The Dark Duet (17 page)

“Leave the complicated work to me. Your job is to make sure she’s ready to enter the field. I give you two months. Now I leave you alone to explore your new assignment.”

I force my eyes open the slightest bit, just enough so I can peek through my eyelids without being too noticeable. “Please don’t let them hurt me,” I say to the man standing with his back turned to me. His body tenses and he slowly turns around.

Oh God no.

Please don’t let this be true.

Sad grayish-blue eyes focus on my half open ones.

It’s Nikolai.

CHAPTER 19

~Nikolai~

I have been given a second chance, yet another aspect of being me that surpasses normality—the guardian angel who must be watching over me. I intend to take full advantage of my newfound luck. The revenge doesn’t outweigh the things I’m feeling in my heart. Adriana was wrong about me. I can love and be loved. I’ll start by telling Alese everything I know about what that vile excuse for a human being did to her back in his Swiss lab.

I slam through the theatre’s entrance doors. An eerie silence greets me, intensifying the surge of doubt and fear that has raged inside of my chest during the drive over here. I walk into the auditorium and instantly discover the source of those feelings. Alese lies on the floor, her long hair covering her face and her body pulled up in a fetal position. A box made out of amber-colored glass sits beside her, and a ballerina stands on top of a stage built inside it, waiting for her music to continue, no doubt.

“Alestasia!” I call out, rushing toward her, forgetting she doesn’t know the name I just used. I bend down and sweep her up in my arms, but she recoils and attempts to push me away. I hold on tighter.

“I’m fine, Nikolai,” she says, cradling her head. “Please let me go.”

“What happened here?” I ask.

“I remember,” she whispers, her beautiful hazel eyes glancing on me with hurt and pain, the eyes of innocence lost. Those two words shoot straight through to my heart. “I know what Burkenstein did. I saw you standing there, watching. Tell me you were forced into this hideousness.”

“Fuck!” I lower my head to hers, still unable to tell her the truth even though, apparently, she knows everything. She tries to pull away from me, but I enforce my grip. “I’m sorry, Alese. I—”

“But it’s Alestasia, I thought. That’s what you called me a few minutes ago,” she says through gritted teeth as she struggles to pull away from me. “Damn you, Nikolai. I trusted you. I was even willing to look past the fucked up shit going on in your head.”

“I can explain.”

“Then do so,” she says, her chest heaving. “Tell me that crazy bastard forced you to stand there and watch me be tortured. Help me understand.” Her face crumples and her voice cracks on her last few words.

“I ...” Sighing deeply, I lower my head.

“Your silence tells me everything.” We both stand at the same time.

“I am truly sorry. I couldn’t say anything without risking your safety.”

“No, Nikolai. You didn’t say anything because you’re hell bent on revenge. I get that part. Especially now. But if we can’t trust each other, then what do we have? A lie. That’s all we are now. All we’ve ever been!” Alese’s body shakes with anger; the expression on her face, the pain in her eyes, stings more than any wound I’ve ever received in the past.

Tell her how much you care, that you don’t want to lose her. Tell her that you love her.
I should listen to that voice, but I don’t. Instead, my safety mechanism kicks in next, the part of me that guards the little boy hiding inside the red room of torture and pain that still exists in my head.

“I warned you. But you didn’t listen,” I remind.

She scoffs, her face crumpling. “Yes, you did. Revenge means more to you than I ever will, than anyone will for that matter. That girl was right about you. Your mind’s focused on hate and your heart remains cold ... if not dead altogether.”

“That’s not true,” I say truthfully.

“Isn’t it, though?”

“I’m still standing here, aren’t I?”

She seems to consider my answer. “Come away with me. Leave all of this behind. No matter how much you might want to believe you started this company of your own accord, its blood money,” she says, motioning around the theatre with a wave of her arms. Moving closer to me, she takes my hands in hers and locks her haunted hazel-eyed gaze on me. “Let’s turn Burkenstein over to the authorities. Let them handle things from here. Enough evidence exists between the two of us to put him away for good.”

Say yes. You don’t want to lose her.
However, doing so would mean Alek and Adriana would spend the rest of their lives living in the shadows of a madman, and I have already caused enough grief for my family. Burkenstein would leave behind Vladimir, and he holds onto a grudge like no other man I’ve ever dealt with in my circles.

“I cannot. I’m sorry,” I answer, lowering my gaze.

A small sigh escapes Alese’s lips, that gorgeous mouth that has shown me more pleasure than I’ve ever experienced in my rejected lifetime, just before she moves back and stares at me for what feels like the longest moment of my life. The pain in those eyes, those vessels of love that once looked at me with more adoration than I ever deserved, stare back at me as though their owner has only now realized what kind of person she has gotten involved with, a man who can no longer trust the intricacies of the heart because he has suffered each time he chose to do so.

“You’re not well. We should take you to get checked out,” I offer because there’s nothing else I can do to comfort her.

“Good-bye, Nikolai.” Exhaling as though it took all of her energy to say those last two words, she turns around and walks out the theatre door, leaving me with nothing but the agony of understanding what my actions have done.

What makes you think you deserved her? You have failed, yet again. You are nothing and no one.
I pick up Alestasia’s little music box, leave the building, and head out to bury this pain by losing myself in Milan’s night life.

~Nikolai~

You are weak. I told you men like you never win anything in the end. But you didn’t listen.

Now look where you stand.

All alone, yet again.

I don’t bother driving to the Extasia. The chill inside Milan’s nighttime air creates the best remedy for calming the storm of emotions swirling inside my head, my chest, and yes, especially my cock. The shame of what I’ve done to Alese, the agony of losing someone I care about, and the rage at Burkenstein’s interference along with my weakness have taken over. I’ve neglected my friends, lost my influence over Burkenstein. At least we have the evidence Crow managed to take from the computer we found in his abandoned lab. If I had just been stronger, none of this would ever have happened.

I arrive at the Extasia, but not even the gorgeous blonde and two redheads can satisfy my desires. “Relax, baby. Let Pansy and her girls take care of that little problem,” the blonde mistress of our group says, running her hands across my chest and down my abdomen until she finds my soft cock and begins massaging it with the hands of an expert. Her technique, along with the way her servants are moving their lips across my body, should be enough to satisfy my needs, to finish stealing me away into the arms of ecstasy. However, I am lost and depressed. This feels like the end of everything, and I will lose Inamorata if I make a move against Burkenstein right now, but I can’t deny how badly I want Alese back. I can’t handle this ache inside me, this pain from losing the woman who could’ve completed me. Nor can I accept myself, my failure and what I have lost, because that’s what I do ... lose everyone who means anything to me.

I am a walking disaster, a time bomb built only for revenge. Alese was right.

I return to the theater and sit in front of the stage, considering my options. Either I give up this obsession with avenging my past, a legitimate one if not somewhat selfish, or I lose the last chance to prove I do have a heart inside of this twisted body of mine. The question remains ... do I truly want to embrace the light and release the darkness I have come to love?

“You knew I wasn’t going to stay away for long, right?” a familiar female’s voice says from beside me, stirring old feelings even after all of this time. I turn around and find Adriana Dostovsky standing inside the auditorium’s doorway. She’s wearing her trademark outfit—a beige skater’s dress with leg warmers—and her hair is pulled up in a ballerina’s bun.

She steps toward me, her gaze locked with mine. I don’t know whether I should yell at her for disobeying my wishes, or if I should pull her into my arms and shower her face with kisses of relief. We both belong to someone else now, but the connection Adriana and I share can never be broken.

Moving toward her, I pull her into my arms and give in to the instantaneous relief after doing so. Even after all that has happened between us, holding Adriana in my arms this way fills me with an energy that’s hard to describe.

“God, how I’ve missed you,” I breathe into her hair. She pulls back and stares into my face, reading me without the need for me to say a word.

“I hope you’re not mad at me for ignoring your wishes. But I ... I felt like you needed me. I had to come,” she explains.

“I could never be angry with you, Little Rishka.”

“Feels good to hear you call me that.”

“And it makes me happy to do so.”

“What are you doing, Nikolai? Why are you keeping all of us at a distance this way?”

I ease my arms away from her body and turn around. Staring into her eyes has always been a weakness for me, pulling even the darkest of my secrets out, even though I might be determined to keep them inside. “It’s for your protection.”

“You could’ve told me anything but that and done well with convincing me. However, with Alek, the alpha brother, and his hit men watching me eat, sleep, and screw my fiancé, I should hardly think we’re in any kind of danger.”

“They actually watch you have sex?” I ask, unsurprised by my best friend’s over-protectiveness.

She shrugs. “They’re not in the bedroom anyway, but still, it’s creepy to have someone shadowing me that way.”

“Yes. I know the feeling,” I say to no one in particular as I think of the way Alese and I have been making our rounds among the circle of men who betrayed Rudolph, who in turn betrayed me. Alese was like a fierce angel the night we took out Valentino, a fallen one that had been tossed out of Heaven and fighting her way through hell’s merciless bowels. We share much of the same type of history. Both of us have been raped, tortured, and left to die in a world that ultimately shuns our type instead of trying to look deep inside the core in order to understand what we’ve become. Closing my eyes a brief moment, I inhale deeply, doing my best to ignore the ache inside my chest. I open them and focus on Adriana.

“You’re thinking of her, aren’t you?” Adriana asks, her wide, innocent eyes focused on my face.

“I think of no one,” I answer.

“You can’t hide anything from me, Nikolai.” She takes my hands in hers and moves her body close to mine. A year ago, I would’ve killed or died to experience the sensations of lust coupled together with what I thought was true love each time Adriana pressed herself up against me this way.

“I hide nothing.”
I have lost everything.

“Mother told me you’ve met someone,” she says, lowering her eyes. “How is that going?”

I sigh deeply. “It’s not.”

“Oh. I see,” she answers, looking up and gazing into my eyes.

“Do you? I haven’t said a word. Yet you presume to know me. Why does everyone think they know me? Can change me? Or make me into Saint Nikolas?” My words come out harsher than I intended. I rake my fingers through my hair and turn my face away from Adriana. I’m losing it. Finally. I cannot pretend to be calm and collected when my soul is crying out for the woman who completes me.

“Nikolai, look at me,” she chides, her hands splayed on either side of my face. “There’ll always be this ... this link between the two of us. Something I don’t even understand all that well. My fiancé knows it exists and accepts that about us. However, I never got the chance to tell you I forgive you. I always made it seem like it was all you being the selfish one, when really it was me. I held on to the one last thing I knew would keep us together and used it whenever I could.”

“No, Adriana,” I take her hands, sliding my fingers in between hers, “that’s not true. I was a selfish bastard then, the same as I am now.” I’ve never told her the truth about the cousin I claimed to have killed when the man who attacked her was actually my brother. I know Adriana, and she would blame herself instead of me or my brother.

“Not entirely. I knew how you felt about killing your cousin, being banned from your home by your parents, but I never understood why they disowned you for that. If anything, your father should’ve stood up to his brother. Made him see that his son was the insane one.”

“That’s because he wasn’t my cousin,” I correct. Adriana’s little lips part as though her words are stuck on them. “He was my brother,” I mutter. I’ve lost everything. I might as well go ahead and finish drilling all of the pretty little nail holes into the coffin I’ve been preparing to sleep inside.