CHAPTER 91
ALEKSANDER ‘CHRISTIAN’ VOLKOV.
She’s become an addiction I can’t shake off. And she knows it.
My hands strangle the steering wheel as I make a turn to the shady side of New York where burglars and mass murderers hang out like old buddies from the army.
My eyes linger on the phone as I step on the brakes and park my car in a dark alley.
Another glance at Alexia and the gardener walking and talking in my backyard and I eat down all that bitter bile rearing its head up my throat because she needs someone to keep her company in my mansion while I’m away.
Whether or not that someone is a six-foot fucker who hates me and secretly loves her.
My eyes zero in on her face and I zoom in just to see how that blonde hair looks as perfect as I remember in my memory.
I dyed every inch of that brown hair she had back to blonde. My blondie.
I know she’ll be happy when she hears me call her ‘Alexia’. Her name. I remembered it in the morning when I ate her out for breakfast but I couldn’t really tell her that seeing as to how my mouth was otherwise occupied.
Sighing, I switch my phone off, pocket it into my pants and take my car keys out before opening the door and getting out of the vehicle.
Dirty pothole water splashes my shoes.
The little shindig in the form of a stripper’s club I visited a while back, seats across the road just as majestically as it did a year ago when Weston and I came to visit.
I know the fucking weasel is here.
He didn’t come to visit me at work like he always does. And trust me, I was waiting for him.
Part of me figures that maybe Benedict yapped about me slowly getting my memories to Weston but the other part of me knows Benedict is scared and scared pigs tend to stay out of the limelight till things cool down.
The bar across the street flickers in a green-blue neon light.
The word ‘Hooker’, an unoriginal title in naming a stripper club might I add, illuminates the night the more my feet walk towards it.
I tip my nose at the bouncers, walking inside and they don’t say a word because they know me. They know I would get them fired in an instant if I wanted.
‘Taste of You’ by Rezz and Dove Cameron echoes from the speakers as men, both young and old, sit in opulent couches, watching the naked strippers in six-inch heels dance along the metallic poles that run from the ceiling to the floor.
The last time I was here, West brought me to have a ‘good time’ and not a pint of my blood rushed to my dick.
I ended up leaving a bit earlier because the free asses being handed out like free candy on Halloween weren’t doing a single thing in making me aroused.
“Hey, handsome. Wanna take a lap?”
I don’t spare the broad with the sultry voice and huge silicone tits a glance as I weave through the naked waitresses, my eyes and goal at the grandiose spiraling staircase leading to the VIP section.
On the outside, this place looks like it’s owned by a couple of junkies but on the inside, it’s a maze of a well-constructed interior design.
Two steps and I take in a lungful of air.
Three stairs in and my hands fist.
Two years I have been trusting the wrong crowd.
Hell, I wouldn’t even trust my own cat if I had one because everywhere I fucking look, betrayal lurks.
When I reach the VIP room, I don’t knock.
Shrill screams and ‘what-the-fucks’ flood the room as the naked bitch who was just sucking West’s cock pulls away and the other well—bitch riding his face jumps to the next couch and picks some flimsy g-string covering herself.
The irony being she’s self-conscious about being seen naked while she works in a quote-on-quote stripper club.
I step aside letting the ladies scurry their way out of the room.
Weston Marasigan… best buddy… best friend… supposed man who’d give his life for me… man who sat on my dining table enjoying my fucking breakfast and dinner… he is a Judas, is what he is.
A traitor I never saw coming. My mother is on the list too and she was the least surprising.
Because Weston? Weston is…
“You are a spoilsport; you know that right?”
He tucks his cock back to his pants, his shirt ripped to expose his chest.
“I barely know anything about myself, Wes”, I joke.
And he smiles. Smile while you still have teeth, Wes.
Because yeah, it’s funny I’ve been the idiot. Bet that’s what’s running in his mind right about now.
He takes a bottle of Macallan from the table, slurping at least a quarter of it before he stands up.
He walks around the coffee table, full of all kinds of booze and drugs, finally standing in front of me.
Cocky, eyes brewing, he guzzles down another pint from his bottle asking the question, “To what do I owe the pleasure, Alek? You back to ask for forgiveness after you kicked me out of your house? No… no. Let me guess, you just realized the maid isn’t worth it and that no woman can come between our friendship?”
He baits me.
A single second to rile me up and make me drop my guard.
All it takes is that window of a single tiny second for him to smash the bottle of whiskey against my head.
By the time I try shielding away from the impact and the sudden brutality, the damage is already done.
My head pounds, my hearing grows loud and static, I stumble to the floor and kiss it in mere seconds as shards of glass, the stinging alcohol and blood… fuck my blood pool around my head.
I can hear it.
I can feel it.
I can predict what the next few seconds of me going under will look like.
It starts with a headache and I try to move… fuck, fuck, I try to move my legs, my body.
Damn it, Christian.
You are not going out like this. You are not…
I see his shoes on the floor and then slowly he crouches to be at a level with me.
His hand digs into my hair and the bleeding cut on my head together with my fucked-up brain scream in agonizing pain.
“You are one tough fucker, Christian”, Wes chuckles.
Any attempt to talk to him has my head singing in a twisted lullaby.
Can’t fight.
Can’t get this pathetic body to move.
“And the bane of my fucking existence. You remember, don’t you? I know you do, I knew Lu and I had a problem when I first saw the maid. Ooh where are my manners?
When I first saw your wife. I recognized her the first time I saw her in your house. Whether she had brown hair or blonde or orange. It’s not hard for me to forget a face.
Especially a face that belongs to someone I was supposed to kill two years ago. I tried flirting, tried to get rid of her from your house but you are one obsessed man when it comes to that woman. Memories or not”, he cackles.
The word ‘wife’ rings louder in my ears.
Wife? My wife. She is my…
“Look at you, so pathetic, so idiotic, so… Lucia always praised you, loved you more than she did me. My son this…my son that. What if she could see you now? What if she could see her mighty Christian Vitello Volkov kissing my feet right now?”
Another cackle.
Another burning question filtering my mind. Wife? The pain bites. And it’s not just my head it’s biting.
“You are probably too out of it to understand me but I see your eyes, Christian, I know you can hear me and I don’t think your weak brain can handle what I’m about to say.
I saved your mother when she was on the run. Volkov industries? The company you run with pride? I gave your mother the investment! She started everything from scratch with my help! My help!
Sure, they said I was fucking mad for loving an older woman but me and Lu? Yeah, your mother understood me in a way no woman did. But see she got greedy. Like my fucking family, never enjoying the much they already had, Lucia wanted her children by her side.
Carissa was dead. Catelina had the Bratva and that enforcer protecting her all day and night, so there was no way of Lu getting her daughter back but you?
Lucia wanted you most. After everything I did for her, she wanted you. Her son. Her pride and joy.
She threatened to leave me if her precious Christian wasn’t by her side. And voila, an opportunity presented itself.
Your woman. If Lucia took your woman away from you, she would find a way to get back into your life by pretending she was there to comfort you and help you get over your grief.
A simple ‘mother-son’ reunion. The perfect place to do it was at the wedding, too much chaos, too much cover, no one would know we hired a hitman to take out Alessandra Pallis.
Wait… wait this is the funny part. Your mother ordered your bride to be murdered right in front of you while said bride was five months pregnant.”
“P—pregnant”, I slur.
A ball of guilt constricts my throat and my brain adopts a painful pulse of its own.
“You got that right, Christian. She was pregnant. With your kids. You should be thanking me. I betrayed the love of my life for you. Because let’s be honest here, your bride wasn’t the problem, you were the problem. You were the reason why Lucia thought of leaving me. So, I gave the hitman different orders. Don’t kill the bride. Kill the groom. Shoot him in the head. A bullet to the head would kill him for sure. But I underestimated you, didn’t I? Normal people die from getting shot in the head, but not you. Not the Cosa Nostra top dog. Not even a dog in the literal sense because you are a cat with nine lives. I’ve tolerated your grumpy shit for two years because of Lucia but with the cat out of the bag, your nine lives just ran out buddy. I’ll kill you, dispose of you, lie to Lucia again that something went wrong like it did two years ago and you died. Afterwards? I’m going to fuck my woman, Christian. I’m going after your bitch and those two boys of yours so there’ll be no trace of you to ruin my life.”
Pregnant.
Bride.
They all come in a red haze as my mind spins trying to grip one memory after another.
I see the blood… I remember the blood on her white dress. The pale look on her makeup face… I see my hands on a big bump. Rubbing it, feeling the life inside…
Pregnant. Little nurse swollen with my kid inside her. Church… bride… wife…
The bastard stands to his feet, the pain pokes my brain with a hot spike as I will myself to breathe.
Weston swings his right leg back about to kick me in the ribs like a dog on the floor when I hold his foot.
Resilience shooting in my blood with lethal doses, I pull his leg in one powerful tug that sweeps and sends him falling on the floor like a log.
The bastard falls on the glass, a few sinking into his back, not enough to kill him but enough to wound him while my lower body starts to work.
I’m on my knees.
‘My type’s a stubborn blondie I know who’s pregnant with my kid, the only woman I’ll let touch me when I’m hurt, the only woman who has me riding economy class so that I can get here on time and grovel if that means she forgives me for any type of shit I’ve done to her.
Her name’s Alessandra by the way but that fucking name is a mouthful, I’d rather call her mine. She has an ant-shaped birthmark at the base of her spine too.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘I’ve held you in ways no man has, believe me I know all the birthmarks peppering my little nurse’s skin.’
Another memory assaults me and I groan out loud keeping the pain in.
Weston is almost to his feet, I grab the rest of that half-broken Macallan bottle pining it to his neck, holding him down.
She was pregnant.
I left… and she was… I left her alone. I left my kid alone.
“Where is she?” I bark, “Where is my kid!”
Sadness and guilt compete in my weary body.
Wes coughs, “You are losing your shit, aren’t you? You are going crazy. You are dying and nothing makes me-.”
I stab him in the neck, watching his eyes dim, watching his shaking hands trying to stop his jugular vein from leaking his fucking useless blood.
‘What did we say about making fun of your body?’
‘That I shouldn’t do that.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m the prettiest pregnant woman to walk the earth. Whether I have stretch marks or not.’
‘And?’
‘Whether I weigh and look like a baby hippo, it won’t matter because I’ll be your baby hippo.’
‘Damn right you are. Fucking sexy is what you are.’
I stab his chest. For the pain I’m feeling right now.
I stab him again and again and nothing is erasing the fact that I gave up on her, on my little nurse when she needed me.
My kid… she didn’t have a child, she didn’t mention a child. Did our baby make it? Did he-.
The door creaks open behind me and I stand up from the mess turning around with a bloody broken bottle in my hand and a throbbing headache summoned from hell.
“It’s about fucking time, Christian. Put the bloody thing down for God’s sake.”
“W-Who?” Are you?
“Kai Davenport. Your savior. Alessandra is not going to like this at…”
I eat the distance between us in seconds, situating the bottle near this Kai guy’s neck.
“I get that you are handling your trauma in your own fucked up way but touch me like this again and I won’t care about past friendships and all that jazz”, Kai grits.
“Wife. Take me to…my wife.”