Sex, Lies & Nikolai (26 page)

Nikolai

“Grant’s a drug dealer,” Vlad tells me at the front of the shop just as I’ve come through the door. I sent him on a mission to dig up everything he could out of this man. It’s hardly been a day since I made that request.

“Dangerous?” I question.

He scoffs. “He works for some big fish. He’s an important component, looks after the Estate for them. He’s a gangbanger, even has some girls on the side he whores out. That’s what he did to Alina’s mother.”

My breaths slow. “He whored her out?”

“Yeah, to multiple men.”

“What about Alina?”

He shakes his head. “Not Alina, but…they operated out of that apartment at one point. She’d have been exposed to it when she was younger.”

It takes me a while to respond. Calmly, I peer out the window, but really I want to claw the flesh off my bone.

Is this why she keeps me at a distance? Because I remind her of that savage?

The tremors return. I should have never looked at her. I should have given her a damn loan and let her walk out this door.

Looking away, I shove a hand in my pocket and say, “Would he easily disappear?”

He tenses next to me. “We can’t get ugly about this.”

“Just answer my question.”

“No, he would not easily disappear. We don’t have the connections to make that happen anymore. We’re on our own out here.”

“I want you to find him.”

This time Vlad raises his voice. “Are you listening to me? We can’t do anything, Niko. This is getting out of hand now. I get you care for this girl, but this is a very shady man.”

“I know.”

“Then you know we can’t just kill him. This is why we left the Sokolov. To never resort to
this
again.”

“I don’t want to kill him, Vlad,” I respond quietly, ignoring the way the tremors worsen as I think about Alina in that kind of upbringing. “I just want to scare him so he’ll never bother her again.”

Scarlett’s running a fever when I come home from work. She was warm and lethargic this morning, and I thought she had a mild cold. Feeling her now after I’ve picked her up, she’s burning hot to the touch. She’s glassy-eyed, can barely open her eyes as I carry her into our bedroom. I strip her clothes and try to keep her cool. After another dose of medicine, I open the window all the way and slide into bed with her, checking every five minutes to see if she’s getting better.

The fever lessens a little, enough to calm my nerves down. I relax beside her, rubbing her back. It helps settle her, but for the most part, she stirs too much. She has a restless night. Tossing and turning, crying out about her belly hurting her. It’s moments like these I wish I could transfer all her pain into me. I can’t handle it when she’s sick.

By the early hours of the morning, she finally falls into a deep sleep. I feel depleted and can barely keep my eyes open. I’m just beginning to fall asleep too when the sound of banging cuts through the silence. It takes me some time floating between sleep and consciousness to realize it’s coming from my door, and it takes every bit of energy to get out of bed. I glimpse at the clock on the wall and have to squint in the darkness just to read it.

Fuck, it’s barely five in the morning.

I’m determined not to wake Scarlett up, so I shut the bedroom door and stumble to the front door.

The banger is insistent, never leaving more than two seconds of silence between every series of knocks. I don’t open up. I linger on the other side and, because I don’t have a peephole, I press my ear against the door to listen in on any voices. If it’s a drunk, he’ll most likely slur and move on.

When I hear nothing, I sigh and call out, “Who is it?”

“Open the fucking door, Alina!”

Ah, the shrill voice that can only belong to the mistress of monstrosity.

My mother.

Fuck.

The anger that surges through me wakes all my senses now. I want to leave her standing there, a statement of how fucking little she means to me, but I know she’ll just stand there and continue banging until Scarlett wakes up.

I unlock and open the door. Determined not to let her in, I come out and shut it behind me. Then I turn and look at her, slightly taken aback by her appearance.

She must have lost twenty pounds since I last saw her. Her bones are practically swimming in her skin. Her face is rough, colourless and covered in splotches. Her blonde hair is up to her elbows now, and it looks uncombed and brittle. I look her over, at the wrinkled tank top she’s wearing, her tits practically visible through her too small shirt. She’s got this cheap leather skirt on, and it’s so short I can almost see everything.

I cringe when I make it back up to her face. She’s so pale and hideous, I realize she’s gotten her hands on tougher shit. Because this is
not
just the work of alcohol.

“Why the fuck have you changed the locks?” she demands first thing. It’s not said in a punishing kind of way. It’s more irritably said, like the lock change is a mere inconvenience to her.

“Hello to you too,” I say, emptily.

“Why’d you change it? I don’t have a key now.”

“Grant’s been coming around and inviting himself in.”

She groans. “Oh, fuck, he still has that fucking spare?”

“Evidently.”

“Well, shit then, a good thing you changed it. I’ll want the new key when I leave.”

I don’t respond. She scratches at her arms, looking up and down the hallway, this ragged look on her face, like she hasn’t slept in a year. Then she looks back at me and presses her lips together.

“What?” she barks. “Why you lookin’ at me like that?”

“Did you hear what I just said?”

“About what?”

“About Grant.”

“Yeah, I heard what you said. He came around with his spare key. What, am I supposed to say something about that?”

“He says you owe him.”

She scoffs, waving her hand. “He’s a sensitive little bitch. I owe him nothing. He’s just being a pussy ‘cause I left him for someone better.”

“I can’t have him come around.”

“Well, you took care of it.”

“I think you should see him and sort it out because he won’t just stop coming around.”

“Like I said,” she retorts sharply, “you took care of it. Why are you repeating yourself? You’re only making me repeat myself too. It’s stupid. Stop it.”

Christ, she’s like a child.

I cross my arms and her eyes fall to them. She lets out a laugh. “You getting tough on me, Alina?”

“I think you should leave.”

She nods, scratching at her arms again. She digs so deep in her skin, I see the red lines she’s dragged through them. “I wanna leave too, baby,” she tells me, changing her voice now to this softer tone, like it’s somehow going to work on me.

“So why don’t you?”

“I need money.”

I grind my teeth, glaring at her. “Yeah, well, I needed a mother, but you won’t see any of those two things happening in this lifetime.”

She lets out another forced laugh, her yellowed cracked teeth visible to me now. Yeah, she’s taking harsher shit. The kind you don’t easily come back from. Maybe never.

“I just need money,” she tells me, smiling sweetly as she reaches her hand out to me.

I flick her hand away the second she tries to run it along my arm. “Don’t touch me.”

She’s still smiling, but her voice comes out sharper. “I’m your mother. I carried you in my stomach and looked after you. Damn straight I can touch you.”

“You looked after me?” I scathingly reply. “Drinking and fucking men in front of me and leaving those very same men to touch me, that was looking after me?” My face is growing red, angry tears forming behind my eyes as I stare at her in disgust.

She rolls her eyes. “This again?”

“What, is my abuse an inconvenience to you?”

“Look, baby girl, I just came for money.”

“I don’t have it!” I yell, and then I quickly clamp my mouth shut because I don’t want Scarlett to wake up.

Her face changes, turns darker, taking on a vicious expression I’m very familiar with. “If you can change your fucking locks then I’m positive you have something.”

“Get. Out.”

“I’m not going anywhere until I get something. I need it, Alina. I’ve been having a hard time lately.” Her voice breaks, tears springing to her eyes. “Everything’s fucked, honey. I got so many problems.”

Is this fucking woman for real?

“
You
have problems?” I almost laugh at the absurdity right now. “You fucking
robbed
me! Your own daughter! Your own flesh and blood! You left me with nothing! I had five dollars in my pocket! I had no food in the house! I had to feed your daughter butter on pasta. You remember your other daughter? The one I’ve been taking care of since you fucking pulled her out of your junkie ass in that hospital? The one that weighed less than four pounds at full term? The one they had to look after for days because she was shaking from withdrawal because of all the fucking drugs you took while you carried her? Yeah, you know her? Well, she just spent the night with a fucking fever and stomach cramps, and you want to sit here and talk about
problems
?”

Mom shakes with every word I say and then she suddenly grips at her hair and pulls on the ends, screaming, “It hasn’t been easy on me either!”

I’m shaking too, but not for the same reasons. I’m shaking because I am so fucking fed up with this bitch. “I want you out and I want you never to come back.”

“I’m not leaving until I get money, or I swear to fucking god I will go in there and take my daughter away from you.”

“Take her where?”

“She’s mine, you know.”

“You don’t give a fuck about her. You don’t give a fuck about anyone but yourself and the shit you’re shooting in your veins –”

She suddenly shoves into me, slamming me into the door. Her hand struggles for the knob. She turns it, and the door flies open, causing me to stumble backwards, falling to the ground.

I’m quick though. I grab her by the leg and she falls too, thrashing her body and hitting at me and the air. I take a few hits, a few scratches, but I move over her skeletal body, straddling her. She screams and my hand shoots to her mouth, muffling the sound so it doesn’t reach Scarlett.

She can’t see us like this.

She can’t see
me
like this.

Mom hits at me, wailing into my hand, until I can’t bear it anymore.

“Stop it,” I cry out, squeezing my hand over her mouth as hard as I can. “You want money?” I hiss, not even recognizing my own voice. “Then shut up!”

Instantly, she stops screaming and her body goes still. She’s completely motionless, all battle gone in the blink of an eye. I remove my hand cautiously, in case she’ll erupt again, but she just lays there, panting up at me.

“I’ll stop,” she says pleasantly after she’s caught her breath. “As long as you give me something.”

I climb off her body and collapse on my ass next to her. It takes me several minutes just to get my body up. I’m so shaken up, I can’t even form thoughts right now. I just keep repeating her words in my head, like a looped recording.

As long as you give me something. I’ll stop. As long as you give me something.

Slowly, I climb to my legs and she follows, scratching at her arms again and sniffing. She’s in so much withdrawal, she probably doesn’t even feel the pain from our fight.

“Stay here,” I tell her quietly. I’ve lost all feeling in my soul, even my voice is dead to me.

She raises her arms up in surrender. “I’ll stay right here. I won’t go anywhere.”

She waits by the door while I stop to check in on Scarlett. It’s a miracle the girl is still asleep, or it just shows how unbelievably shattered the poor angel is from that fever. Then I go to the kitchen and look over my shoulder, making sure Mother hasn’t snuck up from behind.

I grab the tin of coffee and open it, rummaging inside for the glad bag. I open it while it’s still inside the container and withdraw a couple hundred dollar notes. I seal the bag back up, close the tin and return to her, but not before grabbing a knife out of the knife block.

I reappear, money in one hand, a knife in the other.

She perks up instantly when she sees me, her eyes looking drunk when they land on the money. I stop in front of her, and before I hand her the money, I raise the knife up to her vision. “You see this?” I say, my voice morbidly vacant. “You see the tip of that knife?” She nods, uncertain. “I’ll drive this pointed tip into your fucking heart if you ever come back.”

This time her nods are slower; her eyes moving from the knife, to the money, and then my face. “I won’t, baby,” she promises, eyes back on the money. “I won’t come back. You’ll never see me again, angel girl.”

I don’t believe her, but I extend my hand out and let her take the money. All of my instincts tell me this is the wrong move to make. A quick fix to a problem that’ll only get bigger later. But I feel so trapped, I’m not sure what else I can do to get rid of her.

“I love you, baby,” she tells me, stuffing the money in the cup of her bra. “I love you more than anything, you know that?”

I don’t say it back. I simply watch her turn around and leave, and then I lock the door and pound my forehead against it. I instantly regret what just happened. I shouldn’t have given her a cent. I should have beaten her face in and kicked her out of the building.

There are so many things I shouldn’t have done, but I’m too tired to think of them. On weak legs, I crawl back into bed with Scarlett. I check her forehead and skin, and despite the shit-fest I’ve just experienced, I relax in relief.

Her fever is broken. Thank god.

I watch her sleep, mesmerized by her beauty.

How could Mother just walk away from her? From
this
? How could anyone do it?

Connection and love is everything that matters in this world. I come to realize it with more intensity now that I’ve had the worry of money removed from me. I see things clearer. I understand life in a way I never really did before.

I wrap my arm around Scarlett and pull her into my chest. I’m all she’s got. She’s all I have. I kiss the back of her head and breathe with her.

In and out. In and out.

One breath at a time.