Chapter 283

“What?” it’s that knee-jerk reaction of a response and he visibly closes up as he turns to face me. Caught out. Shutting down to deadpan when cornered.

“You went there? You were in that shithole? Why?” It’s an accusatory tone, spat at him in response. I swallow hard, blood running cold at how much worse this is getting, and slowly I try to sit on the edge of the table, my legs turning to jelly and giving way on me. Forgetting about the box and weakening to lightheaded, that this night just keeps getting worse.

I didn’t think it could, and yet he has this great habit of proving me wrong. Alexi in Hackney, in the place I lived. The squalor and shame of that run-down shithole.

Oh, God.

Alexi seems restless and paces away as though he too is having a hard time reeling in a reaction or his thoughts and feelings. This feels like one very long night of large confessions and major traumatic events. I want to lie on the floor and die.

I swear this better be a nightmare and I wake up to find none of it is real…well maybe the first part could still be.

Maybe he thought I went back? I have no clue why he would go there at all. I don’t like it one bit. It’s one thing to read about the poverty I existed in, it’s another thing entirely to see it for yourself. Even I would never go back to that rat hole. I can’t even imagine what he thought when he walked into that rot riddled tiny flat in one of the worst areas in the borough, especially after all this time abandoned.

“I haven’t told you everything … I’m not sure I should.” He walks across the room then comes back towards me again, too much nervous energy and he cannot look at me. He is emanating so much energy it’s like an instant anxiety trigger, and suddenly I don’t want to know anymore. My instincts are telling me it must be worse than the books, worse than him being there. I don’t think my nerves can take any of it, but not knowing will be worse, and my head will run riot and twist itself insane with questions.

I don’t want to know but I need to know.

“I think you owe me a million explanations tonight, Alexi. If you want me to stay, then be honest with me! Stop letting this all filter out in a drib-drab motion and just get it over with. I don’t think my nerves can take much more. It surely can’t be worse than …” I wave my hand in the air in an encompassing motion, meaning ‘this, everything’ hoping to God I’m right.

He throws me a look that says, ‘I bet it can’, and my stomach drops to my toes like a lead weight. Not sure what it is he wants to tell me, and suddenly afraid of what could be worse than my past being in his possession. Maybe I should have just stayed in the elevator and left after all.

Alexi walks past me to the kitchen, so I’m left perched on the coffee table with lack of mobility, and he pulls out a glass to pour himself a drink, motioning with a look to ask if I want one too and I nod. Something tells me I need a stiff drink if he thinks it’s bad enough to warrant one.

Mr cool and controlled has done a bloody runner, and this guy is making me antsy as hell.

A million things are running through my head and yet I draw a blank on what he could have to tell me that’s worse than knowing everything about Lisa. That’s the worst in my eyes. Second is standing in that place.

I detailed everything, and I mean every single thing I lived through. Rape does not make for good reading when written by an eleven-year-old on the verge of a complete breakdown. I bleached my body until my skin bled in a bath hot enough to melt my skin. I felt so filthy and used. At eleven I understood what had been done to me. I should never have known that kind of thing at such a young age.

He read that. God … he read it all.

He saw the where. He stood in a room I described and could envision the scene I set.

He comes back and hands me something dark on ice and downs his in one go, still standing over me, and I can feel the nervous energy coming off him in droves. Apprehension in his posture and the way he moves around before sitting further away so he can look me dead on across the couch.

Sitting away from me is not a good sign. Alexi needing space is Alexi drumming up the courage to tell me something bad; I can feel it. King of invading my space only wants his when he is stressed.

“I went there when he told me he had those.” He nods towards the box and I avoid looking at it again. It’s like a giant black cloud in the room, and I’m afraid if I set my eyes on it again it will suck me right into misery. I want them gone. I can’t function knowing they are so close.

“He read them … tracked Rick down …” It’s the way he adds it quickly, a strained tone to his voice that snaps my attention to his like a hawk.

Rick!!!

Why would he want to find him of all people? Even him saying that name leaves a horrible taste in my mouth, bile rising in my throat, and I want to scrub that name from his tongue, so he never says it again.

Alexi should never have a connection to that man, not even a verbal one. Those two worlds should never collide. As much of a bastard as he is, it was nothing compared to that sadistic freak. Alexi would never do the things Rick did.

“Why? I would never go back to him. Never go anywhere near that place, not for anything.” It’s an automatic response and he just plays with his glass, rolling it so the ice slides about the empty vessel and makes a dull clink-clink noise as he does so. He stares at its depths, and I know he is wrestling with the right words, a coldness coming over him that is more in keeping with the devil I met so long ago, and I shudder at his appearance. He is choosing his words carefully and thinking over his approach.

“Because I asked him to.” That hint of a low growl as Satan Alexi moves into that face, and my mind puts two and two together and runs in fright at the conclusion. My insides somersault and a cold weakness flushes my entire body instantly. I know the beast in him and all the signs of it being pulled out to admit it ate all the village sheep. I don’t know if I want to know more but I need to.

I stare at him, stupefied and holding my breath. My heart hammering in my chest and hands trembling because a huge part of me already suspects what he is hiding, even if it seems preposterous to normal people. Alexi is not normal people, he is Alexi Carrero; I know he has capabilities that are far worse than anything I have witnessed him do. His reputation through the years was not built on a myth. I know where this is heading, even if I don’t understand why he felt he had to go there and do this.

“Why did you need to find him, he means nothing to me?” I can barely whisper the words out because I’m scared to have him tell me more. Unable to keep looking at him as my trembling makes the ice in my glass clink uncontrollably, and I follow Alexi’s example and down the burning liquid in one go. Warming my throat and singeing it all the way down to my belly, giving me an instant numb warmth that does nothing to calm my insides which have hit a spin cycle on a washing machine. I know what’s coming and I don’t know if I can bear for him to say the words.

Oh, Alexi.

“Mico said it was guilt, a way to, somehow, take back the things I did to you. Maybe it was, or maybe I just couldn’t let any man walk this earth who dared hurt you like that. Someone like him doesn’t deserve to breathe and walk around untouched. I wanted to make him suffer the way he made you suffer. I wanted to do something besides searching for you endlessly.”

And there it is. Exactly what I feared. What I knew was coming. The question is, how straightforward was it? I know him. He’s not a quick and clean type when he has a vendetta. That sick, twisted bastard in him isn’t retiring anytime soon.

“Oh, my God, what did you do? Alexi, you didn’t need to do anything. He’s my past. Oh, God … I don’t know if I want to hear this.” I blanch at him, eyes widening as a million thoughts run through my head and I cannot help but gawp at him. He is in full-blown Mafia King mode. Deadpan, almost emotionless with that slight furrow of a scowl on his hardened face. His eyes paling out as that meaner side of him comes to fruition. Disconnection to his sins; something he excels at. When he has wronged, this is the version who comes out to shield him from remorse and I don’t like his appearance now. This is how he deals with all the things that would make other humans crumble. He cuts off, so emotions don’t make him feel regret that normally accompanies heinous acts. I saw this side many times with me.

Alexi has done something awful. Worse than a snap of a neck no doubt. It’s all over him. All the signs are present.

“Not as much as I should have.” He looks away, face changing to show something else, but he’s too quick to turn from me to hide it and I sit in stony-faced shock. I hate that I know him well enough to figure this out, and my mind is struggling to comprehend how bad it could have been. He knows no limits when it comes to cruelty and I’m afraid to dig deeper for specifics.

“Is he …?” I can’t even say the words. Bile rising in my throat almost choking me, but I have to know if he ended it and he’s not chained up somewhere enduring a lifetime of excruciating torture in my name. I couldn’t bear that. I’m not Rick. I’m not as cold as Alexi either, even if I used to be.

“He won’t bother you or any other girl ever again. It’s done.” He jumps to his feet and stalks back to the kitchen to pour himself a second drink, obviously to hide whatever warring emotions are on show, and I try to absorb what he said. Trying hard not to show anything on the surface to what he just admitted.

Alexi went after Rick, did whatever he’s hinting at, and now he’s dead. I can summarise that is exactly what he means, and he’s admitting to killing for me for a second time. My gut says he isn’t holding back on the death part because, in his world, life holds little value. It’s not something shocking or unheard of. Sadly, it’s part of his norm to deal with people in this way. Alexi doesn’t see cold-blooded murder the way someone outside his world would; killing is just a tool, an accepted part of life.

Someone like Rick is like swatting a fly or running over a toad in the road. It’s nothing to him, so I can only guess his aversion to spelling it out properly means he took the long slow route of killing Rick, in gruesome painful ways that lasted days. Something he thinks will disgust me.

I don’t even know how to feel about that other than a sense of nothing. Even though I should be abhorred, afraid maybe. I should feel something, maybe disgust or shock but I don’t. Not really. Beyond the surprise of his confession to all of this.

Rick deserved to die for all he did.

There’s more fear in connecting Alexi to the sort of monster in my head who could torture a man than knowing that perverted fuck writhed in agony until he took his last breath.

I don’t care that a life has been snubbed out.

I care about seeing Alexi as some cruel and evil being who could do it. Afraid he changes how I look at him with a few sentences and I can’t have him give me the sort of details that would do that.

That’s fucked up.

There is something truly wrong with me.

What I do care about is that he took it upon himself to track him down and do something about someone who caused me so much pain and misery in my life. Whether it was guilt for how he wronged me, or just a need to hurt someone that had inflicted trauma on the person he claims to love. He didn’t go after him for anything other than doing it for me.

Alexi really does love me. In his own fucked up way. Killing Rick was a way of making amends for the wrongs he did me or just to ease my suffering and snub out the monsters plaguing my life.

Alexi is all about actions and not words, and you cannot get any louder than hunting down and slaying a pig like Rick for me.

It’s not a lie, a game, a way to get to me—it’s a truth. I’m watching him now as he pours a drink and hides from me because he’s worried my reaction to his confession will be like that of his mother; rejection and fear of him. Seeing an unlovable cold murderer. Convinced I will only see a monster, just like she did. Crushing his soul, just the way a cold woman did to a child who never deserved it. It explains so much about him.

I suddenly feel completely overwhelmed. All those floating emotions swirling around me and the ones which flood my head and heart are empathy and gratitude. For a misunderstood little boy who shows his love in the strangest ways.

Like hunting down a dog killer and beating his car to death.

He didn’t tell me this because he wanted to prove anything, other than he’s always cared. He didn’t do it to make me come back to him either. He didn’t even tell me until now. He is only telling me because he wants honesty. Something we never had the first time around.