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Love you.
No, that’s just crazy. I cared for him, deeply, but to go as far to say it was love? It felt too strange, too soon. Besides, it almost made us feel normal, which we weren’t.
“Alright, good night,lisichka. I promise I’ll come back.” I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of disappointment when I heard the door shut. The solution to my problem presented itself, but it was just another excuse to prolong the inevitable at this point too. I couldn’t keep something like this from him, but I couldn’t facethatdemon again, not yet.
What if he couldn’t look at me the same way after knowing? I don’t know if I could handle that kind of rejection from him. I didn’t want to lose Nikolai, not after falling for him this fast and hard. But, if it happened sooner than later, wouldn’t it be less painful? The more I got involved with him, the more deeply rooted with him I would become. But, maybe he won’t react to how my paranoia presented things to me. Nikolai wasn’t a shallow person from what I’ve seen, and he wasn’t immature to the point where he’d react poorly... I hope.
CHAPTER 23
Nikolai
~5 weeks later~
The burning sting ofalcohol on open injuries never bothered me since I was a child. After being subjected to what I deemed as torture back then by the hands of my father, I had been conditioned by him to not react to pain or let pain bother me. The vile man used to purposely inflict open injuries to me to dump bottles of rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide on them until I would stop screaming and crying. Then he would proceed to beat me for reacting in the first place.
“Hope whoever was on the receiving end looks worse than your knuckles.” Angel joked with a dry chuckle, not looking up as she kept her focus on tending to my busted knuckles.
I thought I could sneak by my slumbering beauty when I came back late from my business outing, but either I was louder than I thought or she wasn’t deep asleep. I barely managed to wash my hands in the bathroom sink before Angel was by my side and took over.
“What even happened anyways? I thought you were just going to check out a warehouse like you usually do to make sure things were going okay.” This time she did look at me for a split second, letting me know with her stern eyes she wanted an answer.
“Well, it wasn’t a routine check. One of the men who I’ve sent to help Ivan tipped me off about unusual activity at one of Ivan’s warehouses. I was supposed to meet up with Ivan at the place and we’d go in together, under the guise of me wanting to see exactly how he ran things and such. He bailed on me last minute, whether it was planned or not is yet to be determined, but you and I both know that coincidences like that don’t just happen. We were ambushed when we got there, and so far Ivan’s saying it’s his worker going rogue and that he had no idea about anything. Things still turned into a shitshow of bullets and punches, but we managed to capture some for holding and questioning. At least his men couldn’t aim for shit, they were just a bunch of amateurs.” I ended with an exhausted sigh.
Thinking back a few hours ago to the ambush ticked me off. I felt like I had been tricked from the very start, and no one tricks me. I had questioned my informant, and he swore he didn’t mislead me. After a few blows to his face and body, it was clear he didn’t turn on me. So, either he was fed false information, or I had missed something. Maybe the attack covered for something, or it could have been a distraction. My men and I didn’t get a chance to do a sweep through the place because of the ambush, and we didn’t stick around after either because we had to get medical attention.
At least we managed to round up some of the men who survived, and they’re being kept at a secure location until I get a chance to question them. Funny thing was Ivan didn’t seem to notice the missing men, or if he did then he didn’t mention it. For someone who was tight on money, I would think he’d want to keep what he had instead of trying to hire new talent because rates are going higher and higher everyday unless he managed to snag a complete idiot who was high or drunk off their ass.
“No casualties right?” Angel asked, glancing up at me again briefly before turning her attention back to the bandage wrappings she used to mummify my hand with.
“No.” Thank God.
“Might not be the best time to bring up Ivan, but Bao did find some stuff that might be useful. He managed to get his hands on some shipping manifests, and some things aren’t adding up. He also traced Ivan’s activities back to Russia as well, but he’s having a bit of a harder time getting his hands on information from that end of things; because of the system that is used over there.” Angel informed me as she finished with one of my hands.
Sighing heavily, I ran the bandaged hand through my messy hair. “I have some contacts in Russia that I can call favors from, and I can contact our branch there too. Whatever he’s hiding, we’re going to find it eventually.” The damn snake has to slither back to his nest eventually, and that’s when we’ll see what skeletons he hid.
Speaking of skeletons, “Lisichka, how much do you know about your father’s health and how it came to be?”
