CHAPTER 61
ALEXIA GREEN.
“Pardon her behavior once again, madam. She is–.”
“D-Dad had business in Chicago but he promised he’d take me to the carnivals in America one day. You didn’t want us to go, you wanted us to stay home and keep you and the baby inside you…you were pregnant at the time but you still came with us to Chicago.
On that night, you stayed back at home because of your swollen feet…I made fun of them, I said you…you look like a cute baby hippo and Dad laughed. When we went to the carnival on our way back to you, me and Dad we…had an accident. He—he told me to run and hide while he…he stayed behind with driver Mancini and they–.”
“No”, her voice rings sharply in my ears drowning me in more memories.
I knew her voice because I remembered each fleeting moment she braided my hair and called me her baby angel.
I remember her blonde hair, the one I got wowed by every time Dad twirled her in his arms calling her pretty.
The same shade of hair I got from her.
“Mom”, I sob, my heart beat erratic. I take a step forward looking for her hands, for her warmth.
“Mom, I remember.”
“No. No. It can’t…it can’t be.”
“You said I was an angel, that I united you and Dad when you thought you would never ever get pregnant.”
“Ale? Alessandra?”
Then it all comes back. Me at the orphanage. Me being asked what my name was but I couldn’t pronounce all of it so they named me what they heard me struggle to say. Alexia.
“We all loved Miss Alessandra but she perished in the accident with-“, Tabitha intervenes.
“Mr. Mancini…the driver…he was your husband.”
And she was…Tabby. Mean Tabby. The twenty-something woman who used to force me to drink porridge because it was good for the bones.
I feel the minute Tabitha turns to me.
“Stop this nonsense, girl!”
“Tabitha? The doctor—call the doctor now”, my mom orders but the truth tastes so bitter and so sweet in the air.
I found…my mother.
***
“I should have searched harder. They wanted to do an autopsy but I was there, everyone had been reduced to ashes. My Alessandro was dead, I thought you were dead and I wanted the pain to be over so bad. I came back to Sicily without looking back, raising my child with half a heart.”
The DNA tests came in yesterday.
It was ninety-nine point nine percent a positive match.
Me, her daughter.
She, Allagra Pallis, my mother.
“Mom, stop. You shouldn’t blame yourself because you didn’t know”, The voice that speaks now is different than the voice she used on me a few weeks ago.
Athena Pallis consoles her mother. Our mother.
“I should have known”, Allagra sobs harder.
I hate listening to her cry but maybe she should feel a little bit of pain.
I saw Dad die, that trauma was so hard on the four-year-old me that I buried the memories in the back of my mind and lived in an orphanage suffering my way into the world.
If she searched for me, there would have been no Rhett. There would have been no pain. There would be no…HIM.
But Millie wouldn’t have existed either and she is my whole world.
“Can I talk to your sister? Alone please?”
“Of course. I will be one phone call away if you need me.”
Athena leaves without a word spoken to me.
No surprise there. She’s not exactly the type of sister anyone would wish to have right after she threatened me and made it clear the only way I’d not sabotage her marriage to her fiancé was by me working as a maid.
“Tell me everything. I want to know everything about you, about my granddaughter and most importantly about who the father to your child is and why you are here working as a maid when he should be supporting you.”
“You know about my pregnancy?”
“The doctors who were here did more than make sure you were my daughter. They took tests to make sure you are fine, Alessandra.”
“Lex or Lexy…I don’t go by Alessandra.”
“Ooh. Okay.”
The disappointment is there but I know she’ll be in for one hell of a disappointment once I tell her everything.
***
“I will hunt them down. All of them.”
“Mom? We’ve been over this, it’s all in the past. No one is hunting down anyone because they are already dead.”
Millie’s soft baby noises come from my mother’s arms as I slowly arrange the milk bottles on the counters in the kitchen.
“Let me help”, Tabitha beckons to my right and I sigh.
“I’m not a little girl anymore, Tabby and this blindness is only temporary.”
It doesn’t feel temporary though.
“You could hurt yourself”, she lashes and my heart constricts.
The last time I had this type of affection…it’s been ages.
“Tabitha, let her be.”
“Yes, madam.”
“This Rhett…I cannot believe a monster like him could share DNA with a little girl like this. Who’s cute? Yeah, you are.
You are, Millicent Pallis. And soon I’ll be a grandmother to your sister or brother. I’ll be a grandmama.”
“Grandmama?” I chuckle.
“What? You don’t like it? Grandmama has a better ring to it, don’t you think?”
I hold back a smile.
“Grandmama makes you sound like an evil mafia grandmother from Russia, Mom. Grandma is better.”
“We are…mafia, sweetheart.”
“Mom-.”
“Word’s already gotten out that you are alive. Everyone wants to see you and I know this has been one hell of a month and I will do anything to protect you but we have an image to uphold otherwise it all leads to suspicions and whispers among the families.”
“Athena is marrying Christian Volkov, isn’t that holding the Pallis’ image well enough?”
I can feel her scrutiny but I’m praying she doesn’t see me trying not to break when the words marry and Christian fall from my lips.
“Ale, I will do anything to hide you from the world and I want to hide you from the world so bad because it has been nothing but cruel to you and yet I want everyone to respect you. To respect you as my daughter instead of calling you names behind my back.”
I hold onto my small tummy that’s barely visible but firm enough to tell I’m pregnant.
“I’ve lived with a mafia don for months. I’ve seen this world and I’m not sure I like it nor do I want to re-enter it.”
Yeah, I told her about Christian and the supposed debt Rhett owed.
I couldn’t tell her that Christian is my baby daddy though or that I think he controls my heart and my very body.
Mom’s about to add something when Yan, my personal bodyguard enters the room with those heavy boots that always announce his presence.
“We have a visitor, ma’am.”
Saliva wells in my mouth and my hands shake slightly.
How many times have I wanted to hear that?
“It’s late, visitors aren’t allowed in my mansion at this hour.”
“I told him that too. Thing is, he’s not leaving.”
He? Him? After weeks of nothing…though I know he’s preparing everything for his wedding with Athena but still.
If there’s anything I know about him it’s that a silent Volkov is a dangerous one.
“Who?” Mom asks.
“He says he’s your future son-in-law. Christian Vitello, ma’am.”
“Athena doesn’t live here; she is not here either.”
“I told him that. He says he’s not here for her but for umm…Alessandra.”
My heart jacks up speed.
“He has no business with her. I paid him back the one million dollars you owed him and that’s courtesy considering I’m letting him marry one of my daughters when he had the other locked up in his mansion as his personal nurse.”
“Mom-.”
I don’t know what I’m about to ask.
I don’t know why I want to beg but tears curb my throat and eyes.
He is here. for me? To punish me? Because he missed me? I’ve missed him too. So bad.
“You are not his prisoner anymore, Ale. Yan?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Tell him to leave, if he doesn’t, use force if you need to but don’t break his legs. He’ll need his legs while he walks Athena down the aisle next week.”
No.
Yan’s footsteps flow down the same way they came in.
If he’s wise, Christian will leave. Yeah, he’s going to leave.
It takes a few seconds for gunshots to echo from outside, then for two words to splice the air.
“Little. Nurse.”
He shouts. No, not shout. It’s an order and that order is followed by two other shots outside.
“Get down! Ale, get down, now!”
“Mom…I need to see him. He won’t leave if I don’t…”
“You are not his prisoner, you hear me? You and Millie are free from him.”
Millie’s cries resonate in the kitchen and I can hear Mom try to shush her.
“I’ll never be free from him. Not when that man occupies my dreams and nightmares. I’ll tell him to leave, I’ll tell him to stop all of this.”
“He is the father to—you are carrying his child?” she’s not mad but she’s not thrilled either.
I clutch the counter; I take the metallic stick that has been my eyes in trying to find my way around the house.
I leave the kitchen, the living room, till I meet the railing of the main door and pull.
The night breeze hits my loose sundress without mercy almost knocking me down but I walk down the marble stone pathway.
The path that’ll lead to the gate.
I don’t make it ten steps from the door when I hear grunting and heavy breaths in front of me.
“Drop the stick and walk to me.”
The anger that ripples off of him cuts my breathing and ups the invisible lump of emotions in my throat.
“C-Christian-“, I breathe out.
“Don’t call me that, Alexia. You lost the privilege to call me that when you took Millie and ran.”
“S-stop this.”
“I won’t repeat myself. Drop the fucking stick and walk to me.”
Trembling from the cold, from the coldness of the marble beneath my bare feet, from the winds that slap my cheeks, I drop my stick and unsteadily walk in the direction of his voice.
“Miss! Don’t!” Yan’s voice warns me.
“Yan?”
“Ah, so that’s his fucking name. Yan? You have a death wish, Yan? Don’t think I haven’t seen you walking my woman around these parts like she’s yours. I wanted to skin you the first time I saw you touch her shoulder, you prick.”
“Ch-Vicious stop, okay? I’m here, let Yan go! He has done nothing to you!”
“Done nothing? Is trying to keep me away from what’s mine, nothing to you little nurse? Because I’ll tell you just how pissed this Yan guy has made me.”
“He was protecting me, okay? Just stop!” I beg. For Yan. For mercy.
“Beg”, his voice comes out like a whip.
“Down on your knees, beg for this miserable punk’s life”, Christian threatens in hot, enraged words.
“And you’ll leave?”
“On your knees”, his low growly voice comes out chopped. Straight for my heart, straight to the skull, maiming me.
If this makes the bastard turn and leave before he gets killed in my mother’s front yard, then I’ll kneel.
Slowly, being careful not to hurt my tummy or let him see it through the dress, my knees kiss the ground and the cold itself punishes me.
“Seems she cares about you that much, doesn’t she? I’ll count to ten, Yan, disappear from here, walk back to your boss and tell her to do her worst.”
Another grunt, another struggle.
“One”, Vicious starts.
“To.”
I hear Yan’s heavy boots padding the ground.
“Ten”, Vicious finishes and he shoots. Yan’s body falls to the ground before he starts howling in agony.
“Yan? No! Yan? Yan!” I shout.
Before I can stand up and try to look for Yan in darkness, Christian’s scent fills my nostrils and steaming hot anger crawls up my spine.
“You killed him! You—You killed him!”
“He’s not dead but he’ll have to crawl back to his boss to deliver my message”, Christian assures but nothing about this is assuring.
The bastard’s fingers land on my chin, tilting me up till he can meet my eyes while I can see nothing.
He’s kneeling too I realize.
His chest meets my sensitive boobs, the ones that are huffing and puffing trying to catch a breath.
“Don’t touch me, you bastard!” I shout, my bottom lip quivering.
I wanted him to find me, part of me did. And I didn’t picture it like this. I thought he’d say he missed me, beg me to come back to him or at least say he’d realized he and Athena weren’t a good match.
But that wasn’t Christian ‘Vicious’ Vitello Volkov. That wasn’t his style.
His lunacy knows no bounds, he doesn’t touch me.
No. To add to his arsenal, his breath skitters over my cheek before I feel his warm tongue licking away my tears.
“I hate it when you cry.”
“Just leave”, I quiver.
“I hate it when you betray me because that’s what you’ve been doing, little nurse. Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus once but it seems like you want to give the guy a run for his money. The first time you betrayed me you did it after a kiss and your cunt welcoming my cock home, the second time it was after one kiss, little nurse. Twice the betrayal, twice the pain. The only common factor is, I’m like a rubber band bouncing back every time and this is me bouncing back to you. Come back to me.”
“No.”
“Very well. See you at your sister’s wedding because best believe I’m kidnapping you and Millie afterward.”
He doesn’t wait for my words.
His lips clash with mine.
Not a kiss. Not a peck.
He feasts on me.
He ravishes me.
He marks me.