I push the door open. “Leave it by the table,” she says carelessly, not even looking up from the magazine she is reading.
I say nothing and Petra looks up with irritation. I see her register my ice-cold eyes, the set of my mouth and the way I stalk towards her. I see fear, real fear, flickering in her eyes.
“Alex? What … what’s wrong?” she asks.
“I think we both know the answer to that one, Petra,” I say.
My voice doesn’t sound like my own. It sounds cold, robotic almost. It’s totally devoid of any emotion. Petra flinches at the sound of it. She scrambles off the bed, putting it between us, and for a second, I remember the child she used to be. How the hell did we come to this?
Cindy’s white face flashes into my mind, and although I push the image straight back out, seeing her for that fraction of a second is enough to remind me that this Petra isn’t the same girl who grew up with me all of those years ago. Just like I’m not the same boy. Life has taken its toll on us both.
“Cindy was out on Nikita earlier and a noise spooked her. Cindy was thrown to the ground,” I say.
“Is she ok?” Petra asks, her eyes widening convincingly.
“She’s fine,” I say.
Petra’s mask slips for half a second. The bitch looks disappointed and it’s all I can do not to fly across the bed and strangle her, but I keep my cool. That flash of giveaway expression was enough to confirm Cindy is right about her being behind this.
“Petra, I have something to say to you, and I’m only going to say it once, so I want you to listen closely because it’s very important.”
She nods. Her eyes flit between me and the door. She’s sizing up if she has any chance of escape if I go for her. It’s further confirmation of what she’s done. She’d be up in arms if she had been wrongly accused. She would be shouting and cursing about how she gets the blame for everything around here, which is not actually true, but a little thing like the truth wouldn’t get in the way of an outburst for Petra.
“If anything untoward at all happens to Cindy while she’s here; any accident whatsoever, even something as small as a paper cut on her finger, I am going to find you and I am going to hurt you so bad you will wish you were dead. I mean that literally. Do we understand each other?”
Fear flashes in her eyes. It’s not like she doesn’t know what I have been capable of. The stories of my Bratva days are not secret. She swallows hard and nods once.
“Good.” I turn to leave.
I close the door behind me and take a moment to compose myself, pushing away the cold, ruthless man I swore I had left behind for good. Once that was me all the time, but I gave up settling my problems with violence.
I think I scared Petra enough that he won’t need to come out again.
I hope I have, because I really don’t like this side of myself, but if Petra doesn’t get the message, my nasty side will come out again, because I’m not messing about here. If she so much as looks at Cindy wrong, I will go through with my threat. No one is going to hurt Cindy ever again.
Not on my watch.
Cindy
By the time Alex returns to his room, I’m starting to feel much better. My shoulder is barely aching and my head has stopped spinning. I didn’t dare tell Alex I felt a little bit light-headed, because if he had known that, I never would have been able to talk him out of calling for the doctor. The ice and the bandage have worked wonders on my ankle, and I’ve even been up and tested it while Alex was gone. It still hurts a bit and I have a slight limp to my step, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. I’m not sure what Petra hoped to achieve with what she did, whether she wanted to kill me, or just hurt me, but either way, she failed. I’m fine. I’ve done worse to myself falling down the stairs at home after a glass of wine too many.
I look at Alex as he comes into the room.
“How did it go with Petra?” I ask.
I wonder how far he has gone. I mean she needed telling, but I don’t imagine Alex is the nicest guy towards anyone who gets on the wrong side of him.
“It was her, but she won’t be trying anything like that again, I promise.”
“I think she must want me out of the way so she can get all of the money for herself,” I say with a laugh.