The Dark Duet (15 page)

“A glass of wine?” he asks.

I glance at my watch. “I have rehearsal shortly.”

A grin spreads across Burkentstein’s dark red lips. “Of course you do. Make sure my money is put to good use.” He slaps me on the back, walks over to the private bar situated on the left side of the room, and removes a couple of shot glasses. I start toward the door, but Gash moves in my way.

“We have an understanding then,” Burkenstein’s voice says from behind me. I keep my gaze focused straight ahead. I can hear the wine filling up in his glass.

“Indeed,” I reply, staring Gash down.

“You must let Miss Ballentine go, or suffer the consequences. Your choice.”

Scoffing, I turn toward him. “Cheap, idle threats, Burkenstein? Honestly? Have we been reduced to high school tactics?” Gash shoves me from behind, laughing as he does so, and something inside of me snaps. Whirling around, I grab his arm and rotate my body while ducking underneath it, so now the hulk of a man sits on the floor with his arm twisted behind his back.

“Bastard! You little fucker!” Doubled over, Gash cries out as I deepen the twist each time he curses, his words becoming less audible with each passing second.

No, this isn’t Burkentstein’s arm I’m twisting, but it’s close enough, anyway. Causing pain to someone other than myself, especially a man like Gash, feels heavenly.

“You like causing trouble, hurting people, don’t you, Gash?” I hiss in his ear. “I should think you’d find this moment rather enjoyable, then.” I deepen the twist, and Gash’s face turns redder, his words a mumble of nothing. “Right now, I’m cutting off the flow of blood in a vein that’s vital to your heart’s capability. How does it feel to know I have control over your miserable excuse for a life, right now? How does it feel?”

“Belikov!” Burkenstein shouts, taking a step forward. “Are you ready to replace Gash with a portion of your advance? No? Then I’d highly suggest you let him go.
Now.
”

I release him at once and straighten up tall, cracking my neck and making sure my suit is straight before I head out to Inamorata. My gaze locks one last time with Burkenstein’s just before I get ready to leave. The look in his eyes is unmistakable ... fear. Mission accomplished.

“I don’t think letting go of Alese will be a problem anymore.” I inhale deeply and slick my hair back.

Suddenly, he starts laughing. “I don’t believe it. The great Nikolai Belikov is pussy-whipped.” More laughter.

I want to kill him ... right here, right now. Who’s to stop me? Doing such a thing would ruin all of my plans, though, and cause even more trouble for my family than we already have hanging over our heads. A war rages inside of me, and the shame of what I’ve done only fuels the anger racing through my veins. But I can wait.

I force my feet to turn and walk out Burkenstein’s door. This is what I get for accepting myself, for opening my heart and falling into that death trap called love life tosses our way, throwing me off track and making me weak.

I am nothing and deserve nothing.

~Alese~

I must find Nikolai.

He’ll do something psychotic if I don’t.

I know he will. We might have only just met a few months ago, but it feels like I’ve known him for a lifetime, and after the secrets he shared with me the other night, I’m amazed he turned out as well as he did. I head toward his penthouse. Nothing. I try searching the rooms underneath the theatre next. Those too are empty. I’m perplexed and confused, and yes ... desperate. I shoot off a text message, telling him I can accept him for who he is. Deep down inside, I think we’re both one and the same; darkness and light mixed together inside two bodies that have seen and suffered through more agony than anyone should ever experience in one lifetime. No response.

Over the next few days, confusion whirls inside of my head, along with the growing pains of a headache that never goes away. Everyone tiptoes around me at practice, as though I’m the cause of Nikolai’s disappearance. Paolo, as usual, has been kept in the dark, and Crow isn’t talking. My grandparents act as though the strange phone call between us never took place, even choosing to talk about the production instead of explaining what they meant about the box Grandpa had mentioned.

At night, the strange memories of the man return to me in vivid detail. The two sides of me clash while I drift inside those dreams, and I’m willing to bet anything that they aren’t dreams, but rather, an explanation for the missing half of me, the years I can’t seem to remember for some reason. The next time my mind plunges into these memories, I intend to give in to whatever the girl known as the Ghost is trying to tell me.

That night I lie down after taking a strong sleeping aid and close my eyes. This time, I drift into a white light and emerge inside a room with mirrors all around the walls. Staring at my reflection, I find a girl dressed in all black. She wears a golden mask and smiles wickedly at me with her ruby red lips, the complete opposite of my long, white night gown and naked lips. Beckoning for me to step through the mirror, I obey. Big mistake. I fall straight down into darkness, my heart thudding as I do so.

Eventually, I land inside a bedroom, and I’m lying beside a man who isn’t Nikolai, the same handsome dark-haired Englishman I’ve seen every time I’m inside these dreams. He reaches over and moves my long, dark hair away from my shoulders just before he leans over and kisses me, his eyes filled with love as he places a pair of lips as soft as petals against mine. My body reacts. The heat surging through me feels real, and the sensation flooding my heart rivals the things I experience when Nikolai touches me this way.

But why? What is this?

What’s happening to me?

Part of me already knows the answer.

“You are my world. You know that, right?” he asks, his British accent darkened by the passion we’re experiencing.

White light rips us forward in time. We’re both standing in the kitchen again, and I’m wearing the dress he gave me for my birthday. Yes! That’s what we’re celebrating today. My birthday. He loves to see me dressed in floral patterns because it reminds him of his home back in ... where did he say? Bristol! That’s it.

Why am I remembering all of this now? You don’t want to remember. Not true. I have to understand. I must!

Once again, he releases me and heads toward the front door. Something about the knocks, hard and excessive, as though the people on the other side can’t wait to get inside our home, rattles me through to my core. I’ll bet Don and Nana got into yet another fight and need us to come by and stop the insanity. Lifting the bowl of brownie mix, I start dumping the contents into the pan. I hear the front door slam against the doorstop, the action powerful enough to rock the kitchen walls.

“What the hell?” I shout, and then reach underneath the sink, pulling out a gun. The words of the dream begin to blur, so I can’t understand the name that has just left my lips. I’m slipping away. The darkness calls to me, yet again, as though something doesn’t want me to get to this part, but I fight against the nothing threatening to consume me the way it always does.

I shove toward the living room, holding on to the dream’s fading images as best as I can, feeling extremely grateful for taking the sleeping aid which has more than likely made it easier for me to continue past the block inside of my mind this time.

Four men have the man pinned to the wall of our little cottage. Dressed in what appears to be black ninja suits, each one possesses just as much fighting skill as he does. Right away, I swing into action. The same moves that I used on Valentino and crew the other night come to me about as naturally as baking a pan of brownies. I make some kick ass round foot motion and send the two men coming my way flying backward as they grasp their jaws.

“Alestasia! Get out of here! There’s a bomb!” the man calls out to me. Yet, I can’t leave without him; that would be like cutting off my arm or leg.

“I won’t leave without you!” I shout in between the fighting moves I’m using against our invaders.

A couple of men against one woman is tough, but now there are four headed my way. The one in the front is slightly shorter and slender, curves silhouetted by the strange uniform—a woman. She sends three swift jabs into my abdomen, knocking the air out of me
. Shit, that crap hurts.
I drop to my knees and cradle my stomach while gasping for air.

Two assassins work their way around me and secure my hands behind my back, leading me toward the doorway while the others all gang up on the man who was kissing me, the one who was making love to me and driving me insane with pleasure. He knees the guy standing beside him in the groin. The guy doubles over, but his efforts aren’t enough to keep my captors from separating us.

The men drag me toward the doorway, the pain coming from the way my arms are secured behind my back blinding me. I try to kick and call out his name, the words a blur of syllables inside a vacuum of a memory, because I’m certain that’s what this has to be a vision or a glimpse into my past.

“Let her go, damn you!” the man I’ve been kissing shouts at someone standing in our doorway, his voice clear this time. I rotate my head toward the door and gasp. Rudolph Burkenstein now stands in the entrance. He’s surveying the scene, a shrewd expression in his dark features.

His gaze lands on my partner first, and then me next. “It’s all right, my dear. You’re going to be fine. I won’t let them hurt you anymore.” A sharp pain shoots through the left side of my neck. The woman has made her way around me and injected some kind of drug or something into my veins. My muscles tighten. My body’s on fire; the more I fight against the darkness overtaking me, the weaker my body becomes.

“I love you, Alestasia!” my mystery man shouts from behind me. Those are the last four words I hear just before I pass out.

I’m not sure how long I stay asleep, but I’m fully aware that I am now lying on top of a table, my arms strapped to the sides and my head held in place by a strap across my forehead. My mouth tastes dry and I want to cough, but I can’t. My body has shut down, unable to move. I’m trapped in my own private hell inside my mind. A medicinal scent fills my nostrils, stinging the lining and the low hum of machinery fills my ears. Without being able to open my eyes, I have to assume I’m inside some type of hospital or something.

Why can’t I open my eyes?

Someone please help me.

“Such beauty and fierce passion. She’ll make a deadly assassin,” Burkenstein’s voice says from inside the darkness of my mind. Another voice responds to him, a familiar one; but just as the dark-haired man continues to elude my power of recognition in these dream-visions, this voice muddles into a blur of deep tones and hidden words as well.

I bolt upright in my bed, grasping at the air. Nikolai! I must find him. I need to warn him, to tell him the man we both thought was our friend is actually an enemy.

I hope I’m not too late, because we do belong together. I can feel it in my heart. Despite the things he has done in the past and the crazy vision-dreams threatening to reveal something I’m not ready to see, I will stand by the man who has released me from a lifetime of nothing. Tossing on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, I head out the door.

CHAPTER 17

~Nikolai~

“How do you know Valentino wasn’t messing with us?” Crow asks. “He duped Burkenstein. Why would he tell us about this so-called host computer?”

I stop walking through the back alley behind Gaccione’s and turn toward him. “Men like Valentino will sell anyone out to save their own hide under the right circumstances. Pleading for his pitiful excuse of an existence provided proper incentive, don’t you think? Now, are we going to do this? Or do you intend to stand out here and continue sulking like a girl?”

Crow narrows his eyes. “Yeah, I got your little girl.”

“No thanks. I prefer women, experienced ones at that,” I tease, hopping up on to the first rung of the ladder we’ve positioned underneath the window.

Under the cloak of evening, we have made our way through the back alley and to a window situated just above the doorway. If my memory serves me correctly, this should be the one with the broken pane I first spotted when I entered the brewery—which serves as a cover for Rudolph’s Italian laboratory—on the night I was first summoned to meet with Gash.

“We don’t even know where to look,” Crow whispers as he follows behind me.

“I have an idea,” I correct, hooking my fingers underneath the window pane and lifting it. Success! The window slides up with minimal effort. Maybe it’s Crow’s insecurities taking hold on my conscience, but I can’t help thinking this entire scenario feels too easy.

I enter the laboratory and survey the corners, checking for hidden cameras. Nothing. The room we’ve entered has a metal bed sitting in the middle of it, and a less extravagant version of the equipment Rudolph used on Alese back in his Switzerland laboratory. Other than those two items, the rest of the room appears to be empty except for a few cabinets lining the wall running along the back of the room.