by N. Alleman
Haven’t I already responded to this more than once?
“No comment,” I reply wearily, feeling like I might actually be falling apart this time.
All of a sudden, the door opens behind me and I spin around to see Alexi. But he looks different than how I’ve seen him before. He’s wearing an expensive suit and his hair’s slicked back. Without meaning to I let out a little gasp.
“Interview’s over,” he says in a business-like tone. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get here.” He shoots me a smile, which I return half–heartedly, and he slides into the chair next to me before extending his hand to the police officer in front of him. “My name is AlexAlexi Smith, I’m Mrs. Novikov’s attorney.”
This is a shock, and I’m wondering how he knows my married name, because I never told him. I guess he researched us, but still... it feels a little crazy.
“I would like a moment alone with my client.”
Having never been in trouble with the law before, I’m worried this isn’t going to happen, but after shooting him a sharp look, the officer stands up and leaves the room.
I exhale loudly.
“Are you okay?” He asks, concern in his eyes. “I’m sorry this happened.” He’s speaking in a hushed tone, but I’m too paranoid to say all of the things that I want to say.
What the fuck happened
What the hell are we going to do now?
I want to ask him those things, but I don’t dare. Not in this place.
For now, I’m just glad he’s here, that I’m not totally alone. I thought he would just bail, and that would be the end of it. He certainly has no obligation to help me. This isn’t what I was paying him for, but I’m really glad that he’s here.
“Have you told them anything?” he asks. When he sees he isn’t going to get much out of me, he tries again. “What are have they said?”
“It’s pretty clear that they think I did it.”
“They’re doing their best to scare you,” he says, sounding confident. “I wouldn’t worry. They have nothing on you. It’s going to be fine.”
I vaguely remember him saying to me at some point that I was being framed, and that he removed the evidence, but I’m not convinced. How can he be totally sure? I mean, I know he’s a criminal, but this is out of the ordinary even for him...
“I’m going to get the cop back in here, and we’ll get you out of here soon.”
My heart beats harder, and I can hear the blood pumping in my ears. I want to scream out, to beg him to wait a few minutes for me to get myself together, but I don't. I’m basically useless in stressful situations, and he knows so much more than I do about things like this. I shrink down in my chair and defer to him.
When the police officer comes back into the room, Alexi takes control.
“All right, Officer Whitfield,” he commands, making a big show of leaning in to look at her badge. “As I understand it, you have no evidence that my client has had any involvement in this crime, so you cannot keep her here. There is no reason for you to arrest her, so I would like to request that you release her.”
“But we would prefer...” she tries to speak, to get her opinion across, but Alexi won’t let her get a word in edgewise.
“I know that you like to have people here, but I can assure you that Mrs. Novikov will not be going anywhere. She hasn’t done anything, so she has no reason to flee. As I’m sure you can imagine, discovering that her husband has been murdered, is quite a traumatic experience. Surely you can understand she needs to be alone with her grief. Not to mention there will be the practical arrangements she will have to make.”
Oh fuck... practical arrangements. How the hell am I going to deal with all of that crap?
Officer Whitfield stares at Alexi for a few moments, trying to get him to back down, but he isn’t going to. He seems stronger, more determined, and soon she breaks eye contact and moves to stand up.
“Fine, but keep your phones on because I’m sure we will need to question her again. The entire situation is highly unusual, not to mention suspicious.”
Her tone intimidates me, and I can’t wait to get out of that building. I stand up, press myself close to Alexi, and we leave the room. Normally I wouldn’t cling to a guy I just met, especially one who kills people for a living, but I’m one step shy of having a nervous breakdown so I do the only thing that comes naturally—I rely on this man who is here to save me, at least for the moment.
“I just need to go to the bathroom,” I tell him in the hallway, needing a moment to gather myself.
I slide away from Alexi and rush into the ladies room. Tears threaten to spill down my face, so I quickly wipe a couple of them away, not wanting to give in to my emotions in this building. This might be a fucking nightmare, but I knew that it could end up this way when I put in the request to the agency. I need to suck it up until I get out of here.
The timing couldn’t be more terrible, but I can’t go another moment not knowing if I’m pregnant with my dead husband’s child. I bought a pregnancy test at the drugstore down the street from my hotel, but I’ve been waiting to take it. This one says it only takes three minutes so I pee on the stick and count the minutes.
Alexi may wonder what I’m doing in here, but that’s okay. I have to know.
The test is supposed to make a plus sign if you are pregnant. Fortunately, that never appears. The minus sign just stays as it is.
Hallelujia! I’m just late. The thought of going through all this while carrying Damien’s child seems unbearable. Having the baby of a criminal would be bad enough, but giving birth to the child of a dead man I despised would be a million times worse. Plus I dread the thought of a baby tying me to Damien’s family. The man is dead, but it still feels like I’ll never be rid of him. A baby would cement my fate.
Tossing the stick in the trash, I splash some cold water on my face, and tell myself things are looking up.
It isn’t until we’re out of the building, and into Alexi’s car that he becomes himself again. Up until now he’s been playing the lawyer character, but there isn’t any need for that any longer.
“Shall we go back to my apartment?” He asks. “I think we have a lot more to discuss and to be honest, I’m not keen on leaving you alone.”
“Me neither,” I tell him eagerly. The thought of being by myself when I already know someone is out to get me, freaks me out. I’m already a hot mess, and I’d rather be with someone who can protect me and who can look after me when the going gets tough.
“I’m scared,” I admit. “I’m scared I’ll get arrested for this crime, I’m scared that whoever killed Damien will come after me, and I’m totally freaked out about the fact that I don't know what’s going on.”
“I know.” He rubs my thigh gently. “But we’ll figure it out. Don't worry, we’ll straighten it out somehow.”
But is on other things. For some reason the only thing I want to think about now is his hand on my leg. His touch feels electric, and as inappropriate as it is for me to be thinking about him this way, all I want is more of it. Maybe it’s the stress of the situation, but my feelings are teetering into an area that they really shouldn’t be, and I’m confused.
What the hell is wrong with me? Why do I always feel an odd attraction to people that are so wrong for me?
Although, to be fair, this is nothing like what I had with Damien. Looking back now, Damien was convenient, he was easy, he took me away from the shitty life that I had before. The attraction to him was purely one of convenience. This man couldn't be less convenient if he tried. Even though I know nothing good that can come from me feeling this way, it doesn’t stop the intense chemistry, and the sizzling sexual tension that’s hanging in the air between us from demanding my attention. Of course Alexi is a handsome guy, if a little rough looking, but that’s no reason for me to fall for him.
Stop it, I warn myself. You cannot fall for this guy, just because he’s nice to you. He’s here for only one reason, and that’s the way
it needs to stay. Focus on figuring out who killed Damien and what they want from you!
7
Alexi
One of my biggest rules is to keep my business far away from my home, but this isn’t a normal situation. I feel like I need my personal resources to deal with this situation. And I meant what I told Nadia about not leaving her alone. As much as I fear this could be an attack on me, I might be wrong. If that turns out to be the case, I don't want to risk something happening to her. If something happened to her that I could have prevented—that would kill me.
“Okay,” I say to her as we pull up outside my place. “This is me, let’s go in.”
My home has always been more than enough for me, but I doubt Nadia will be impressed. She’s been living in sheer luxury for however long she’s been married, but she’s kind enough to look like she likes it.
“Would you... like a drink or something?” I ask when we go inside. Now that we’re here, it feels awkward. Ever since I’ve owned this place I haven’t brought anyone to see it—not friends, not women, no one... it’s mine and that’s the way I intended it to stay. I’m not sure why I made an exception for this woman I barely know, but it’s strange having company in a place where I’m usually all alone.
“Yes, thank you.”
I walk over to my liquor cabinet and decide that we both need something a little stiffer to drink, so I grab the bottle of my favorite vodka which I take over to the table.
“So I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and what we need to do is find out who...” But I trail off, noticing that she’s looking at me a little strangely. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“You drink Elite?” She asks with a rasp to her tone. “I’ve never known anyone else in this country to drink it. Are you... Russian too?”
“I am,” I confirm, nodding as I let her in. “My full name is actually Alexi Fedorov.” I don’t usually tell people about my past, that’s one of the reasons that I tried really hard to disguise my accent, but since I already know so much about Nadia’s life, it feels all right to share something of mine with her. “I grew up in Moscow until I was in my teens... I can’t remember when exactly. That’s when I came to America.”
“Wow,” she gasps, taking a massive swig of the vodka, like a true Russian. “That’s crazy. What made you come out here?”
I drink a little more myself, trying to steel myself before I share anything else. Telling this story to anyone scares me, but I feel an affinity with Nadia. I feel like because we’ve come from similar backgrounds, I can tell her things and she’ll understand. Plus, I can tell that she needs the distraction, needs something else to think about other than the current bizarre situation she finds herself in.
“I’m not entirely sure what happened, because I was too young to remember it fully, but I know that we lived in the poorer end of the city. My father worked all hours, but it was never enough, and we lived pretty much in squalor.” I sigh deeply, feeling myself crumble a little. “It was always a violent area, but one day a whole bunch of explosions kicked off... I think I must have been at school when it happened, which is why I survived it, but I remember clearly hearing the bangs.”
As I speak, I’m taken back to that moment in time. Back to when I was a child, and my world shattered. “Then, that was it. My parents were dead. I guess our house got caught up in the fires and that was the end of it all.”
“I’m sorry,” she says sadly. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
A little part of me breaks at her kindness, but I keep talking Suddenly, I want to get it all out, this story that’s been stuck inside me all these years, and is now finally spilling forth.
“After that I was left. I suppose if I waited around long enough, the authorities would have gotten involved somewhere down the line, but I was scared. I thought we were being targeted for a reason, and I just ran. There was no one to mourn for me, no one to care I was gone, so I just... carried on. I lived on the streets, fending for myself, until I met the man who brought me here.”
“Why...what did he bring you for?” She asks anxiously, I guess fearing the answer.
“To work for his agency, I guess,” I tell her, shrugging my shoulders causally. “To start the life I live today.”
She nods slowly, as if she understands, and I suppose in a way she does. She also wound up in a life she probably didn’t plan. And, like me, she’d probably done things she might not have otherwise done, just to keep herself alive.
“What about you?” I ask, hoping that she trusts me enough to reciprocate. I realize she might not want to, but after all I’ve just said I would so appreciate it if she did the same. “What brought you here?”
“My father,” she tells me, before glugging her drink again, needing the liquid courage as much as I do. “He wanted to come to America and become a big shot, but it never worked out for him.” She looks down at her feet for a moment, and my heart bleeds for her. This story clearly doesn’t have a happy ending, the same way the ones that involve me never do.
“When things didn’t work out as he wanted, he started drinking, then he became abusive. It was a vicious cycle I wanted to break free of.” She rubs her face hard. “I guess I thought that I was doing that by marrying Damien, but he was probably worse. I mean, I saw my father do some pretty horrific things to my mother, but I think it came from his depression. I feel like there was always some love there between them, not that I’m excusing it at all,” She says hastily. “But with Damien... he was manipulative and mean, he was horrible.”
Tears start to stream down her face, and I can’t resist the urge for another second. I lean forward and pull her body close to mine, trying to reassure her at least a little bit. She slumps against me and allows me to take some of the burden from her for just a few moments.
“He turned me into a different version of myself—one that’s scared and sad all the time. I mean, I hate the fact that he’s dead, and that it had to go that far, but if anyone deserved it, it’s him. He was a despicable man.”
“It’s okay now.” I do my best to reassure her. “He’s gone, and soon enough all of this will be behind you. I know it seems overwhelming right now, but soon it will be a distant memory. You’ll have a future for the first time in a very long time, and you should be focusing on that.”
She pulls back to look at me for a few seconds, and in that moment I feel something spark deep inside me. Something both strange and familiar all at once.
“I guess we aren’t so different, you and me,” she tells me huskily. “We’ve both been through horrible ordeals, and we’ve managed to come out the other side.”
I nod slowly, but my mind isn’t on the conversation anymore. I’m thinking about whoever is out there, looking for us, coming for either one of us—or maybe both of us. I don't know what to do about it, and the only thing that I can think of is to contact Aidan, to get him involved, but that’s the last thing I want. I owe him a whole lot, and I don't want to let him down. He pulled me out of the gutter and gave me this chance. All I’ve ever wanted to do was repay him for that. I certainly don't want to have to go to him with this bullshit.
I need to tackle this alone.
“Let me turn my computer on,” I say, getting up. “We need to do some research on this, try and work out what happened at Damien’s. I need to know everyone that he’s connected to. We have to find out...”
But she pulls me back into a sitting position, before I can even finish my sentence. “Just leave it for now,” she assures me. “Let’s just... take a time-out from all of this. Take a minute to rest.”
I stare at her for a few moments, trying to figure her out. Does she not see that we still have much to do? And that by tackling that now we give ourselves the advantage... but as I look into her eyes I can see something else, something that I wasn't expecting at all. A fire.
Is she... does she want something to happen here?
The electric charge between us is something I’ve been thinki
ng about all along, but I know I shouldn’t act on it. This is the first time I’ve suspected that Nadia might feel it too. It’s actually felt like she’s been purposely trying to keep her distance from me. Maybe the stress of everything finally catching up to her. Maybe she’s reacting to the way I’ve been taking care of her. I don't know. All I know for sure is that this is a terrible idea.
So why can’t I stop myself from leaning in?
As we move nearer to one another, drawn together like magnets, my brain is screaming at me to stop, yelling at me to stop, but I can’t even though I know there’s only one way that this will end—in a whole heap of trouble.
Despite my internal torment, our lips crash together in what feels like a moment that has been coming for a very long time. Her mouth opens, and my tongue darts inside. She tastes like strawberries, and I want to drink her in. Devour her.
My fingers get tangled in her hair, her hands clutch my waist, and I can tell this isn’t just a sweet kiss. It’s a kiss that’s deep and passionate, needy and desperate. The kind of kiss that opens the door to your heart, no matter how hard you’ve tried to keep it locked away.
It doesn’t make sense.
But it doesn’t have to.
I know that if I don't put a stop to this soon, we’re going to end up in bed together. And as much as I’ve been thinking about being with Nadia, I didn’t think I’d actually act upon those thoughts...
I can’t.
I force myself to stop, and I hold her shoulders trying to keep her at arm’s length. But as I stare into her eyes, my resolve wavers. There’s something about this woman. Something between us I need to explore. So instead of saying the words that I should, I hear myself asking her, “Are you sure?”
She nods furiously then she grabs me, bringing my body back to hers, as desperate for me as I am for her.
With nothing holding me back, I pick her up and carry her to my bedroom.
