by Abbi Cook
I realize the moment the words leave my mouth that I can’t tell Dr. Trevino the whole truth about Alexei. I don’t want to go back on my word I just gave him about being honest, but I can’t handle trying to explain that I’ve fallen in love with the man hired to kill me.
Not today, at least.
“What do you mean?” Dr. Trevino asks with a quizzical expression.
So I lie, something I said I wouldn’t do anymore with him. “Just that he’s the other man. I never expected to fall in love with him. I guess it just happened.”
Most of that isn’t a lie. God, I think I might be getting better at lying to people. That’s not good.
"Do you feel safe in your home, Natalie? I'm wondering if there's somewhere you can go for a few days. Maybe you should take Alexei up on his offer?" Dr. Trevino asks, clearly shaken by what he's seen and heard.
"I don't know if I'm safe there. My husband doesn't trust me, and I don't think it's because he found out I've been coming to see you. I just don't know what's making him act like this. The past few weeks, something's been wrong with him. I know he's cheating on me, but then turning around and becoming furious when he thinks I'm doing the same thing doesn't make sense. Then there's the spying on me. I don't know what to make of that."
"Believe it or not, it's not so surprising that a man who’s cheating would become upset to know his wife might be too. Many people, not just men, can compartmentalize their behavior from the behavior of someone they love. They can give excuses and reasons why their actions are fine but those of others are reprehensible."
The doctor’s mention of love and Adam falls hard on my ears. He doesn’t love me. I’ve begun to wonder if he ever loved me, but no man who cares at all for his wife could hire someone to kill her.
None of what Dr. Trevino says sounds like it makes much sense, but then again, little of what Adam has been doing makes much sense either. Since I've told the doctor this much, I figure I might as well give him the whole truth about how I feel about my husband and his behavior.
"You know, I think I always thought that if I heard Adam was cheating on me that I'd just die. I'd crumble into a million pieces on the ground. I know a woman whose husband is rumored to be cheating on her, and I've always pitied her for that. Now that it’s happening to me, I don't feel like I have to fall apart. It’s strange to me. I can't explain why, but it’s not as devastating as I once thought. Now if other people find out and pity me, like I pity that woman, I'd hate that."
"You feel strong enough to handle that? That's good news for you," the doctor says with a smile. "I'm just a little worried about your husband's erratic behavior in regards to you."
I don't know why I smile, but I do before saying, "Me too."
After filling out the paperwork so Dr. Trevino can get my medical records about my head injury and promising him that if I feel in any danger that I'll call the police or leave my house, I drive home lost in thought about people pitying me if they know Adam is cheating on me. The mere thought of that makes my stomach churn.
I replay every Preservation Society meeting and every country club event for the past few months, my mind scouring people's faces and their words to figure out if anyone acted a little too sympathetic toward me. The fact that everyone knows I'm a victim of a random attack doesn't help my mental investigation, and by the time I reach home, I decide if anyone knows about him with this other woman, they haven’t pitied me.
I turn the car off and sit in the driveway staring straight ahead at my house. His house. The place I loved so much has become somewhere I dread to be. I'll never forget what happened in the kitchen. Never.
Still, I can’t shake the belief that I belong here. As that thought settles into my brain, I have to admit that I sound like my mother. For the first time in my marriage, though, I don't want to be with Adam. I've never felt like that before, but now it's like I can imagine never seeing him again and that doesn't bother me in the least.
The problem is that I have to see him in just a few short hours.
Adam moves his asparagus around his boiled potatoes for the fifth time before pushing his plate away. We haven't spoken a single word since he got home. All we've done is sit across from one another at the kitchen table and eat.
The silence has been a relief, even though the tension hanging in the air could be cut with a knife. His entire body bristles every few minutes, like he wants to say something but stops himself each time. For my part, I've chosen to keep my head down and simply enjoy the dinner I cooked.
He folds his arms across his chest and begins to breathe heavily. As I stare down at my potatoes, I imagine he looks like a cartoon bull with steam coming from his nostrils each time he breathes as he prepares to charge some matador holding a red blanket. I can't help but crack a tiny smile, and immediately after, I hear him practically growl.
"I had the man at the phone store check your phone logs, Natalie. I'm sure you thought you'd gotten rid of them, but nothing is ever really gone in this day and age. He showed me all the calls to that therapist of yours."
The sharpness of his words, each one so angry and hateful, rattles me for a moment, but I take a deep breath before I look up from my plate. "I don't know what you want me to say. That you're checking the phone logs on my cell phone tells me nothing I say will be right."
"You won't be seeing that doctor any more, Natalie."
He practically spits out the word doctor, like it's something utterly distasteful. I don't say anything in response for a long moment, mainly because I don't know what to say. I'm not surprised he's spying on my phone usage. The man is secretly recording me every day, so having some phone store employee check my phone logs is nothing in comparison. I'm sure he told the man that he was worried about me and wanted to make sure I'm okay.
"He's helping me, Adam. Ever since the attack, I've been having difficulties. Dr. Trevino is helping me sort through them."
I don’t know why I’m explaining myself. What the hell does this man’s opinion matter on anything in my life anymore?
What’s even more surprising is he must know about Alexei. Why hasn’t he mentioned that? His phone number was in my deleted call log too.
"You will cease seeing him from this point on. Do you understand? If you don't, I've told you before what will happen. They'll put you away."
His threat isn't even veiled now. I know who the they are who he claims will put me away. He should just use the correct pronoun when he tries to frighten me.
I will put you away, Natalie.
Dr. Trevino's words repeat in my head. If you feel in any danger, please get out of the situation. Call the police, if you feel you can, but at the very least leave and go somewhere else for the night.
I look across the table and see that danger the doctor warned me about staring back at me. Without another word, I stand up, but Adam’s on top of me before I can get two steps away.
His body covers mine, his knee crushing my chest into the tile floor, and his hand presses against the back of my head as he screams, “Running out to go to your boyfriend, Natalie? He came to visit me today. Is that where you’re planning to go tonight?”
Tears stream down my cheeks at how much pain I’m in from him holding my face to the floor. I shake my head to free myself from his hold, but that only makes him push harder.
“Adam, you’re hurting me! Stop! Let me up!” I cry out, afraid if he doesn’t release me soon I’ll black out.
His mouth is next to my ear, and when he speaks again, his words come out like venom pouring into my brain. “I should have known not to take you when your mother offered you up to me. You’ve never been anything but a hassle, Natalie. A barren husk of a woman with nothing to give a man. Your boyfriend will find that out too. Don’t worry. No man wants an empty thing like you. And when he finds out, he’ll finish the job he should have by now.”
“Please stop!” I sob, pushing as hard as I can against him, but he’s so much bigger than me.
; “Does it hurt? Good. That’s what you deserve, Natalie. Let’s see if he likes you as much when that pretty face of yours doesn’t look so good. I bet he’ll see what I see then.”
I feel the grout lines on the tile floor pressing into my cheek, and when I try to pick my head up to stop him, he twists my head so the sharp edges rip against my skin. No matter how much I beg him to stop, he doesn’t.
He just punishes me more.
“Adam, please stop hurting me! Our neighbors will hear me and call the police!” I scream, but my voice simply gets absorbed by everything happening.
Finally, his hand releases my head, and a second later, I feel his knee lift off the center of my back. For a moment, I lay there in shock that my husband, the man I thought loved me, admitted he wanted me dead and attacked me like a savage animal.
Whatever reason I thought I had to remain in this house doesn’t exist anymore, so I stand up and quickly walk upstairs to get my purse. I don't even pack a bag. I simply walk out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and out the kitchen door to my car. With each step, I expect Adam to come up behind me and do something to hurt me, but it isn't until I'm backing out of the driveway that he appears. He stands in front of the garage as calmly as ever, but I see in him the rage he has toward me now.
I refuse to live with that rage another second longer.
Chapter Forty-Six
Alexei
A crashing noise in the kitchen tears me out of my thoughts about Natalie, and I head out of my office to see who or what the cause of it is. I find Roman looking sheepish and standing at the counter with a metal mixing bowl in his hands like he can’t figure out where it came from.
Why he’s up here instead of at his own place at the back of the estate is a bigger question than why he’s in my kitchen, though. “What’s going on?”
He sets the bowl down on the counter and looks over at me standing in the doorway. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make a commotion. I just came up looking for something.”
“Something? Like a spice?” I ask as I take a seat at the island.
That sheepish look grows even more on his face. “No. I came up hoping to find something to eat.”
“Why don’t you have anything at your house?”
He grimaces, making him look just like our father for a moment. “I didn’t get a chance to get to the store.”
Translation: He blew all his money for the month and has no food until the trust fund doles it out on the first of next month. Roman may look like Adrian Volkov, but he’s far more like his mother. She never could save a single penny either, although she didn’t spend it all on strippers like her son prefers to.
I have no interest in giving him a hard time about that at the moment. My mind is too full of concern for what’s happening to Natalie to want to bust his balls about being shitty with the more than generous amount of money he gets each month from the trust fund our father set up for him. Being a bastard has never hurt Roman, but he’s never gotten all the benefits I’ve had from being Adrian’s full son, so I don’t need to lecture him on how to budget his money.
Plus I fucking don’t want to.
“Take whatever you want. I’m sure there’s something in there you’ll like,” I say with a wave of my hand toward the refrigerator.
“Okay, thanks.”
I sit there thinking about how much I wish I had Samson put some cameras in Natalie’s house for me to see just what the hell is going on in there, even as I know she doesn’t need anyone more watching her. Not that I’d be interested in that, necessarily. The cameras would be for watching that fuck of a husband, not her.
She’s better in person.
“So I thought you’d be out with Mina tonight,” Roman says, surprising me with the very concept that he’d considered what I do with my nights at all and specifically that I’d be with Mina.
I shake my head in disbelief. “No. I don’t make a habit of spending any time with her.”
He shrugs and gives me sly smile. “I just figured since she came over that time. She looked pretty jacked up about seeing you.”
His attempt to find out exactly what happened between us makes me laugh. Unlike my father, there’s not a smooth bone in my half-brother’s body. He gets his lack of social graces from his mother, like his piss-poor ability with money. Come to think of it, I can’t think of one useful thing he got from my father.
“Exes can be like that sometimes.”
Whose ex I’m referring to I let Roman decide. That he has the choice of me or our father registers on his face, making his expression twist into one of uneasiness.
“You know, it’s more than a little fucked up that she married our father after dating you. No offense, but that’s not right. I’m not sure I’d be able to even see her after she did that.”
Yet another difference between Adrian Volkov’s two sons. Roman’s still a boy, though, not even twenty-five, so it’s not surprising he can’t handle his emotions yet. Maybe that will come in time.
“I moved on. She’s just an ex now.”
“Who happens to have been our stepmother too,” he adds with a smile.
The sound of the intercom from the security guard shack at the front of the estate saves me from having to acknowledge that kinky truth, and I turn away to listen to what’s coming out of the speaker on the wall.
“Mr. Wolfe, there’s a woman here who says her name is Natalie. Should I let her through?”
I don’t even attempt to hide my happiness at hearing that and quickly answer, “Definitely. Send her through, Metzger.”
Standing, I turn to head toward the front door as Roman says, “Someone you moved on to? Should I get lost?”
I look back at him and smile. “Yeah. Grab whatever you want and leave. This is personal.”
When I open the door, I see the evidence of what that son of a bitch did to her now all over her face. Red marks along her jaw, scratches on her cheeks, and mascara under her eyes from her crying tell the story before she can even say a word.
Her eyes still glassy from tears, she bites her lower lip for a second and says in a trembling voice, “Please tell me you didn’t change your mind, Alexei.”
Shaking my head, I push down my rage at Adam Anchoff and pull her into my arms. “Come in. You’re safe here, little bird.”
I don’t get another syllable out before she begins to sob against my chest. Her body shakes as I hold her to me and fight the need to follow through on my promise to kill Adam if he dared to hurt her again.
“It’s okay. You’re safe now. I promise I won’t let anyone hurt you again, Natalie.”
“He pushed me down on the kitchen floor and held my head against the tile. I thought I’d pass out it hurt so much,” she explains and then goes back to crying.
Pressing a kiss to the top of her head, I say what I know she needs to hear, even if it’s not what I want to say about what he did. “You’re safe with me. I promise that, little bird.”
She tilts her head back and wipes under her eyes to remove what her crying has done to her makeup. “I’ve never been so afraid in my life. I thought he would kill me. He was saying all those horrible things like I was a barren husk of a woman with nothing to give a man. He even admitted what he hired you to do and said you’d finish the job once you found out what I really am.”
I struggle not to let my rage get the best of me and shake my head at all she says. Cradling her face in my hands, I smile and kiss her forehead. “Forget what he said. It means nothing. He’s nothing, Natalie.”
Her blue eyes fill with tears once more. “You don’t think I’m that, do you?”
With a smile, I tell her the truth I know she needs to hear. “No, little bird. I don’t judge you or anyone else by that standard. What you give me that makes me love you has nothing to do with if you can have babies or not.”
She closes her eyes and lets out a deep sigh before looking up at me again. “I told my therapist that I love you today. I just realized, though, tha
t I’ve never told you that. I’m sorry I didn’t say it to you first.”
“Say it now for the first time then,” I demand with a smile as my heart soars.
“I love you, Alexei.”
She lifts herself up on her toes and kisses me before saying those words again. “I love you. Now I made up for it because I said it two times and you haven’t said it at all since I got here.”
I know she needs that more than anything else I can say, so I kiss her like I’ve wanted to for hours, long and deep and in a way that claims her beautiful mouth as mine before whispering against her lips, “I love you, Natalie.”
“Call me by your nickname for me, please. I need to hear that right now. I can’t explain why, but I do,” she says in a pleading voice.
But she doesn’t have to beg. I’m happy to call her that.
Looking down into her blue eyes, I smile at how beautiful she looks in my arms and in my house, finally. “I love you, little bird.”
“Tell me it’s going to be okay. Tell me everything’s going to turn out okay because I don’t think I can keep living this madness.”
“It will. I promise.” I gently push her hair off her forehead and kiss her. “Now that you’re here, you’ll be safe. I won’t let anyone hurt you. Not him. Not anyone. I swear.”
Even that doesn’t erase the frown from her face. Closing her eyes, she whispers, “What’s going to happen, Alexei?”
She doesn’t want that answer. At least she doesn’t want the truth. So I sidestep telling her what I have to do tonight and instead focus on what I want to do right now.
“What’s going to happen is you’re going to take a bath and relax in the tub for as long as you want and then we’re going to forget the entire world exists and get lost in one another for a few hours.”
That makes a tiny smile lift the corners of her mouth, and she looks up at me with that innocent look I’ll never get tired of. “I’d love a bath. I can’t remember the last time I got to just relax in a tub. You wouldn’t happen to have any bubble bath, would you? Probably not. Men aren’t really bubble bath people.”