CHAPTER 93
CHRISTIAN VITELLO VOLKOV
I’m looking at Maximo drag the dead doctor’s body across the floor to dispose of it when my cell rings.
Blood smears the white tiles and it does nothing to dent my armor of a conscience.
I came for the doctor who lied to my face that I had an accident two years ago. Same doctor who works for my mother and has been giving me bullshit pills and another crap load of medical advice.
Did I make him stitch me up tonight and lie I would spare his life?
Yes, I did.
Did I shoot him at the same spot in the head I was shot at in that cathedral? I did and I ensured the doctor wasn’t coming back from the pits of hell he was going to rot in.
The number reads ‘unknown’ caller but I know who it is.
My whole gut tells me it’s her and I pick the call anyway because the need to hear her voice controls me like a puppet on a string.
I pick the call.
“You are back. I know you; I saw you and I knew you were back, Christian. Yet you pushed me away… Y-You let them take me away from you.
You know how it hurt losing you and you let Yan take me away from you. I don’t care about what you are going to do back in New York but I was there. You could have… could have said something to me. You could have… could have…
It’s wishful thinking though. I spent all my years focusing on you, breathing for you, telling myself I wasn’t Alessandra without Christian.
The world wasn’t complete without you. That’s what I believed. Why? Because my Christian fought my demons, my Christian led me to my family, my Christian gave me what no man had.
Love. Comfort. Ha- Happiness. C—Children. But today? Tonight?
Maybe it’s time I become a little selfish. I’m going to live for me, going to live for the babies I have abandoned for so long because of you.
They deserve my love. They need my love.
Not… not you. Because I fought for you, for two years I have fought for you, I have stayed strong for you, I have grieved for you and the first thing you get your memory, you push me away? You push me? Me of all people?
I’m tired. So tired. I want to be fought for too. I just want”, a sob erupts from the other end of the line and I grip the phone hard as she continues, “I’m done. We are over, Christian. For good this time.”
She hangs up.
A second later, a message litters my screen.
-345 warehouse, South Street Seaport.
‘Your fiancé is waiting for you to rescue her.’
I should call back.
I should tell her that I won’t let her dirty those pretty hands. I’m here. I’m back. I get to exterminate the monsters. And she does what she’s always done, patch things up.
I should tell her ‘We are not over. Not in this lifetime or the next, baby’ but I grin at her message.
Still as feisty as ever. Still mine and I’ll fight for you Tesoro.
Sending you home is fighting for you. I need you away while I get this shit done and dusted.
I need you, our boys and my girl safe from my mother.
Scrolling through my phone, I land on my gallery sifting through her pictures.
Her pictures will have to do for now.
Next time I’ll see her, I’ll be having her in my arms, making up for the nine hundred and thirty-seven days I’ve locked her away from my mind.
Maximo wraps the polythene around the dead body before he tapes it up.
We have so many things to talk about but I don’t have time.
Not if I want to kill my mother, make it to see Catelina in Moscow and be home in Italy in two days begging for forgiveness.
“Kai’s men are keeping an eye on your mother. How are we doing this? Bomb? Ambush? I’ll even offer myself to kill the bitch if it comes to it.”
Two years later and he still speaks of murder like we are talking about lemon tea in a café in good ole London.
That’s Maximo and I should be concerned considering he’s now married to my sister but we are cut from the same damn cloth and I like the way his crooked mind operates.
“Too easy.”
“Slice and dice?”
“Too merciful.”
“Don’t tell me you are growing a heart for her right now.”
A heart?
The only heart I have is for Alessandra Vitello Volkov. And she’s currently dumped me so let’s say that heart is hollow at the moment.
“I am doing this face to face. Famiglia in famiglia.”
XxX
Tied to a chair in the middle of a rat-infested warehouse. Poppy’s snores echo around us as I crouch to the ground examining her dirty face.
I’m guessing my wife told Yan to do this.
Little nurse wouldn’t have had time to bring Poppy here let alone tie her because for the past one week I’ve been eating her cunt for breakfast, lunch and supper.
The fact that I fucked my wife without having my memories eats me the wrong way but we move on regardless. I’ll fuck her cunt for the rest of my years after this is done.
Ignoring the smell of urine, rust and something dead-probably a rat- I tap my hand against her cheek.
“Poppy.”
“Poppy.”
She stirs then takes a deep breath before her eyes widen as she stares at me horrifically.
Brown eyes. She has bland brown eyes. And they are an eye-sore to look at.
I’ve tolerated those eyes for two years?
“Alek!” she wiggles, the ropes she has around her wrists and ankles dig into her skin the more.
“That… that bitch she… she punched me… she did this!”
That would explain the dried blood around Poppy’s mouth.
“Your…”
Wife? My fucking wife, Poppy?
“Your… new maid. She… she is insane! You have to fire-.”
I cradle her cheek. Play the role handed to me by people who took the right time and opportunity to control me.
“Take a breath for me, Poppy. I’m here to save you.”
Hand them the lies they told me.
Poppy shakes her head with a smile. A smile of relief.
Because prince charming is here to slay her dragons. Little does she know the dragon is in the room with her ready to scathe her to the depths of eternal sulfur fire.
“I w-was so… so scared.”
“I’ve got you, love.”
The endearment has Poppy sobbing. Soon as I cut the ropes around her ankles and wrists, her whole body collapses into me.
“Please…please don’t let me go. Get me out of here.”
She sobs and her tears smudge my shirt, she pushes her body so close to mine I want to purge her out but I can’t. Not yet.
When her sob fest stops and her self-obnoxiousness evaporates from her body, Poppy’s hand reaches over to my face.
“What happened to your face?”
“Slight accident.”
“Because of m…me?”
“I would do anything to save you, Poppy.”
“I’m sorry. Sorry.”
Five minutes later, Poppy’s hand is still latched on my arm as I drive around Manhattan above the usual speed.
Patience. Control.
It’s all about that.
Buy Poppy’s tears, feed into her victim complex until we reach my house. Patience and control.
Twenty-five minutes later, I’m driving my car up the driveway.
“The doc is on his way to check your wounds out. The cops are also on their way to get your-.”
“No cops!”
Poppy screams and I cock my head to face her.
“This… is nothing. Celebrities have psychos who do this all the time. Stalkers, fanatics… Alek, I know you are worried but-.”
I’m anything but worried.
“Where I’m from this is labeled as kidnapping, Poppy. If I hadn’t found you, figured out you were missing, you would have been left rotting in that warehouse for days.”
Her fingers skim my arm even more desperately.
“But I wasn’t… baby, you found me. And the maid, is she… is she still working for you?”
“She left.”
“Then, see? She got scared, she ran, I’m not in danger anymore. Can we please forget about this?”
Are these the same lies I bought for two years? Maximo was right, I was a freaking pushover.
I grin. Assure her it’s all good.
In return she smiles.
Then she unbuckles her seat belt, moves past the center console to kiss me and I dodge it by opening my side of the door and walking out.
She gets the message.
A second later, she’s opening her side of the door and stepping out as I catch sight of the black Audi parked by the right.
Mother is here.
“Let’s get you inside.”
The ever-compliant Poppy Woodcock follows me inside not questioning a thing.
How did I find her? Why is her family not with me if she was declared missing?
But her daddy dearest probably has bigger fish to fry at the moment.
We make it past the foyer all before the sound of sharp heels cuts us off.
Formal, always formal.
Sophisticated, gotta be sophisticated.
That same hair she shares with Catelina, Lucia Volkov stares at the me and the woman behind me and gasps.
“Aleksander? W-What happened? P-Poppy?”
Aleksander? She looks me in the eyes and calls me a name she forged in all my documents for two years knowing she took my life away.
“Slight accident.”
I give her the same answer I gave Poppy.
Mother dearest doesn’t buy my lies and I gaze at her and dare her to question it.
Our eyes lock, her dark eyes, the same shade as mine, expanding to a horrific realization.
I can hear her body jumping into a frenzy of emotions.
See her hand drop the Prada bag on the floor as her chest rises with an inhale.
My birth name is at the tip of my tongue.
Christian.
Call me by my name, mother.
“Anyone want a drink?”
I don’t wait for their answers.
I head to my kitchen, take the champagne Maximo left for me on the kitchen counter and with the other three glasses in my hands I make my way to the dining room.
My mother walks in with her heart in her mouth.
Poppy well… she’s always been oblivious in reading the room.
The tension is almost flammable as I sit down. I uncork the champagne bottle with a pop pouring the bubbling liquid into the three glasses.
“Christian…”
My mother says it in a whisper.
Poppy gazes at her with a frightened look before she peers at me.
“I think I should have a shower before-.”
“Sit down.”
I bark.
Mother’s face falls as tears well in her eyes. And that’s about as human as she gets.
Because humans tend to do this, play the sympathy card when they are caught at their own game.
Shed a few tears, put on a sad face, ooze regret like you didn’t know what you did in the past was bad.
“Christian I-.”
“You sit down or I tie you both down in chains. Don’t even think of running, love because I’ll chase you and tear you to fucking pieces.”
My message is clear. If they run well…
Poppy walks to where I’m seated and pushes her chair out to my right seating down.
My mother shakes and plops to the seat on my left.
I take my champagne glass by the flute raising it in mid-air.
“Here’s a toast ladies. To the greatest heist in history. Stealing a man from his own life deserves its own type of recognition, don’t you think?”
I drink my champagne and it tastes like piss. I was never a champagne guy to begin with.
“I never meant to-.”
“More drinking less talking, love.”
Poppy drinks all of it. Spending the whole day and a few hours in a warehouse would cause dehydration.
Mother dearest drinks three quarter of the champagne putting her glass down.
“L-let me explain, please. What I did? I would do it more than twice if it meant you being alive. That is what a mother does, she loves her children, she protects her-.”
“Did you give Carissa up before we even met her because you loved her? Because you wanted to protect her?”
“Your father would have killed her!”
“Moretti killed me and Cat while you watched! Don’t give me bullshit about protection because you watched as your husband lay his hands on me every Wednesday in that basement and you did nothing.
You are not a mother, Lucia. That title was stripped from you when you left your kids to your husband’s brutality, when you let your kids move away from Italy while you went in hiding.”
“Christian…”
I turn to Poppy. She looks like she needs another glass to wash away the guilty and wary expression on her face.
“What about you, love? What was in it for you? Money? A little bit of fun in duping a man that he loved you?”
“No. It started like that. My father and your mother wanted to merge their companies and our marriage would ensure that. I did what I was told but I fell for you Ale… Christian. I—I loved you. I love you.”
A muscle clenches in my jaw.
“Love? All I hear is love so how about we put that undying love you feel for me up to test?”
I take the small flask from my pocket placing it on the table. It’s clear and the yellow liquid in it can be seen by everyone who’s seated.
“One of the three glasses was lined with poison before I poured the champagne. Cutting the long story short one of us has poison flowing in his veins. Poison that kills in five minutes unless the small vial of the antidote sitting in front of us stops the poison and the dying altogether.
The poison could be in me or it could be in one of you. Question is, will any of you take the antidote for yourselves or will the undying love you have for me push you to letting me have the antidote instead?”
Greedy hands latch on the antidote and I gaze at my mother.
It didn’t take a second for her to take the bottle.
“I was giving it to you”, she mumbles.
This woman has always looked out for herself and no undying love is changing that.
I don’t feel a morsel of remorse knowing she has poison in her veins and that the bottle she is holding with dear life has more poison instead of an antidote.
My work here is done.
Poppy screams, hauling herself over the table as she tries to fight my mother over the small flask.
All I know is, it ends in three ways.
My mother dying in her house of lies.
Poppy dying if she drinks the content of that bottle.
Or her surviving if mother decides to keep the bottle to herself.
I’m too tired of New York altogether.
Time to go home and face the wrath of a woman scorned. My feisty blondie.