Only Pretend

by Nora Flite

  No one.

  The sound was deafening; a gun had gone off. Reaction took over, I let the knife go and dove towards the floor. Was I shot!? Who was it, who...

  Marat bellowed like a dying animal.

  Turning on hands and knees, I stared at the scene before me. Leonide held his pistol, smoke wafting, powder stinging in my nose. The mask was gone. Truly gone.

  I didn't recognize the man in front of me.

  His foot kicked Marat's weapon away; it slid, left a a smear of blood across the room. Ignoring the crumpled man as he sobbed, hugged where the redness bloomed over his shoulder, Leonide trained his pistol on Vitaly.

  Even with the knife in his leg, the man still stood. Breathing heavy, face bent and marred by pain, Vitaly stared Leonide down. “Are you insane? Do you know what you're doing?”

  The click of the gun cocking echoed. “Insane or not, I'm getting what I want.” The oak grip came down, cracking on Vitaly's skull. After that, not even anger could keep him standing.

  Crouching low, Leonide settled over the man's body. It was simple for him to rip the larger gun away. It joined Marat's across the room. Coiling up the front of Vitaly's shirt for leverage, Leonide pulled him from the ground. “Do you know what you're looking at?” he asked.

  Vitaly narrowed his eyes, blood streaming across his forehead. “A dead man.”

  Leonide fired the gun out the open door. I screamed, covered my ringing ears. But that couldn't stop me from seeing. No, nothing could shield me from watching what the man I'd fallen so deeply for was doing.

  It was a lesson for me.

  Like Vitaly, I was learning who Leonide was.

  He forced the searing, hot barrel of the gun against the man's cheek. The acrid scent of burning skin assaulted me. Vitaly couldn't bite back his cry of distress, his own blood staining his teeth.

  “Do you know what you're fucking looking at?” Leonide asked again.

  Breathing heavily, Vitaly's eyes flashed with a hint of fear. “No. Tell me.”

  Carnage swelled in Leonide's. Black depths, stark with murderous lust. “You're looking at a choice. Do you see what's in my eyes, Vitaly?” The metal of the weapon dug into Vitaly's flesh, indented his cheek. Every word from Leonide's mouth was calm. “I'm not ready to die. And I'm ecstatic to erase any threats from my life. You're a threat. So you have a choice.”

  It couldn't have been long. The rhythm in my chest ruined my sense of time.

  “Tell me my choice,” Vitaly whispered. In the corner, Marat groaned, looked on with a twisted scowl.

  Reaching down, Leonide took hold of the knife handle. Like everyone else, I knotted up, coiled in anticipation. “Marat drags you to your car. The both of you leave. I never, ever have to see your god damn face again.” His forehead was a sea of grooves. “Swear you'll leave me alone—leave her alone—and you can walk from here, alive.”

  “And the other choice is death?” It was a cold chuckle.

  “If you survive me cutting your joints to ribbons?” Leonide tore the knife free. Standing over the writhing man, blood leaking and staining every surface, he waited until Vitaly was focused on him again. “Then yes. After that would come death.”

  I couldn't stop shaking. At some point, I'd crawled to the furthest wall and just hugged myself. My own arms weren't comforting enough. So much violence...

  And all because of me.

  “Marat,” Vitaly croaked. Both men were white sheets; I didn't know if they would survive. In the growing light of day, the circular, shiny red ring on Vitaly's cheek stood out. The burn from the gun tip was a brand. “Come help me.”

  Standing aside, Leonide didn't lower the pistol until Marat had helped Vitaly off the ground. Tangled together, both pairs of eyes roiling with hate, they turned towards the doorway. “What you're doing is foolish, Mr. Vetrov.” It was hard not to admire Vitaly's returning demeanor. “Even if I don't come for you, attacking me like you have will anger others.”

  The sound of car doors came. I saw them, two other men, rifles in hand and standing in wait in the grass. Of course Vitaly hadn't come with just Marat. All at once, my joy melted away. We'd done so much, but again, we were outnumbered.

  Leonide hung the weapon to his hip. “Not the best guards, they ignored your screams.”

  In the driveway, Vitaly scoffed; it was a wet sound. “They were told to wait. They did that. Does my agreement to not harm you stretch to people not present during the contract?”

  Sticking his gun into the back of his trousers, Leonide's chin rose. “Ask them that.”

  The wave of noise came over the hill. Baffled, I rose up, inched close so I could see outside. At first, I thought it was the police—someone organized, coming to rescue us all from the brutality and madness.

  Nestor marched at the front, shotgun in his hands.

  The town. My lips parted in silence. Leonide must have called for help earlier. But he only talked to one person, and so briefly, then how...

  I didn't grasp it, not fully. But the reality was obvious.

  The people in town had come to help.

  Vitaly eyed them, his expression going barren. Guns were pointed at guns, men ready to shoot each other down at a mere bidding. Vitaly looked back at us once. It was me who he paused on, seeming to engrave my essence into his brain.

  “Help me inside,” he said to one of the guards. “Marat is about to collapse.”

  In minutes, what had felt like the end of my life faded down the road in two shiny cars. Vitaly had left, chosen to keep his head instead of fighting for me.

  Inside, I was torn up over how to handle the events. Leonide had called himself a demon, agreed to my assessment. To see him gleefully inflict pain on another human was something else.

  I should be scared of him. He walked towards me where I trembled. I should want to run again. I should see him for what he is and not want to get closer to the fucking barbed wire inside of him until it shreds me alive.

  He reached down for me...

  And I took his hands and squeezed.

  - Epilogue -

  Leonide

  I turned the knife in my fingers, examined the pommel. The engraving was faint; my memory filled in the gaps. It had belonged to my father. After he'd passed, I'd taken to carrying it around.

  It had become an old habit.

  A 'what if' plan among my many plans.

  That it had been what saved Celeste and I...

  Fitting. It was a fitting resolution.

  I still thought about that day. How the girl I longed for had looked at me, thought I was giving her up. She couldn't have known I was hoping for some slight moment, a way to catch either of the men off guard.

  Even I couldn't be faster than two guns.

  But then she'd done it. Celeste, that beautiful fucking woman. She'd found the knife and buried it in Vitaly with such untempered emotion. Marat had looked away from me, and it had been the opportunity I'd prayed for.

  My thumb grazed the razor edge. We're both alive because of her. The statement was truer than that. It went beyond just our flesh and bone.

  Celeste had done something to me... and even if I still felt pangs of unease...

  I knew I was better for it all.

  Clicking the knife shut, I dropped it in my pocket. Long legs carried me absently around my home, took in the high ceilings and ancient wood. I'd had it upgraded over time, fixed up from when it first stood over the tiny town below.

  It had been an inn, once. So far back, before anyone in my family had bought the land and mines to start the business that grew us from poverty to riches. At what point the tradition of matchmaking the women in the town had shifted to something more wide spread, I didn't know.

  My father had been born in Moscow. It was his father's brother who had focused on the mining, tried to coerce the family into expanding. I had heard little from my own father about the mess. But, eventually, I knew he'd moved back to the building in Estonia and taken residence.

  He'
d told me he started helping the town early on. Jobs, food, women; he wanted the place to blossom. There weren't enough women, though. He started using the money from the mines to expand further, and soon, he started bringing lost girls into his home.

  At one time, he'd filled the place. Every room, holding women who hungered for a man to marry and keep them safe.

  It was a trip to America, a meeting with an overseas buyer, that put the idea into motion to match couples from different countries. And oh, the money he received the first time I found himself a sweet little blonde thing.

  He was hooked.

  Pausing at the railing, I gazed down onto the floors below. I tried to imagine the home full of people. After he'd found my mother, married her on the spot and juggled traveling to Estonia with visiting her, he slowed the process down. When I was born, he had me stay and learn English, gain citizenship.

  Moving here, so far away from the world I had known, had been awful. I'd hated the house, hated everything.

  With time, I adjusted.

  After all, I still had my mother at my side. She was kind, gentle. She sang with me, told me stories and never once was cruel.

  Even when my father hurt her, she never cried.

  It had all seemed so perfect. So normal.

  I'd never questioned it until Celeste.

  Turning, I marched across the solid wood. My heels spoke my mood, clipped and brisk. Passing the room where I'd bathed her, where she'd asked me about that song I'd been absently singing, I slowed.

  She asked me about my parents—my mother. I pinched the bridge of my nose. Love or obsession. Brain washing. Was it possible my father had done that to my mother?

  It put a pallid tone over my childhood. Everything I had seen, done, helped with... I'd believed in it to my core. Tradition! Family! It was what mattered. I'd seen the women my father took in. All of them, sad and broken and with awful stories. None of them had had happy homes.

  Not like mine.

  So how could it be wrong?

  Gritting my jaw, I hurried down the stairs. I didn't know where I was going, just that I had to move. Fleeing my thoughts was useless, though. Everything was a nest of angry wasps, stinging over and over.

  My father had taught me everything I knew. The man had kept me at his side, all to show me how to run the business, since I was ten. Between managing the mining companies, and learning the intricacies of how to pick out a woman who needed saving...

  I'd been an apt pupil.

  When I was seventeen, he'd let me break my first one on my own.

  Ira. She'd been easy. I'd picked her out after seeing her in the market of London, her face bruised, eyes downcast. Following her showed me her home, how the people inside beat her and abused her.

  I'd told my father, and he'd told me what to do.

  Luring Ira out wasn't even a challenge. I talked to her, found out the people who hurt her weren't her family. She'd been sold to them.

  Sold. Real slavery.

  Though my father warned me to not be so blunt, I offered her a chance to escape. Ira had looked back, only once, before following me to my car.

  Like Ira, most women didn't fight. Many wanted out of their lives already.

  American girls, my father had instructed me, were another matter—different, but still broken girls that needed saving.

  Celeste was more different than all of them.

  The night I'd accused her of being just like all the others... it still stabbed me, that memory. Everything about Celeste drew me in, all while fueling me with hate. She stood against everything I had grown to believe.

  She was a woman who had nothing.

  But she would fight for the choice to keep it.

  Fighting for choice. Fighting for death. My mother's face, drawn in and cracking, all while she faded away in her bed. I could do nothing to reach her.

  I couldn't save her.

  Gripping the edge of the doorway, I leaned on the wall. Too many ghosts in my head. They wanted to steal what was left of my heart.

  I don't want death. My eyes lifted, flashed. I just want her.

  She was standing in the kitchen, wrists deep in dough. Sun beams shimmered on her hair, lit up the brunette color that was almost to her ears. I'd found her, weeks after Vitaly had come, trying to bleach her roots.

  That day, I'd poured out the chemicals.

  She didn't need to pretend with me.

  “Leonide,” she said, somehow feeling me behind her. Wiping her forehead, flour stuck above her eyebrow. “There you are! Are you ready for breakfast?”

  Pulling her from the mess, I held her wrists, kissed her soft lips. She was dazed, gaping up at me and my helpless smirk. Fuck, she made me want to make her laugh and see her gasping, all at once. “I'd rather eat you.” I just want you.

  Blushing, she looked away. “You still need food.”

  I didn't let her go, saw the scar inside her forearm. It was a cruel reminder of what had been between us. But what were we now? Without a plan, what was I supposed to do?

  “Leonide?” she asked nervously. “What's wrong?”

  It was simple, forcing her against my chest. Hands curled in her hair, the dark strands turning to gold at the bottom. It was a metaphor for her, this insane girl who had masqueraded as one thing, then transformed—No. Celeste never changed.

  It was me.

  She breathed out from my crushing embrace. “You're mine now, do you understand that?”

  “I—of course.” She stopped struggling, cheek to my shoulder. “I'm yours.”

  “So then what am I to do with you?”

  Celest stiffened. “Leonide...”

  “All these years, all this striving.” My heart swam in my toxic blood. “Was it all pointless? Was I wrong about my father, what we did? If all those girls were happy when they left—and you're the only one who wasn't—what does it mean?”

  Through her breathing, I sensed her agitation. “If you think what you do is right, does it make it right?”

  I held her away so I could see the turmoil in her blues. “What?”

  “I just—I don't know. Even if you were right about all the others, it doesn't make it right for me.”

  A cold wave inched up my spine. “Then none of this is right for you. I trained you to be this perfect woman, an amazing wife, and here you are. You hated all of it, but you remain.”

  Digging her fingers into my jaw, she pulled herself up to tangle our lips. My hands remained at my sides; I was trying to understand. Gazing up at me, she judged my expression, compassion blooming in her own. “I'm remaining because of you. The rest doesn't matter to me.”

  Welling with desire and the taint of distrust, I grabbed her shoulders. “Even if it continues?” My nails cut in, made her flinch. “If I do to you everything you say you hated, will you still really want to stay with me?” Even if I'm a demon?

  Celeste steeled her lips into a line. “The truest hypocrite is the one who doesn't think that they are. Fuck—Leonide, we've been through this! I don't want to fight, it's hard and it makes me miserable. I... god.” Her whole face went beet red. “You've been the stupid one all along. I love you!”

  I stopped breathing. When I'd met Celeste in Vegas, I'd teased her in my bed as she went numb. I'd called her strange sluggishness 'love' knowing fully well it was nothing more than drugs and alcohol.

  Now, she was throwing the word in my face.

  Can I call this messed up brutality love?

  I didn't deserve it.

  But I fucking wanted it.

  There was flour on both of us, I bent her over the counter that hard. This wonderful, monstrous girl was either a fool or as ruined as I was. I was fine with either.

  The result was the same.

  Against her throat, a place I'd left so many bruises, I whispered the truth. “I love you too, sweet girl.”

  Under my touch, Celeste thrilled. She was as alive as she'd ever been, and in her glory, her passion, I felt myself flying. Never had
something been so fulfilling, so terrible, as realizing I wanted this woman.

  Not until now.

  It was a fear worth embracing. Worth tearing men to pieces over.

  I loved Celeste Barstow...

  And god help anyone who tried to get in my way.

  THE END

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  About the Author

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  A USA Today Bestselling Author, Nora Flite loves to write new adult romance (especially the dramatic, gritty kind!) Inspired by the complicated events and wild experiences of her own life, she wants to share those stories with her audience.

  Born in the tiniest state, coming from what was essentially dirt, she's learned to embrace and appreciate every opportunity the world gives her.

  She's also, possibly, addicted to coffee and sushi.

  Not at the same time, of course.

  Check out her blog, noraflite.blogspot.com, also email her at noraflite@gmail.com if you want to say hello! Hearing from fans is the best!

  -Nora Flite

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