AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A few weeks ago, I had Emily, one of our department store managers, give Lia a makeover while she was on sleeping pills. The store manager changed my wife to look like the pictures of Winter we found on surveillance cameras. When she woke up in the hospital, I had a different doctor than Putin discharge her in case she remembered any details from the past and recalled his face.
Lia didn’t have any trouble believing she was Winter or adapting to her life, as if it had always been her own. It could be because she was used to being around the homeless due to the amount of volunteering she took part in.
She did mention once that they were free.
I never forgot her expression from back then, the sadness in it, and how much her eyes shone with a secret yearning for that freedom.
That night, I made up an excuse to spank her, to punish her for ever thinking about leaving me. Then I fucked her like a madman as if intending to purge that idea out of her head.
But deep down, I recognized that she believed in it. In fact, she probably buried it in her subconscious until this moment.
Being homeless is akin to freedom to her.
Kolya stops the car at the back of the shelter she stays in and we wait. My second-in-command retrieves his phone, probably to check on the hackers’ emails. Boris opens and closes his cigarette pack but doesn’t light one.
I sit in the back seat, my whole attention zeroed in on the door of the shelter. Every time someone exits and it’s not her, my stomach falls with a pungent type of disappointment.
When she comes out, I feel her before seeing her. It’s a strange connection that I didn’t realize I had with her until the day she fell from that cliff.
I shake that gruesome image out of my head as I focus on her. She’s gotten thinner, but her features are still the same—soft, delicate, and so beautiful.
She’s still the fragile rose I want to shield from the world, lure her into mine, and swallow her in my darkness.
Lia shoves her hands in her coat and hurries down the street, probably to get a beer and get drunk.
I motion at Boris. “Follow her.”
“Yes, Boss.” He opens the passenger door and steps out, keeping his distance as he trails her from afar.
My attention remains on her until she rounds the corner with Boris on her tail.
I’ll probably join him after I talk to Yan. To say I’ve been neglecting my work these past couple of weeks would be an understatement.
I can’t focus on anything when Lia is fucking gone. In the past, I was used to watching her in the garden or knowing she was somewhere at home, safe and sound. Now that she’s not there, my mind feels scattered and I can’t get anything done.
Though I have to. In order to keep protecting her and Jeremy, I need to be on top of things and not let anything slip past me.
The back seat opens and Yan slides to my side, smelling of trash. He rubs his nose with his dirty gloves and retrieves a cigarette.
He looks like shit.
But he doesn’t seem to mind as long as he gets to protect Lia.
Kolya’s ex-colleague did wonders on Yan’s features. Not only did he make him look a few decades older, but he also changed his face map in a way that gives him a completely different appearance.
Yan is currently Larry, an ex-veteran who has high cheekbones and graying hair.
He’s always by Lia’s side unless he needs to touch up on his disguise, and that’s when either Boris, Kolya, or I keep an eye on her from afar.
Sometimes I watch even when Yan is with her. Partly to see her smile and partly to give my fucker guard strikes in case he touches her.
“Did she mention anything?” I ask the same question I do every day.
He shakes his head once, blowing a cloud of smoke. “The usual. She really does believe herself to be Winter.”
I tap my finger against my thigh to keep from punching something. I should be used to it by now, but I never am.
Every day, I hope that she’ll remember me. That she’ll come back.
