CHAPTER 56
ALEXIA GREEN.
Days, weeks, months in here and I have already accustomed myself to the darkness.
Rhett thinks he’s punishing me by leaving me alone in here.
Here where I can hear voices from my own head whispering in the dark, here where I can hear rats shuffle across my feet, across the corner, mocking me.
But I’ve survived.
I’ve cried. I’ve screamed. I’ve eaten the food he throws on the ground to me like a dog and I’ve survived.
I thought of giving up but every time I feel like giving up, Rhett appears in this darkness holding my baby and every time Millie calls to me, I shout at Rhett to give her to me.
He doesn’t give her to me of course.
He stands there, probably wearing night vision goggles and stares down at me reminding me who has the power, reminding me if I don’t stay in that little corner in this darkness, he’ll hurt Millie.
And so I’ve stayed.
I’ve slept in that corner praying that my baby survives this and a neighbor, anyone comes to rescue her.
I don’t care if I’ll rot. I’ve always been one to be followed by bad luck so it doesn’t matter if-.
Today?
Today things changed.
Days in this darkness and my ears do the seeing.
I hear the men come down the stairs but none of them get too close, none of them touch me but I know they are going to.
This is how Rhett operates.
He likes a show.
He likes torture.
So I do what I’ve been doing for so long, I steel myself, I count, I wait.
After what feels like an eternity, heavy boots stomp the wooden stairs, I listen in, everyone stops murmuring but I know who is here.
I know who the man of the show is.
I know who these men are.
“I know you are there. I can hear you. You are…you are Rhett’s men, are you? What? You’ve finally come to kill me is that it? Then do it, you assholes!”
Rhett doesn’t speak. Of course he doesn’t.
I’m about to insult all of them when my baby…my girl, my—my-my.
“Baby? Millie, is that you? Gimme my baby! Rhett? I know you can hear me, just gimme my baby! She needs to be fed, please just…I want to hold her, just once I want to…”
I sob.
Rhett wins. He knows he’ll win anytime he brings my baby down here.
“Millie”, I huff, standing up roaming in the darkness and trying to follow her cries.
“Please, turn on the lights. Turn on the lights so I can see my baby.”
They don’t turn the lights.
They don’t take pity on me.
Rhett doesn’t acknowledge my cries of defeat as anything.
“Alexia.”
The rough baritone voice gives me whiplash. Unsteady on my feet, unsure whether to trust my craziness and finally admit I’m crazy, my weak feet will me to go back to my little corner.
I think the madness is finally getting to me because I can swear that the man standing in front of me is–.
“Nico?” Volkov’s voice comes out heavy.
“Yes, boss?” Nico’s voice rings out from the distance.
“Take the baby to the car, keep her safe.”
“Yes, boss.”
A guttural aching sound leaps from my lips.
“No! Let me…let me hold her!” I cry but it comes out as a scream in this small room with darkness.
I take hurried steps forward but I trip and huge arms catch my fall lifting me off the ground and to his chest.
“The child is going to be safe”, Vicious assures, his scent fogging my senses as tears erupt from my eyes.
“I th—thought you died”, I sob.
The grip he has on my thighs tightens and he whispers, “You would have wanted that, wouldn’t you?”
The vitriol in his voice is heavy and I don’t have enough strength in me to tell him that not a day went by in here when I didn’t feel guilty over his supposed death, not a day went by in here when I didn’t regret not telling him how I felt.
“M-My baby”, I mutter weakly, “The lights. Please.”
“The child is paper-thin and weak. You are filthy and dirty, any attempts to touch her will result in her getting sick. Do you want that, Alexia?”
Paper-thin?
Weak?
“N-no”, my voice wobbles and I look up at him only to feel something warm being wrapped around my eyes.
“Christian what are you—”
“For the light.”
For the light not to hurt my eyes because I’ve been in the darkness for so long?
Three words, he tells me.
Three words, he lies to me.
I wrap my hands around his neck, not caring what will happen next because the only thing beating in my mind is getting out of this hell hole.
Getting away from Rhett.
He stomps his way up the stairs and every time my ear locks in on his chest, that erratic heartbeat that Christian had when we were together is gone.
Instead his heart barely beats. As if he’s cocooned it with enough muscle to shield his heart from exposure.
I want to ask how he could think I wanted him dead.
The news of his supposed death impales me…how could he think that…
“Is he dead?”
Vicious’ voice rumbles from his chest.
I know we are in the living room because it smells like Rhett and his empty beer cans and pineapple topping pizza.
And that’s where Rhett’s villainy came from. Anyone who chose pineapple as a topping on pizza was borderline psychotic.
“Dead, boss”, Jett speaks back.
The last time I saw Jett, he was with Brenda in that café. Did Brenda make it out alive?
“Add another bullet to his skull just to make sure.”
We start walking to the main door I assume. When the smell of briny sea air hits my nostrils and seagulls sound from a distance, that’s when Jett shoots Rhett and the sound coming from behind us is enough to make me cower.
“He’s gone, Alexia. The man you chose over me has left this world in the most insensible way possible. He couldn’t fight you, never even had the chance of throwing the first punch. And now you are stuck with me again.”
“I d-didn’t choose him.”
My voice breaks. My heart churns.
“Yeah? Did you not open your legs for me because my sister offered you freedom from me? Did you not walk away with him from that café leaving your phone intentionally when you could have carried it and I would have found you? I watched the tapes, Alexia. Every single fucking traffic camera that showed you and Rhett moving, you had every chance to walk away, you had every chance to use everything I taught you and get Millie away but you stayed put. You let him drag you around because you were always his, weren’t you? And now I’m going to show you just how being mine should feel like. I took the fairy tale Prince Charming highway ride and it didn’t work out. Let me be your villain, Alexia. The killer of all your little dreams. The monster of your nightmares.”
His voice teeters on the edge of lunacy, like a volcano of rage threatening to splinter inside of him.
I want to say so much.
I want to reveal so much.
But my voice rolls in like sandpaper on glass, as reality washes in like a clean bullet to the heart.
The sun is shining, the seagulls chatter, the waves crash somewhere on the distant horizon; I can feel the sun on my skin and even with the blindfold I should see some light.
I should see some light.
Why can’t I see the light?
I thrash in this man’s arms. This man who gave me hope in the basement, held me as if I were precious, rescued me and promised me more suffering but he already knew life had stabbed me in the back already, hadn’t he?
“P-put me down”, snort fills my nostrils, my willpower crumbles.
Her puts me down.
I stand and bask in the sun on weak legs.
My hands slowly retrieve the rag on my eyes meant to put me in a semblance of calmness and the mantra that ‘life’s just peachy’.
The rag falls away, my eyes open. I guess life isn’t peachy after all.
“I can’t see the sun.”
My voice is low but it slams into my brain like a fatal crash.
I can’t see. I can’t see anything. The darkness inside there…the darkness was me.
XxX
Millie is in my hands and she coos giving me strength.
“We have good news and good news only”, some doctor says, I don’t have to be told what the news is.
I know what it is and it’s worse than good.
“Head trauma caused some of the blood vessels in her eyes to rupture resulting in her blindness. Scans show that they are already healed.”
“But?” Vicious asks.
“But I think some sort of mind block and specifically her own trauma is resulting in her temporary blindness? Therapy should help her and I could recommend her with some-.”
“Your job is done; you’ll be paid on your way out.”
I can feel the doctor looking at me.
Pity? That’s the last thing she should feel. This isn’t trauma. Not the trauma I remembered, not the trauma I went through with Rhett.
“Good day then.”
“Nico? The child.”
I don’t fight when Nico takes Millie, I haven’t fought them since I discovered my condition.
She’s safer with them where I won’t…won’t hurt her.
“Mr. Volkov please…”
“Do you have a problem, Brenda?”
“No.”
“Help her pack up for Sicily.”
“Yes, boss.”
Everyone leaves my room and someone comes to hug my knees.
“Ooh, Lex! Millie, they are not going to do anything to her. Despite how cold he acts; Christian has been calling the best pediatricians to check up on whether Millie is really fine or not. Lex, speak to me please?”
She holds my hands.
She asks me to speak and that’s when my bitterness breaks like a dam.
“I—I’m blind! I can’t—can’t do anything. T-this is all my fault, Juana dying, him hating me…this is all my fault!”
“No, it isn’t. Everything is going to be okay.”
“No…no it’s not.”
She holds my cheeks; she wipes my tears.
“Everything is going to be okay if you manage to keep yourself alive and the little life living inside you alive as well. Xavier and I did a few tests on how your blood sugar levels were and if your blood was…if your ex did something psychotic, only to find you pregnant. You are pregnant, Lex.”
No.
Rhett took me two weeks ago and that’s not a substandard number of weeks for conception.
Even if it was, he used a condom and didn’t even finish off because apparently, he couldn’t imagine being inside me after ‘I let that foolish bastard inside me.’
His words. The baby isn’t his.
Which means…
“You can’t tell him. Y-you can’t tell Christian I’m pregnant.”
“I haven’t. Xavier won’t either but don’t you think his knowing could stop everything?”
“Stop what?”
“Lex, he—he is going to Sicily to marry Athena Pallis.”