She gets it finally that arguing this matter would be pointless so she sighs and rests her head against my chest. I hold her a little tighter as it suddenly hits me how much worse this could have been. I can’t stand the thought of even the smallest hurt for Cindy.
I go up the stairs and take her into my room. Tenderly, I lay her on the bed. She pushes herself up into a sitting position and although I would prefer her to stay on her back until she’s been checked over by Doctor Ivanov, I let her win this one.
“I’m going to call the doctor,” I say. “I know you think you’re fine, but it won’t hurt to get checked out.”
She shakes her head quickly. “Alex, seriously, it would be a complete waste of the doctor’s time. I am fine. I’ve twisted my ankle and bruised my shoulder and that’s it. I’m working class. You don’t call a doctor for that. You put an ice pack on the ankle, maybe a bandage. And that’s literally it.”
I really don’t like the idea of her not getting checked over just to be on the safe side, but deep down, I know she’s right. It doesn’t seem like she’s seriously hurt, and what’s Doctor Ivanov really going to do for her ankle that I can’t do myself? It’s like she said. He’ll put some ice on it for a time, and then he’ll bandage it. He might prescribe her some painkillers.
I decide to relent. I really don’t want us to fight right now. But I’ll be keeping a very close eye on Cindy and if her ankle isn’t any better by tomorrow, I’ll call the doctor whether she likes it or not. And at the first sign of a concussion, I’ll do the same.
I stand up and move to the telephone in the corner of my room.
“Alex, no,” Cindy says.
“Just relax. I’m not calling the doctor. You won this one. I’m just calling downstairs to get some ice and some bandages sent up.”
I speak to one of the staff and ask for what I need. Then I start pacing impatiently as I wait for the things to be brought to me.
“Will you stop that! You’re making me nervous,” Cindy says.
“Sorry. I can’t help it. I hate not being able to do anything. You don’t—” I stop and turn at the sound of a discreet knock on the door. One of the maids holds out the items I requested when I open the door. I thank her and go back to sit down beside Cindy.
I gently roll her leggings up and look at her ankle. It’s swollen and bruised, the skin shiny and a deep purple color. I wince when I see it. Cindy grins, peering down at it.
“It’s a corker of a bruise, isn’t it?” she comments happily.
“You’re not meant to sound happy about it,” I say with a frown.
I pick up the ice pack and lay it on her ankle.
She hisses, but before I can tell her, that’s it, I’m calling the doctor, she explains, “It didn’t hurt. It’s just cold. I got a shock, that’s all.”
I think she’s underplaying how much her ankle is hurting. Looking at the bruise, it must be hurting like hell, but I’m convinced now it’s not broken. Even if she was running on adrenaline earlier and walking though the break rather than be left outside, alone and injured, that adrenaline would have been long gone now and she wouldn’t be able to bear anything or anyone even touching her ankle.
I leave the ice pack in place for a few minutes while I unravel the bandage and get it sorted and ready to use. I gently lift the ice pack away and begin to bandage her foot.
She watches me for a moment. “You’re good at this.”
“I’ve patched up a lot of men with worse injuries when I was younger. I guess it’s something you don’t forget,” I say.
I finish up and Cindy smiles at me. “It feels so much better now it’s supported.”
“Good.” I smile at her. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Cindy. I should have been around.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Even the most experienced rider gets thrown sometimes. It’s just one of those things. I hope it hasn’t put you off riding.”
“No, of course not. I love riding.”
“Nikita is usually so calm and it generally takes helluva of a lot more than outside noises to spook her,” I say, thinking about the incident rationally for the first time.
“Yeah. Like someone making a noise that sounded like a gunshot, for example?” Cindy says.
I frown. “What do you mean?”
She shakes her head. “I’m probably just being paranoid.”
I realize in my panic I didn’t ask what happened leading up to Cindy being thrown from Nikita. “Paranoid is not a word I would have associated with you. Tell me everything.”
“There was a noise, a damned loud one. It sounded like a car backfiring, or a gun shot. That’s when Nikita reared and I fell. I realized I’d seen a flash of pink through the trees right before hearing the noise. It appeared to be the same pink as the dress Petra wore at lunch. It sounds crazy, but I can’t help feeling that she was the one who spooked Nikita. That she wanted me to fall and hurt myself. But even as I’m saying it out loud now, I know it sounds ridiculous.”
I feel anger coming over me in waves. Fucking Petra. I don’t know what game she’s playing exactly, but this is a damned sight more serious than spooking Cindy in her room. Letting her think the ghost of some crazy old relative was in her room was child’s play compared to this. This could have caused a serious injury. Hell, it could have paralyzed, or even killed her.
“It doesn’t sound ridiculous at all. It sounds exactly like something Petra would do,” I say in a low voice so filled with anger that Cindy recoils slightly.
I stand.
“Where are you going?” Cindy asks.
“To have a little chat with my bitch of a cousin,” I reply.
“Don’t do that, Alex. What if I’m wrong?” she says.
“Petra is sly, vindictive, and one hell of a liar, but I have always been able to see through her lies. I’ll know whether she is behind this or not, don’t you worry about that.”
“I’ll come with you,” she says immediately.
“Cindy, please, just stay here and don’t move your ankle. I won’t be long, I promise. I’m not going to hurt Petra, even though I would love to give her the hiding she never got as a child. I’m just going to let her know I’m onto her dangerous games and make it clear she stops right now or she’ll have a very different me to deal with. I promised you nothing would happen to you while you were here with me, and now something has. But I’ll make damned sure nothing else does.”
She nods but she doesn’t look overly happy about it. The fact she gives in so easily tells me she’s scared of what Petra is capable of and what she might do next. She won’t be doing anything else, I’ll make damned sure of that.
I stalk out of the room before Cindy can say anything else. I have to. I can’t let her see how mad I really am, or she’ll be hobbling along behind me trying to calm me down. I wasn’t lying to Cindy. I’m not going to hurt Petra. This time.
I need to get a handle on my temper before I look for Petra. If I go in ranting and raving at her, she’s not going to take my threats seriously. Everyone knows I have a temper and my immediate family learned quickly to just ignore my outbursts. I need to dig down inside of myself and find that cold anger I know still lurks there. The kind of anger that terrified people back in the days before I sorted my life out and began making my money through legit businesses.
I push all thoughts of Cindy away, because when I think of her, hurt and in pain, my emotions take over and all I can see is red. I know deep down this isn’t about Cindy. Petra couldn’t care less about Cindy one way or the other. This is about me. This is between me and her. Cindy is collateral damage in this, and that’s how I need to think of her for the moment. I will protect my assets, just like I always have in my business.
It works.
The rage inside of me shifts, becoming a cold, deadly focus. By the time I reach the bottom of the stairs, I am different. Gone is the emotion, the ranting and raving. In its place is a ruthless determination that I have nev
er allowed myself to show in front of my family before today.
I move through the house. A maid who is carrying a tray of coffee informs me Petra is in her bedroom. The coffee is for her. I tell her to take the coffee back to the kitchen. Then I go back upstairs and tap on Petra’s suite of rooms. She shouts for me to come in.
I push the door open. “Leave it by the table,” she says carelessly, not even looking up from the magazine she is reading.
I say nothing and Petra looks up with irritation. I see her register my ice-cold eyes, the set of my mouth and the way I stalk towards her. I see fear, real fear, flickering in her eyes.
“Alex? What … what’s wrong?” she asks.
“I think we both know the answer to that one, Petra,” I say.
My voice doesn’t sound like my own. It sounds cold, robotic almost. It’s totally devoid of any emotion. Petra flinches at the sound of it. She scrambles off the bed, putting it between us, and for a second, I remember the child she used to be. How the hell did we come to this?
Cindy’s white face flashes into my mind, and although I push the image straight back out, seeing her for that fraction of a second is enough to remind me that this Petra isn’t the same girl who grew up with me all of those years ago. Just like I’m not the same boy. Life has taken its toll on us both.
“Cindy was out on Nikita earlier and a noise spooked her. Cindy was thrown to the ground,” I say.
“Is she ok?” Petra asks, her eyes widening convincingly.
“She’s fine,” I say.
Petra’s mask slips for half a second. The bitch looks disappointed and it’s all I can do not to fly across the bed and strangle her, but I keep my cool. That flash of giveaway expression was enough to confirm Cindy is right about her being behind this.
“Petra, I have something to say to you, and I’m only going to say it once, so I want you to listen closely because it’s very important.”
She nods. Her eyes flit between me and the door. She’s sizing up if she has any chance of escape if I go for her. It’s further confirmation of what she’s done. She’d be up in arms if she had been wrongly accused. She would be shouting and cursing about how she gets the blame for everything around here, which is not actually true, but a little thing like the truth wouldn’t get in the way of an outburst for Petra.
“If anything untoward at all happens to Cindy while she’s here; any accident whatsoever, even something as small as a paper cut on her finger, I am going to find you and I am going to hurt you so bad you will wish you were dead. I mean that literally. Do we understand each other?”
Fear flashes in her eyes. It’s not like she doesn’t know what I have been capable of. The stories of my Bratva days are not secret. She swallows hard and nods once.
“Good.” I turn to leave.
I close the door behind me and take a moment to compose myself, pushing away the cold, ruthless man I swore I had left behind for good. Once that was me all the time, but I gave up settling my problems with violence.
I think I scared Petra enough that he won’t need to come out again.
I hope I have, because I really don’t like this side of myself, but if Petra doesn’t get the message, my nasty side will come out again, because I’m not messing about here. If she so much as looks at Cindy wrong, I will go through with my threat. No one is going to hurt Cindy ever again.
Not on my watch.
Cindy
By the time Alex returns to his room, I’m starting to feel much better. My shoulder is barely aching and my head has stopped spinning. I didn’t dare tell Alex I felt a little bit light-headed, because if he had known that, I never would have been able to talk him out of calling for the doctor. The ice and the bandage have worked wonders on my ankle, and I’ve even been up and tested it while Alex was gone. It still hurts a bit and I have a slight limp to my step, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. I’m not sure what Petra hoped to achieve with what she did, whether she wanted to kill me, or just hurt me, but either way, she failed. I’m fine. I’ve done worse to myself falling down the stairs at home after a glass of wine too many.
I look at Alex as he comes into the room.
“How did it go with Petra?” I ask.
I wonder how far he has gone. I mean she needed telling, but I don’t imagine Alex is the nicest guy towards anyone who gets on the wrong side of him.
“It was her, but she won’t be trying anything like that again, I promise.”
“I think she must want me out of the way so she can get all of the money for herself,” I say with a laugh.
Alex frowns, looking confused, and I decide to tell him what Petra told me now. I think it’s kind of funny how far Petra will go to try and split Alex and I up, and while I don’t think Alex will find it funny, I still think he deserves to know the truth. If Petra is willing to tell a virtual stranger stories like that about him, who else is she telling these lies to?
I pat the bed beside me and Alex sits down.
“After lunch today, Petra invited me to have a glass of wine with her. Turns out she was only pretending to be nice to me so she could try and get into my head. I think she thought I would believe her story. I didn’t because I know you better than that, but I have to hand it to her, the girl is damned good at manipulating people. If I didn’t know you as well as I do, I might have believed her, she was that convincing.”
Alex’s frown deepens. “What did she tell you, Cindy?”
I take a deep breath. “She told me that you’re using me. Our relationship is a lie to fool Babushka.”
He narrows his eyes.
“That was my initial reaction too. I thought she had somehow worked out what we were doing, well how we started … our deal. Then I realized she couldn’t have and I only thought that because she was being so vague, so I asked her to spit it out. That was when she tried to convince me that there’s a clause in your aunt’s will that says that you will only inherit her money and her estate if you are married. If you’re not, then everything will go into a fund that will provide for Petra and the others. I mean talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel for a story. I don’t know what she’s trying to achieve with these stories. Maybe she just wants to make you miserable.”
I keep on babbling because as the words are pouring out of my mouth I’m beginning to realize that she was not scraping the bottom of the barrel. The story actually made perfect sense, especially since the reaction I’d been expecting from Alex, either anger at Petra, or maybe even laughing at how pathetic she is, doesn’t come.
He doesn’t say anything. He’s just silent. In fact, his face has gone white and he’s staring straight ahead of himself and in that moment, I know it’s true. Petra clearly has an agenda here. One that involves getting me out of the way at any cost. She must have thought after our little conversation that I would stick by Alex no matter what so she tried to get rid of me another way.
Because she too wants that money at any cost.
“Alex?” I say when it’s clear that he’s not going to be the first one of us to break the silence that’s fallen over the room. “Please tell me this isn’t true.”
He looks at me and I can see sorrow and pain in his eyes, but it’s clear that everything Petra said is true. He’s just been using me to get his hands on Babushka’s money. Everything has been a lie. I’m not here fooling that sweet old lady for her sake, I’m here so Alex can walk away with the whole lot. For a brief second, the horror of knowing how thoroughly I was fooled by him made me almost wish I hadn’t told him what Petra said.
But no. I’m glad I told him. I would rather know now what kind of a man Alex is than learn about it down the line in a divorce court once he has access to all the money. No doubt, he would have made me sign a pre-nup. What a joke! He sure knew how to pick the right girl for the job, because I would have insisted on signing a pre-nup to show him I had no interest in his money.
I finally see the true man beneath the mask. His face might be handsome, but insid
e, he is ugly. Ugly to the core.
“I don’t want to lie to you, Cindy,” he says softly.
Not only is he not trying to say it’s not true, but he’s not even defending himself or trying to explain to me why he’s done any of this if it wasn’t about the money.
I can’t help but think of Babushka. Of how much she loves Alex and how this news would break her heart into a thousand pieces. I know then that I will take the coward’s way out. I won’t tell Babushka what I’ve learned. I can’t be the one who breaks her heart like that. But I also can’t be a part of duping her. It was one thing when I thought I was part of something that would make an old woman very happy, but not this. I have grown fond of Babushka over the last few days, and I don’t care if Alex doesn’t pay me a red cent. In fact, he can take his stupid casino and shove it up his ass. I am not being a part of duping an old lady out of her money.
“Fine,” I say simply.
What else is there to say? He’s not giving me any sort of an explanation and he’s not denying it. I could get angry and yell at him, tell him what I think of someone who would do something so terrible. But what good would it do? Alex must know himself that what he’s doing here is the lowest of the low. He doesn’t need me to tell him that. And it’s not like any of what I thought was between us is even real. He’s not going to give a rat’s ass what I think.
“I’m kind of tired now. Would you mind leaving me alone for a while?” I add when he says nothing.
I don’t wait for him to say anything else. There’s nothing he can say that can fix this. I lay down and turn my back to him. Please just go I think to myself. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.
Alex stays sitting beside me on the bed, but he makes no move to touch me or to try to get me to talk to him. I close my eyes, willing him to go, and after a few minutes, I feel the mattress move as he stands. I hear him walking across the room and I open one eye a slit so I can see him. He picks his laptop up, then walks towards the door. I hear it open.
“I’m sorry, Cindy,” he says.
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