CHAPTER 92
ALEKSANDER ‘CHRISTIAN’ VOLKOV
Give up.
“You don’t look too good, buddy. A quick stop at the hospital should-.”
My heart squeezes and breathing becomes near impossible as the tap, tap, tap of my brain continues.
“Drive.”
Annoyance breaks through my voice and I have to swallow down the waves of nausea and guilt swerving through me like an umbrella left to the cold winds of the desert.
I’m bleeding. I’m aware.
I’m dimming. I’m aware.
I killed a man tonight and I’m covered in said man’s blood. I’m fucking aware.
Yet my eyes squint at the road ahead.
Gotta make it to her.
Gotta make it… and ask about our kid.
Gotta ask for her forgiveness.
“Still the same prick I see.”
The Kai guy attempts conversation.
I don’t speak a word.
Speaking means losing energy, losing energy means giving in to that creepy voice telling me to close my eyes for a second.
And closing my eyes for a second? Yeah, I got this nagging feeling, I won’t wake up again from that nap. It will be game over and I can’t do that to her.
I can’t let that pale look ever linger on her face again. She can’t… she can’t lose me again.
Kai Davenport drives like a maniac. Unhinged, carefully composed within a well-tailored suit that costs more than mine, the man reeks of that subtle madness that serial killers have.
He saw me kill. I enjoyed killing because the bastard deserved it. But Kai? Kai didn’t flinch at the scene or at the blood. To him it was a normal day in the office and I wondered are these the kind of friends I had?
Give up.
Another wave of migraine hits me but I grind my teeth in my mouth locking that shit up.
We are almost there.
I know these roads too well to know soon enough we’ll be pulling up in my mansion and I’ll be seeing my Tesoro.
That’s all that matters.
Don’t let that brain eat you, don’t let that brain shackle you to your death.
Open your eyes, Christian. Goddamnit, stay alive!
Kai pulls up to my estate, driving up the rocky driveway to the mansion up above like he’s been here two times or more.
The only thing humming in my mind is survival.
That survival however turns to an animalistic growl as we both stare at the Range in front of us.
The Range has the headlights on and three figures in the night that look like they are in the middle of an argument.
I recognize my blondie and a surge of relief cools my raging blood.
What has me seeing red though?
The two men by her side.
I know the gardener. The lizard fuck follows her everywhere.
But the other man? I don’t know him and I don’t appreciate kindly to how he has his hand on my woman’s wrist trying to pull her inside his vehicle.
Kai scoffs with mischief uttering something between the lines of, “Of course there had to be another type of shit drama” and “You’ve gotta be kidding me”.
The rest I don’t quite hear.
Why?
I’m out of the car garnering as much strength as I can to walk.
The first three steps have me hissing “fuck my life”.
Everything hurts.
From head to toe. From muscle to muscle…
“Blo…”
Blondie.
I slur. I think I shouted it loud enough because I saw her eyes on me and they brimmed with tears in an instant.
The other two men eye me as well.
And the scowling one gapes at me like I’m the Great library of Alexandria itself being reconstructed to what it was centuries ago.
“Motherfucker”, this new guy hollers.
But my attention shifts to the woman running to me in the dead of the night.
“Christian? Oh God. Oh my God, what… what happened? You are…bleeding. We need to take you to the hospital. We need… Maximo, Yan, help me! Help me now.”
My woman holds my cheeks, wiping the blood with her fisted palms.
“You are okay… you are…”
“Pregnant.”
I mumble. Those tears, those eyes… I never meant to…
In a split second, Alexia is taken away from my sight by Yan who holds her waist and cages her with his arms.
How dare this bastard think…
“Let me go! Let… me go, Yan! I command you to let me… Maximo? Maximo? Please? No. He doesn’t remember, he’s hurt, he’s…”
Yan holds Alexia as she fights in his grip.
I take one step to stop him but this Maximo guy shoots up like a bulky tree from the Amazon right in front of me, blocking my way.
He’s bulky sure but I’m at least a pound bulkier than him.
I’ve killed Weston.
Pretty sure my own mother is dying in my hands too once this headache stops and my thoughts are aligned.
Hence, I’m not above slaying this Maximo guy. Not after everything I’ve gone through tonight.
“You Volkovs have deals with the devil, don’t you? First my wife and then… fuck.”
Maximo’s words come accompanied by his fist.
Unlike earlier when I couldn’t predict Wes’ attack the fist that connects with my face right now is something I see coming but with my mind still processing things at nanoseconds, I can’t dodge it.
It stings over my jaw, over my head in particular and I fall with one knee to the ground, hands fisted.
“No! Y-You stop this! He’s hurt! He’s bleeding! He’s… please, stop this Maximo! Yan? Let me go! Let me the fuck go right now. He’s going to kill him… Max is going to-”
Maximo circles me like a fuming predator on prey, he kicks my ribs and I should kiss the ground.
I should fall to the ground and admit defeat.
But she is crying. Like she must have cried when I died on her at that altar. Pregnant. Alone. With child. Our child.
“You either kiss the ground or stand up, Volkov! There’s no in between. You either fall back to being the scared fucking ten-year-old boy locked up in the basement by dearest daddy or you pull yourself together”, Maximo snarls still circling me.
One knee to the ground, the other knee hoisting me up, I can’t fall. I can’t leap into nothingness when I have a woman crying for me.
Maximo flings his foot again.
Same spot. Same ribs.
I don’t move.
My eyes are on the blondie sobbing and thrashing in Yan’s arms. Her lips quiver as tears mar her cheeks.
She mouths the words ‘Get up’ but they feel so distant.
I can’t hear her over the roar of my own blood in my ears.
“Fall down, man. Don’t make me beat the shit out of you. Fall down, like you fell down when everyone needed you. Fall down and embrace this little life you’ve built yourself because this is how cowards do it. They hide, they retreat. Fall. Down. Like. You. Have. For two years.”
Another kick, I cough out blood.
I don’t fall.
“Yeah you want to play tough guy, Volkov? You want to play tough guy right now instead of when she needed you the most? Because that’s the worst thing a coward can do. Get a woman pregnant, disappear and pretend you don’t remember. You look at her and look at her good. Give up because you gave up on her. That woman needed you to hold her hand when she went into the maternity ward with labor pains. That woman needed you when two rowdy boys, your own spawns might I add, came to her life and made her life a hell lot tougher. They are cute but they needed you. They needed their father. And where were you, buddy? Here? Playing what? A rich kid in a suburban mansion and a mentally ill mother? You either give up or you choose to stand Christian. I’m not patient enough to wait for any of those choices whether my wife will hate me or not.”
Nurse.
Rhett Kingston. Rhett killing my sister. Me seeking vengeance and kidnapping Alexia?
It all comes in one blur after another. Blurs and tidbits of my memories flood my brain with no direction.
“And when you are back to this life you’ve created for yourself, I’m taking Alessandra from all this mess. She doesn’t deserve this kind of torture. Hell, I’m going to match her up with one of Demetri’s annoying brothers. They might be little pieces of shit but they’ll-.”
Demetri Sokolov.
“I hate that… fucker”, I spit out the blood, wiping my nose with the back of my palm.
“I know.”
Maximo says and the more he speaks the more his face becomes recognizable, the more the images start to form in my head one by one, the more the bitterness crawls up my spine.
I raise my knee from the ground and with every part of me hurting, I stand up.
Maximo DiMarco smirks at me.
I flick my eyes to the woman in Yan’s arms who’s stopped thrashing and is looking at me with a slight gasp.
Raucous and searing pain hangs a noose around my neck as I look at Yan.
He’s the only guy I want to forget right now.
“Sicily”, I utter.
Take my wife back home.
“Christian?” Alexia calls. My little nurse. My woman. Love of my life. The woman I dared to forget.
Her teary eyes search for mine and I avoid them completely as I order, “Now.”
Yan nods.
“Christian? B-baby is that… is that you? Christian? Yan, let me go… just… I want to… I want to touch him, please justChristian? Please don’t… do this.”
Her pleas fall on deaf ears when Yan covers her mouth with a cloth.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget the eyes she gives me when she passes out.
Cold. Detached. Angry.
Yan opens the car door and places her body in the back seat. A minute later, Yan drives the Range out of my estate.
I watch the car leave till it disappears.
I turn to Maximo, my whole body bruised because of his ‘tough love’ speech that has the stick shoved up my brain slowly clearing.
Memory after memory flows inside my brain like water to a creek.
My emotions constrict my throat as I gulp saliva and ask,”M-my… boys?”
“I’m glad to have you back from the dead, you prick. I knew a little roughing up would do.”
Bastard broke two of my ribs or something more but the physical pain is nothing.
The real pain is repeating the words that I…
“My boys.”
“Ethan and Liam Volkov. Both carbon copies of you.”
I swallow hard. Ethan and Liam?
“A-And Millie?”
“She’s all grown up. Kid almost reaches my knee and that’s saying something.”
Another lump lodges in my throat.
Fuck me.
“How much blood did she spill?”
Blood, she spilled for me.
I know a killer when I see one and my little nurse…shit, it’s my fault. My fault.
“She was grieving, Volkov. Everyone dealt with it in their own way.”
“How much?”
I grit.
“As about as much blood as the Cosa Nostra leader would. She’s been the head since you died.”
“No.”
“It was all she could do to suppress the-.”
“No”, my voice comes out hard, “I never wanted this for her. I spill… I spill the blood, I get my h—hands dirty! Not her. Not my nurse. I never wanted her to take lives… I’ll fucking take lives for her! I’ll kill… she restores lives! She… she is not me.”
Curse the headache.
Curse my slurring speech.
Everything in me breaks down like acid churning my organs one by one.
“If you ladies are done with the reunion, one, I suggest you get medical assistance and two? What are you going to do Volkov?” Kai’s voice snarls behind me.
Too broken, both in and out, to think straight. The only thought ticking in my brain is…
End this.
Kill my mother. No prison is going to hold her for the crimes she committed against me.
Not when she messed with my woman and babies I never got to meet, never got to hold, never got to see how they came in this world, never got to hold their mom’s hand and tell her she was doing great and she was a hella brave mom.
All that time…
They say blood is thicker than water but they forgot to add the part where said ‘thick blood’ lies to you for two years and keeps you from what is yours.