Chapter 33: Chapter 33

C’mon, I am dying to say to her. Make one more shitty remark. C’mon. Do it. I stretch to my full height but am still dwarfed by Dominika thanks to her giant platform boots. It doesn’t matter though, because my anger fills the room in a way I can’t. As if she can sense that, she finally shuts her big mouth. For the most part.

She gets to her feet, gesturing at the things spread out over the table. “Suit yourself. There’s nothing there of value,” she scoffs.

“How would you know?” I say in a low, growly voice.

I surprise us both. But I don’t care. It feels good to let loose some of my fury on this hideous excuse for a human being.

Unbothered, she shrugs me off. “Stacey didn’t have a pot to pee in. Of course, everything she left behind is junk,” she sniffs

I take a step closer to Dominika, closer than I really want to be to her. “You wouldn’t know if she had anything important, because you don’t know what is important,” I spit.

Her right eyebrow lifts and she chuckles at me with just as much disdain as she held for Stacey. “Okay. Okay, tough guy. Put me in my place, why don’t you?” she taunts.

“Look, bitch,” I say, inching closer. “I don’t care if you’re related to Niko. I don’t care if you’re related to the King of England. If you don’t stay away from me with your nasty comments and ugly attitude, I will make sure you’re as dead as Stacey.”

Holy shit. I did it. I told the bitch off.

For a moment, her eyes grow wide. But she’ll never let me get the better of her, so naturally has the last word. “Whatever. Whatever you say, Charleigh.”

She saunters away like she’s not bothered. But there’s no way she missed the vitriol in my voice.

When she’s gone, the room seems to refill with air and I take a deep breath. While I hope my standing up to her will keep her out of my hair for a while, I am also empowered. It feels good not to be afraid of her, to know I can call her out when I need to.

And I’m no longer afraid she’ll find out I was the one who found her photos, the ones where she scratched out Mrs. Alekseev. In fact, I pull open her locker door. No big surprise, the box labelled photos is gone.

While I pack Stacey’s things into grocery bags because that’s all I could find, I wonder if her mother might like them. I remember how happy I was Victoria saved some of my mother’s things for me.

As I finish, I see the corner of a photo wedged under the last locker in the row. I ease it out with a fingernail file and find it’s one of the Alekseevs.

With their mother scratched out.

I tuck this into my pocket. I am sure it will come in handy, hopefully sooner rather than later.

In spite of her contrary nature, being here in the compound has been good for her. Her sassiness has decreased considerably, which, considering where we started might not be that big of an accomplishment, but it’s something. And, I saw her in the guys’ library the other day, picking out a couple books to read. Never thought I’d see that day.

Many of their books are special collector editions I assume should remain untouched, but no one—and I mean no one—is going to discourage Evie from reading a book. I don’t care how priceless a volume it is, if she’s interested in it, she has full access.

When it comes down to it, she’s been a good distraction from my concerning one-track mind, where I’m coldly focused on turning myself into some sort of one-woman killing machine. The guys have noticed. Which is not a good thing.

A couple days ago, Niko suggested he and I practice sparring. While that’s nice and all, sparring is not what protects you in an attack situation, I’ve learned. It’s useless for street fighting. But I went along since he said it’s good for endurance and strength building. It didn’t bother my sore shoulder too much, not that he knows it still hurts. I keep that to myself.

Problem was, at the end of our practice, he leaned over to kiss me. And I punched him right in the chest.

When I did it, there was no thinking. It was as if my arm had a mind of its own, entirely independent from me, and bam, hit him like a well-honed reflex. Naturally, my small fist was no match for his muscular chest, and after his initial shock, he laughed it off.

But still. I was horrified.

So, it’s good I’m learning this stuff. I just have to use it at the right time and place.

What worries me most is that I was glad I avoided the kiss, and that when I made contact with his chest, it felt so good. I only admitted this to myself later. I’m not proud of it, but when it comes down to it, I just don’t want anyone touching me. For any reason. I pray that in time, these feelings will pass. I can’t say for sure they will. But right now, I have no interest in being intimate. None.

Niko tells me I need to get out of my head or my training will falter. That could mean no revenge against Dimitri, which has pretty much become my sole reason for living. He told me that after my training sessions, he sees the life drain right out of my eyes, like the only way I feel alive is when I’m practicing, throwing punches, and thinking about hurting someone.

He may be right.

I am fueled by anger on my part, my sister’s part, and Stacey’s part. I’m overrun, polluted with rage, to the point I’m afraid it seeps out my pores with a noxious odor that will keep everyone I love away from me for the rest of my life. I am ugly on the inside like a rotten piece of fruit and can’t find a single redeeming thing about myself except that I’ve sort-of gotten my sister on a new and better track for her life.

If that’s all I manage to pull off right now, maybe that’s enough. Maybe I should be thankful. I’m all about survival. I have to be. There’s no room for the intimacy that soothed me before. There’s no enjoying the special meals Chef has been making. It’s like someone stole the heart right out of my chest and the tastebuds out of my mouth. I’m not happy about it. But it’s my new reality.

I have little or nothing to say, having lost the art of conversation, and the scent of the flowers around me is sickening. I can’t enjoy music, as I’m afflicted with a nonstop ringing in my ears. I can still see, thank God, but I feel like I’m looking down a long tunnel where revenge against Dimitri is at the end of it, very, very far away. Like so far away that I don’t know I’ll ever reach it, yet it’s all I can think about, driven as I am by hatred—dark, ugly hatred that has pilfered my light. I know it and I know the guys know it.

I am trying to survive each day. It’s not easy and there’s room for nothing else. Will I get out of this abyss of misery and all-consuming anger?

Maybe. Maybe not.

************

Vadik

“Guys, I don’t mean to sound paranoid, but I’ve just put together some interesting facts, and I think we may have a bigger problem than we originally thought,” Kir says.

Fuck all. As if there isn’t already enough shit going down in our world. The attack on Charleigh and then the crash with Stacey has taken us away from all the other things we should be focused on. Sure, we have people working for us to keep things moving forward, but we can stay away for only so long. We need to get back to it, but dammit, with all this shit swirling around us, it’s near impossible.

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

Kir paces the room, snapping the elastic band on his wrist that he normally uses on his too-long hair.

He takes a moment, like he’s gathering his thoughts. “I haven’t had the chance to tell you. The man who crashed into Stacey, the guy driving the big rig. Well, he looked familiar.”

“He did?” I ask.

Kir rubs his hand over his face and looks vacantly around the room. “I’m… pretty sure he’s the same truck driver who T-boned Clara and me a few years back.”

No fucking way.

Impossible. Simply impossible. Too much of a coincidence.

Unless it’s not.

Kir looks like he can hardly believe it himself, and yet, if I know my brother, he’s checked his facts before making such an accusation.

“I did some digging. I had the guy grabbed when he was leaving the police station after giving his statement about Stacey’s accident. Right now, he’s being held at one of our facilities,” he says.

“Are you serious? Are you really sure it’s him?” Niko asks.

“Not one hundred percent, which is why he’s still alive.”

If this is true, if Kir is right, in spite of all these years believing his accident with Clara was just that—an accident, not deliberate or planned—how will he take it? Is he going to head back to that spiral of despair that almost killed him the first time around?

When Clara died, she took a big chunk of him with her.

We’re quiet for a minute, digesting the implications.

“If that’s what really happened, Kir, that both crashes were intentional, who do you think is behind it? Who do you think hired him?” I ask.

He presses his lips together. “Let’s lay this out. What we do and don’t know. Niko’s car, being driven by Stacey, blew up when she was hit by the truck. We thought the truck was just incidental, but it seems like it was planned, used as a sort of detonator.”

“Okay. Someone planted a bomb, and used a hired gun, a big rig driver, to fake an accident and make the thing explode,” Niko says.

Kir is pacing so hard now he’s making me dizzy, which is not good. This is the sort of shit that brings on my migraines. I close my eyes and listen.

“Right. The driver claimed Stacey went through a red light, but Evie was chasing the car, running after it, and saw it waiting at the light when the truck hit it. Stacey was never in the intersection, so the driver had to swerve toward her. He hit her so hard no one could tell whether she was in the intersection or not. Evie insists Stacey never went through a light, red or otherwise. The truck just slammed into her, and then the driver lied about it. They hadn’t counted on a witness like Evie. She saw the whole thing.”

Holy fuck. “Can we get video of the intersection? Any cameras in the area?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I’ve already checked that out. I suspect they chose that intersection because there are no cameras.”

“So you’re saying your accident with Clara” —I can’t remember the last time I said the woman’s name out loud— “played out the same? Some guy T-boned you, possibly on purpose? Was there a bomb in your car, do you think?”

I know this is hard for Kir to talk about. In fact, I’m surprised he is able to.

“I don’t know. At the time, I never thought to look. The car was towed to the wrecking yard. I never saw it again. But if there had been one, it failed to detonate. The truck crashing into us accomplished the one thing it was probably never meant to—killing Clara instead of me.”

I open my eyes again to see he’s taken a seat and is holding his head in his hands. Poor bastard.

“Okay. So who’s behind it?” I ask.

“That’s the million-dollar question. I assume it’s Dimitri. Could it have been he who caused mine, all those years ago?” Kir says.

It doesn’t seem likely, but nothing surprises me anymore.

“Or…” Niko says, “maybe Dimitri isn’t behind Stacey’s crash. Maybe we need to widen our focus?”

Kir gets to his feet again, clearly tortured, and gazes out the window to our south lawn. “Look at her out there. It’s like she’s training for the Olympics or something.”

Niko and I join him at the window to watch Charleigh with her trainer.

That’s one of the problems with the business we’re in. You never know who’s coming for you.