the time everything comes to a silent crescendo, blood grazes the floor and a man is dead.
Trevor whatshisname is dead.
Brad is dead.
Tommy is dead.
Only Julius and Rhett are remaining.
The two assholes who touched the woman who mattered to me more than anything.
The two men who touched the nurse too.
I didn’t do this for her though. This was for Cat. My spiraling is because Cat is dead not because a certain nurse might be done with me forever.
“Feel better?” Maximo leans against the driver side’s of the door as soon as I step out of the warehouse.
“No.”
And I still have to wake up and train her sassy ass knowing she hates me more than her ex.
***
“You ready?”
She’s wearing a different fleece jacket today and an even more different pair of leggings than the ones she had on yesterday.
The only kicker to this is I’m hard as stone looking at those Amazon leggings that were invented to make a woman’s ass look good and to torture us men into knowing that ass isn’t yours.
Her ass isn’t mine.
The nurse doesn’t speak. Normally she’d cut into the tension with something funny or some complaint of the sort but she doesn’t speak to me.
Doesn’t give me her blue eyes either.
What she dishes out to me however?
A cold slap of karma right to my face.
I should tell her I didn’t fuck the woman she saw last night. Wasn’t planning to either after my dick fell flaccid on the kisses I shared with whoever the woman was.
That what I was doing was an experiment to prove to myself I could fuck another woman.
I was still Christian Vitello and this heart was long dead.
She takes the blindfold; she covers her eyes.
She takes the stick; I stand right in front of her.
Somewhere she won’t miss.
Somewhere she’ll hit and she’ll be forced to treat my wounds because that’s her thing.
She’d treat anything living, whether it was Hitler or the man who treated her like garbage the other night.
That’s Alexia for you.
She knows I’m in front of her, I can see it in that quivering bottom lip of hers, in those ears that listen in.
She raises her stick, she splices the air, the wood connects with my face breaking on my face and stinging almost half as bad as when Daddy dearest hit me when I was young.
Blood guzzles on the right side of my face.
She takes off her blindfold, retreating her stick, her eyes on me, on the blood that I don’t give a shit about, I expect her to talk to me, say anything.
Say you hate me.
Talk to me, damn it.
She doesn’t.
Juana picks the wrong time to walk in and witness our little alteration in the atmosphere. Always dramatic, always concerned about me, the tray with a jug full of juice falls down from her hands hitting the ground with a bang.
“Vicious? Oh God, what happened?”
“I think I’ve mastered the stick thing. Let’s move to the next stage of training tomorrow. See you again, boss. Same time.”
She leaves.
Juana’s cries about why I’m bleeding fall on deaf ears as I watch my nurse walk away from me without an ounce of pity.
I messed up.
I messed up badly.
Two days of silent treatment have me seeing stars.
Two days of no touch from her feels like my whole world is getting pulled beneath my feet.
Two days in and I’m a stalker chasing after the nurse I kicked out of my house because I couldn’t afford her getting too close to me or getting hurt.
All that is garbage right now.
I want her close. Her and Millie. I want them.
They won’t get hurt because I’ll protect them.
I have the means, the resources, they’ll be safe with me.
“You think anyone would miss him if he disappeared?”
“I don’t think he’s disappearing, boss. The guy likes his work, I’ve seen him in action and he likes the job”, Jett praises looking over the table a few feet from us but his gaze is lingering on a certain woman.
The one with the dimples. The one who’s too sweet looking for an ass like him.
My eyes are on the punk whispering stuff into the nurse’s ear and she laughs.
I have barely seen her teeth in two days and here she is, fucking ray of sunshine in a pub with a Texan cowboy nurse who doesn’t understand the concept of boundaries.
The nurse is dressed in a blue body con wrap dress that hugs her sweet curves and strains her boobs so much so that any guy from a street way can see her cleavage.
And so does Xavier, the guy chatting her up with whatever nonsense he’s whispering into her ear.
He’s not that funny. He doesn’t look that funny from where I’m seated.
“You are right, Peter Pan over there goes missing and the whole police force comes after my neck.”
“Sir?” Jett looks back at me.
My eyes are on Xavier.
Hiring a sniper to wipe him out of existence is better. No one would suspect my involvement not even when the punk works in my clinic and is clearly besotted with what’s mine.
“You think anyone would miss him?”
“I don’t understand, boss. Xavier’s been reliable so far.”
Xavier has been reliable once. Just once.
“Truth or dare guys with a side of shots! I’ll go first, Xavier. You’ve been giving Lex googly love eyes since we got here so…I dare you to lick this drink off her nose.”
The honey blonde haired woman shouts over their table loud enough for anyone within a quarter-mile radius of this city to hear her.
I decide then and then I’m firing her. She’s Linet, right? No, Lana.
“Layla, I don’t think Lex is-“ Brenda interrupts only for the nurse to speak up for herself.
I’m firing this Layla ASAP.
“I’ll do it. I’m definitely one hundred percent down to truth or dare. Can I take a bathroom break though? I think the cocktails did a number on my bladder?”
Like hell she’s doing it.
She stands up, Xavier gives her hand a squeeze before my little nurse excuses herself with a blush.
I’m up from my seat not giving two shits that I’ve been spying on what’s mine for an hour trying to surmount enough courage to apologize.
The truth here being I didn’t come to apologize.
As soon as Juana said she was going to babysit Millie, I knew something was up.
I knew my nurse was having fun out there…the only stinger as I drove here was that she wants to forget about me and being the greedy bastard I am I can’t let her do that.
She gets into the ladies’ washroom and I follow her in like a puppy.
Two women are in the washroom, they spot me from my reflection in the mirror and silently walk out.
I close the door behind them. Locking it.
Alexia reapplies her red lipstick, doesn’t acknowledge we are in the same room…or in this case washroom.
“Do you know diarrhea can be inherited? That it’s hereditary?” I ask.
She huffs. Doesn’t look at me.
“What are you doing here, Vicious?”
“This is the part where you say how.”
“I want you to leave.”
“Ask me ‘how’.”
“How?”
“Because it runs in the jeans.”
Silence. Grating silence.
“It’s a joke.”
I explain. A joke that I scoured through the net while I was thinking of her. a joke that has me looking like some cheap ass manager called Fred from Costco.
“I know.”
“Are his jokes funny?”
“Don’t do that.”
“You’ve been handing the punk your precious smiles like he fucking deserves them and I want to know what type of jokes he tells. I’ll tell you better jokes.”
“I don’t think a mafia don should be telling jokes in the ladies’ washroom. That taints your resume as the big bad wolf.”
She knows?
“Sunshine-.”
“Why are you doing this to me? You push me to the side, you treat me like dirt and when I’m ready to heal, ready to move on you show up. You demand answers, you change into this and I’m…I’m tired. I’m telling you right now that I’m tired. I’m done. This…whatever this is, it’s done.”
I take a step towards her; she turns around to face me.
No mirror, no reflections just us.
“I didn’t fuck her.”
She chuckles, sitting on top of the concrete that holds the sink.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? Because it doesn’t. After everything you said, I don’t think it even matters anymore.”
“Don’t give Xavier a chance.”
She scoffs. She has every right to do so.
“You kissed her, that pains more. The first time we…in that hotel room you didn’t kiss me. You…you treated me like…”
“I’m not Rhett, baby. I’ll never be like Rhett.”
“You felt like him though. Treating me like dirt, like I’m unwanted and that night? You did worse than Rhett, you crushed me and it hurt right here because you showed me that it was easier for you to kiss anyone but me. I’m never enough for anyone and it’s high time I accept that instead of accepting the scraps men like you feed me.”
“You are more than enough, Alexia. Fuck me and Rhett and any other man who has made you feel otherwise.”
“Then why did you kiss her? Why do I get the cold version of you when they get the warm version of you? Why do I get scraps when they get the full meal? Because I’m a slave? Because you see Rhett in me and despise that?”
I take another step.
Her eyes brim with tears.
“Because I look at those lips and see my Achilles’ heel.”
I take another step towards her.
Her bottom lip quivers.
“I look at those lips and I know as soon as I claim them there’s no more you, there’ll be us and I won’t let go. Not when you say no, not when you want to leave me, I’ll tether you to me and give you everything you desire. Everything other than love because I’m incapable of that.”
I take another step.
The final step.
And now there’s only so little distance between us I can bear.
The minute I try to take a step again, her right leg pulls up from where she’s seated.
Her heel, a silver type of five-inch heels stabs my shirt right where my heart is.
“I’m incapable of it because I have never…I’ve loved one woman and it was a different kind of love. I don’t know how to love the other way but I know you matter, Sunshine. You matter to me.”
“That isn’t enough for me.”
“I know.”
“I have a game to get to so if you’ll-.”
“If that cowboy touches you, I’ll give him a pair of concrete boots and toss him into the river.”
“He’s not a cowboy, he was born in Texas but that doesn’t mean-.”
“He’s not touching what’s mine, Sunshine.”
“I’m not yours”, she stabs her heel further into my chest trying to push me back but I grab her leg and kiss her ankle.
“You are if I’m going to win you over and earn your forgiveness.”