CHAPTER 73
CHRISTIAN ‘VICIOUS’ VOLKOV.
Her pregnant, me in a hospital means I can tolerate more security.
And those security follow her into her mother’s room while I stand in the room too.
Athena Pallis sits by her mother’s bedside as Sunshine talks to her mother, crying, giggling, whispering stuff like your average mother-daughter conversations.
I know them though.
Allagra Pallis is no more a normal mother than I am the next Queen of England.
Athena Pallis is no more a normal sister than I am Tom Cruise.
I hate her family.
Mother-in-law and sister-in-law hate me even more.
Though for her sake we tolerate each other in the same room.
“I’m sorry Millie couldn’t come. She makes a fuss when she’s in hospitals.”
“I’ll see her at home”, Allagra coos.
“She’s at our home”, I interject.
Allagra glances at me like she wants to hang a noose around my neck. After all, I’m the reason her left reg is bandaged and she’s currently on a hospital bed.
“You took my granddaughter?”
“I took my daughter and returned her where she’s supposed to be”, I fire back.
My little nurse bites her bottom lip agitated.
“She’s my daughter, Millie is my granddaughter the only place they belong in, is with me.”
“Yeah? Even after your psycho of a daughter tried getting rid of them? My wife and my kid stay with me.”
Alexia flinches but I can see the blush that creeps to her cheeks.
Yeah, Tesoro. Get used to that name because we’ll be married soon and no family is yours is going to dictate how we live or how we breathe.
“Athena didn’t mean to-.”
“Didn’t mean to? Are you actually defending-.”
“Christian, stop”, Alexia interrupts.
Athena looks like Saint Mary over there while I look like the bad guy puffing and huffing at the wrong crowd.
“Mom? I’m living with Christian, me and Millie are. I love him but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. We’ll visit from time to time and you and Christian are going to get along because you want me to be happy. Isn’t that, right?”
Her blue eyes pin me down.
If she thinks I’m going to hold hands with her family while we sing kumbaya then she’s dead wrong.
“Isn’t that right, Christian?” She asks again.
Damn those eyes.
“Yes.”
“Mom?”
“He’s not good for you.”
“He has saved me countless times. He is who I chose to be my side forever and if you can’t see that, maybe you never knew me very well.”
Allagra shakes her head.
She looks at me, rolls her eyes, then she looks at Alexia.
“Fine. This is the warning I’m giving you right now, Christian Vitello. If you hurt any of my daughters, I will come at you with everything in my arsenal, I will bury you it doesn’t matter whether the whole of Italy will come for me, I will end you if you ever hurt any of us again.”
“Same goes to you.”
I say with a smile but I mean every word too.
If Athena starts her bullshit again, I will kill her and I will fuck my wife like I didn’t just end the sister she never needed in the first place.
“I have to go but the doctor told me you’ll be discharged tomorrow, I’ll come visit home sometime, I promise. You can visit too.”
And I’ll add more cameras and guards to make sure my mother-in-law doesn’t try anything funny while I’m away.
“At least let Yan work for you. He was your personal bodyguard; he knows how to handle any-.”
“She has guards to protect her”, I interrupt, “and besides Yan was incompetent in trying to stop me, don’t forget that, Allagra. Yan is an incompetent bodyguard.”
I should have killed Yan that night.
Because Allagra knows her daughter and the empathy she carries for people who don’t deserve it.
“I’ll have to fire him then-.”
“Mom-.”
“I hired him for you.”
“Fine. Yan can be my bodyguard again.”
I almost want to smash the face of the guard standing next to me. He might have noticed it too because he subtly takes three steps away from me.
“He’s right outside.”
I bet the fucker is.
A few kisses, a few I’ll see you later and Alexia is ready to go.
“Can I talk to you? Privately?” Athena stands up and asks.
“Absolutely not”, I shoot down the idea and for once since we arrived in this hospital, my woman agrees with me.
“Whatever you have to say to me, you can say it in front of them too.”
I am one proud man when she says that.
“I’m sorry. Words can’t explain how deeply sorry I am for Rhett, for Junior and everything-.”
“What do you mean for Rhett?”
Athena looks at me, sunshine looks at me. And she is not happy.
“I—I was jealous, I thought the only way to win…to win Christian back was to enlist your ex’s help…”
“Oh my God, you told Rhett to kidnap me, didn’t you?” The pieces fall into place and the mood shifts from slightly less tense to aggravatingly tense.
“I didn’t…I just paid him to get you out of the way, I didn’t know he was going to-.”
“He took Millie and me! He beat me, have you ever been beaten to the point that your ears ring and your mind shuts down lying to you that you are in a happy place and not in a horrific place where a man is threatening to kill you and your child? Have you ever been hit to the point of all the blood vessels in your eyes ruptured and you lost your eyesight for weeks? Because that’s what he did, little sister. That’s what he did. He—he…”
My feet are already guiding me to Alexia and I wrap my hand around her shoulders.
“He raped me, Athena. Again, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t…and then you wanted to give me to Junior like I was a piece of furniture you had grown weary of. Do you know what that feels like? Don’t fucking tell me sorry because I don’t want it. I can’t…can’t accept you as my family.”
“I’m admitting myself to a psychiatric hospital. I realize I’m not well, I have dark thoughts that—I will work on-.”
“You are not just ‘not well’, Athena. You are mentally ill and Dad would be ashamed of the person you’ve become.”
“Alessandra”, their mother intervenes but my little nurse struggles from my hold and storms out of the room.
I turn to Athena.
“This is her saying she is cutting you off so don’t even think about stepping a foot in my mansion or stepping a foot near her.”
“I never meant to hurt her. I was-.”
“You hurt her, Athena. Bottom line is you hurt her and I pray for my sanity that you are going to the madhouse to get yourself analyzed otherwise any shit you pull against me and her will end with you dead this time around.”
“A-and you think you won’t hurt her?”
I chuckle.
I would never hurt Alexia again. Not this lifetime at least. Not ever.
“I don’t just think it, Athena. I know it.”
I step out.
Alexia is by the wall sobbing and the guards are standing a few feet from her like the men in black.
And then there’s Yan. Also present.
“Sunshine-.”
“Don’t touch me! You knew! You knew she was involved with Rhett and you didn’t tell me!”
“You have to calm down, Alexia. The baby-.”
“The baby is fine! Answer my goddamn question!”
“I knew.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“For this exact reason.”
And the mere fact that Athena was a bitch who didn’t deserve your tears.
“I thought we had no more secrets.”
“We don’t. We won’t. I don’t have any secrets I’m keeping from you right now.”
I hold her cheek, wiping her tears.
“Don’t…touch…me”, she whispers closing her eyes but she’s not pulling away from my hand.
Pregnant Alexia likes me by her side.
She yearns for me and my heart swells because it might be her and the baby that want me around.
“Do you want pasta? Mmm? With truffles?”
“Don’t bribe me with food.”
“Not bribing you, baby. Keeping you happy.”
“I want cupcakes too.”
“Anything for you.”
“Christian?”
“Yes, baby?”
“You keep secrets from me again and I will leave you.”
“No secrets.”
***
She stuffs her face with pasta, talking about how this one is good without even the truffles.
I’d tell her it’s spaghetti a la carbonara but I watch her gobble down the entire food on her plate, giving her mine too to feed from.
I’m enamored.
I’ve got the hots for this woman so bad, I’ll buy her this restaurant too just to watch her eat across me with no inhibitions.
My phone buzzes in my pants and I pull it out reading the text Maximo just sent.
Maximo: We gotta get back to Chicago. Troy Sullivan is acting up again.
I will castrate Troy Sullivan, my-fucking-self.
Me: Thought you handled Troy yourself. Jagger said you handled him yourself a while back.
Maximo: Yeah, I did but the prick doesn’t know when to quit. He killed a cop, Volkov. Same cops I told him not to touch.
Damn it.