07 | Operational Issues

IT ALL HAPPENED VERY QUICKLY. Just as the man beside Alex allowed his finger to twitch on the trigger, Alex forcefully shoved him to the side. "Nyet!" he bellowed, wrestling the other man's arm so that the bullet whizzed past me and planted itself in the wall with a cracking sound.

(No!)

I hardly had time to scream or think - to really think about the fact I'd almost just been shot. Instead I dropped to my knees and curled my arms around them, preparing myself for further fire. I wasn't familiar with guns nor the idea of being around them; unlike America, my country had strict gun laws and so walking into a room full of them was even more terrifying.

I'd never seen one before, let alone been fired at by one!

Between the group of men an intense conversation broke out in a language I didn't understand. I watched, still shielding half of my face, as Alex raised his own gun to the man who was now scrambling off the marble floor, disarmed.

"Grace," he spoke lowly, voice perfectly level and calm. I noticed that he'd taken up a British accent again. "Come here." I couldn't move. I couldn't. It was like I'd gone into shock, my body still shaking from a rush of adrenaline stronger than I could handle. Alex's gaze flickered my way for a second, his spare hand extending in a "come here" motion. "Grace," he repeated firmly.

Unsteadily, I rose to my feet. My pulse had quickened until it throbbed in my temples, drowning out the tense silence of the awe-struck room. I kept my eyes trained on Alex as I took a step closer; I knew if I looked anywhere else I would see prying eyes, and that would only make my panic worse.

I hesitated drawing closer to the table. Approaching a man with a gun went against my natural instincts; no matter what I thought about Alex, did I really know him? Could he be trusted?

"I won't hurt you," he promised, and for some reason, I believed him. Just like it had been two years ago, it was as though he could read my thoughts and answer them accordingly. "Nobody will hurt you."

Somehow I managed to stumble towards him through my shock. He drew my body into his and I practically collapsed, but with inhuman strength he held me up one handed. He cradled my head into his chest and for just a second the smell of his cologne hit me, bringing back memories of our last meeting two years ago, when he'd said it's for the best. Now I could believe him.

His fingers worked through my shoulder length blonde hair soothingly as I felt his body stiffen. All my senses were muffled by his close proximity and the soft cotton of his white shirt. There was a loud bang that hardly registered followed by a small jolt as Alex's body absorbed the shock of his gun. I didn't need to see to know that the man who had shot me was himself now dead.

I drew back half an inch to watch as Alex aimed his gun at each of the other men in turn, rotating around the table. "Nobody touches her, da?"

(Yes?)

Slow murmurs of what I assumed was assent travelled around the stunned table as each man faced the looming barrel of Alex's handgun. Pressed to his hard chest, I knew that my own body was shaking violently but I was beyond caring. In my drunken state, I'd never bargained on this happening, not in a million years. Suddenly all the time I'd spent hoping Alex would call me felt like it had been wasted. I wished I'd never found him at all.

He tucked the gun into his waistband and proceeded to wrap his other arm around my waist. "Come on," he said lowly, just to me, his lips brushing against my ear. He guided me away from the table and towards another door at the back of the room, through which a set of stairs ascended. We emerged from them onto the top level of the club.

A small pool with turquoise water sat in the middle of the roof, lit by pale white lights that made it look ethereal. At the other end there was an unmanned bar and various chairs or sun-loungers were stretched out in the surrounding space. By this point, however, my head had started pounding, and I was feeling far too ill to realise the beauty of the roof. I was far too consumed by the task of not throwing up everywhere.

Alex closed the door behind us and leaned back against it, his hooded eyes following me as I stumbled over to one of the chairs and slumped onto it. "Are you going to shoot me now?" I slurred. I tried looking down at my feet to avoid his gaze but that made the spinning infinitely worse. I had no choice but to meet his curious, dark eyes.

"No," he said flatly. "You know I'm not." At last his eyes shifted up towards the starry sky, exposing his tanned neck when he lifted his head. There was something perfectly angular about his face and jaw; something that caught the shadows just right. He was terrifyingly handsome. "Are you scared of me, now?" he asked, as his eyes fell closed.

I bit my lip. "Yes," I admitted. "A little."

He stayed still for so long that I thought he hadn't heard me - or that maybe he'd become some renaissance marble statue, carved elegantly like a silent god. That's exactly what he looked like, leaned against the door and bathed in pale moonlight: a god. He'd lost his suit jacket altogether and the sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up to the elbow, exposing the sinuous shapes of his forearms. I could see the veins running down them, just a hint, and in the space between his half unbuttoned shirt, on his chest, tattoos were peaking through the crisp material.

When Alex opened his eyes at last I jumped half out of my skin, startled by their sudden intensity. "Grace," he breathed quietly.

"Yes?"

He shook his head. "You weren't supposed to find me."

"And you were supposed to call."

"I wasn't." He was measuring my expression very carefully, and an overwhelming feeling of exposedness washed over me just like it had in the cafe.

"You promised," I countered, unable to stop a hint of betrayal leaking into my tone. I was drunk and quite frankly beyond the stage where I was capable of controlling my emotions.

Alex stood up straight and pulled out his gun. "And you still wish I'd called you?" He aimed it at the floor, examining it. "After this?"

"You promised."

"Grace." He shook his head and pointed the gun at me. "You have to tell me the truth. After this-" he took a step closer and I forgot how to breathe "-do you still wish I'd called?"

"Y-yes."

Another step closer. The gun was still aimed at me, right at my head, a meter away. "And am I scaring you?" Alex pressed.

"Yes."

Another step. Half a meter. "And now?"

"Yes."

Something in Alex's gaze shifted. It went from intense to blank as he dropped the gun to face the floor and emptied out of it the remaining bullets. He held them out flat on his palm and then let them fall to the ground. "I'm sorry it had to be this way."

"You're not making any sense," I said frustratedly, rubbing at my eyes as they threatened tears. This was exactly why I didn't like to drink; I always ended up confused, angry or crying, usually all three at once. "None of this is making any sense! You promised, you promised me that you would call but two years later you still haven't even tried! And here we are at last because I stumbled in on...on..." My arms flew out in a wide gesture. "Whatever that was, and it's like you're a different person or something! And-"

"Grace-"

"-then you go and shoot someone! In fact, someone nearly shoots me!"

A hint of amusement flickered across Alex's face. "I must admit, you've highlighted some...operational issues for me, this evening." He was back to serious in an instant. "Speaking of which, how did you manage to get up here?"

"Um, I may have...threatened...the bouncer," I admitted sheepishly. "I said you'd have his balls."

"Well, you were right about that."

Something in his expression told me he wasn't joking. I frowned. "So this is what you do now?"

"What is what I do, Grace?"

"You know." He raised a brow. "Shoot guns. Kill people. Have their balls." Why didn't I sound terrified by all of this? Why wasn't I running for the hills?! I put it down to the alcohol - I was still, in my defence, very drunk indeed. Too drunk to comprehend that I may have aided a killer in evading the police.

Alex shrugged. "When I have to."

"And do you have to, very often?"

"Occasionally."

I dropped my gaze and nodded as though I understood any of this. "I see."

"I suppose you could say I'm not your boring banker, anymore." He chuckled and for a brief second a flutter of something shot through my stomach. He remembered our meeting in the cafe!

I quickly reminded myself that the man in front of me was a killer and that I shouldn't be excited by his memory of our previous acquaintance.

"Were you ever a banker?" I asked.

Alex dropped the empty gun to the ground now and closed the remaining distance between us. It was suddenly as though somebody had jolted an electric current through me; my whole body bristled as he stretched a hand up towards my face and allowed his index finger to trace a loose strand of my hair. "I didn't lie to you, Grace," he told me seriously. "I was a banker, and I didn't cause that explosion."

"But you're not English."

His hand dropped and his expression grew unreadable - darker, perhaps. "No." The next time he spoke, he relinquished all pretences of a British accent and allowed his own to come through thick and deep. "I'm Russian."

"Oh." The illusion of the man I'd met in hospital was quickly falling away, and with it a sinking feeling grew in my chest. "And your name isn't Alex, is it?"

"Alex is a name I go by."

"And how many of those do you have?"

"A few," he admitted, amusement flitting across his eyes briefly. "My name is Alexei Ivanov."

"Your real name?"

"Yes."

I swallowed hard, realising that I had yet to ask the most basic question; the one I feared the answer to the most. The truth was, I wasn't sure I even wanted to know. But after two years of waiting, after all of the thinking I'd done, didn't I owe it to myself?

"I know what you're about to ask me," Alexei said. He brushed his thumb over my cheekbone.

"H-how-?"

"Ask something else." It was the same thing he'd said to me in the cafe two years ago, and as the memory flickered through my mind, I felt the two moments expanding between us, stretching endlessly yet binding us in time.

I took a step back to clear my woozy head but I stumbled into a sun lounger. "Ouch," I growled softly.

Alexei kept watching me with that unreadable expression of his until I could bare it no longer. I couldn't keep my mouth closed; I couldn't choose to be ignorant. So I asked.

"You're not a banker," I stated. He shook his head. "Then what are you?"

I knew the answer before he even said it. "Ask me something else."

"Did you find your father?" I shot back. "Was he alive?"

"Ask me something else."

A low growl of frustration tore from my throat as Alex stood there, perfectly calm. I fought the urge to push my hands against his chest, to shove him, because I knew that the thought of my palms connecting with the planes of his torso would drive me insane. "Are you going to answer any of my questions?"

He shrugged. "If you ask the right ones." Don't think about his accent. Don't think about his accent. Don't think about his accent.

"Well." I threw my hands up and flopped onto a sun lounger. "Maybe I'm all out."

"Suit yourself." He brushed past the sun lounger where I was sat and made his way over to the empty bar. I watched as he poured out a large whisky and knocked it back. Through the material of his shirt, I saw the muscles in his back bunch with the movement, relaxing again when he set the glass down. I wasn't sure if I was imagining it, but he seemed a little broader than when I'd last seen him - more muscular, even though he'd been wearing less clothes at the cafe.

I got up and took a few steps closer to where he was stood. "Can I have one?" I asked.

"You're already drunk," he said, not turning around.

"Not nearly enough," I muttered.

Alexei poured out two whiskeys, sliding one away from him with a flick of his finger. He didn't speak as I walked up to the bar and wrapped my hands around the crystal tumbler. I sneaked a glance at him out of the corner of my eye but he was looking straight ahead, out across the city skyline.

I lifted the glass to my lips and took a sip. I'd never tried any before, so I hadn't known just how bad whisky would taste. I dropped the glass and began coughing, desperate to get rid of the foul taste. "That was disgusting," I spat.

Alexei's low chuckle only fuelled my anger, but the second his thumb and forefinger gripped my chin I forgot my own name. He angled my head up so that he was looking down into my eyes. With his spare hand, he traced the tip of his finger across my cheekbone and exhaled.

"Grace," he muttered. "What am I going to do with you?"

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