Chapter 175
I don’t want to hurt Marco but his touch doesn’t fire up my entire body. His stare alone isn’t powerful enough to make me melt into the floor.
His voice doesn’t go straight to my stomach. He doesn’t make my heart beat ten times faster. I don’t feel the throb, the need to be with him, not like I did with him.
Alessandro!
I wanted to stop being a gay but he honestly still owns some part of me. It was no longer love though.
I won’t call it love, I came to realize that what I felt for him wasn’t real love; it was simply a fantasy I had created in my mind because he was the first man to take my break my ass’s virginity.
Yes I told him that I loved him but at that time, I didn’t know what was real and what was unreal.
I was so mixed up with all the new emotions he made me feel that I think it all clouded my rational thinking. I was new to the world, inexperienced, and dumb and he knew exactly what he was doing all along.
But now I knew everything.
“We could try, Nikolai. We are good together, we make a great team.” Marco’s voice interrupted the train of my thoughts. I didn’t answer him immediately.
There was so much more to love than just being a great team. I wasn’t ready for it, not right now anyway. I was going to focus on myself, I was going to work on myself and I can do all that without a man in my life. I don’t need a man to make me complete. I was doing great so far and I think I will do just fine in the future too as a single man but I wasn’t a single man.
I was still his husband, legally.
Before I could reply him, the door opened and Leah strolled in, followed by her father and his men, “How is my favorite trainee doing?”
I smiled, “I am doing good, I am learning so fast.”
He laughed lightly at that but then it got wiped off and he stared at nothing in particular. Leah stood beside him, visibly pale and tense, clutching something tightly in her hand.
“Nikolai, come with me, there’s something I need you to see.”
I nodded and looked back at Marco. I gave him a smile along with a grateful look and went out of the gym room with Paul together with his daughter.
Leah walked silently beside me, her grip still tight on the small package she hadn’t let go of. She hadn’t said a word, but her unease was
obvious.
“I think he knows, were the first words Paul said to me when we were out of everyone’s earshot.
“What? Who?” A feeling of dread crept up from my stomach.
Leah finally spoke, her voice low and shaky. “Nikolai, I think he somehow knows that you are here.”
I inhaled sharply, “How do you know?”
Leah glanced at her father, then handed the package to me. I got a gift this morning. It didn’t have a name on it or the return address, it was just a simple package.”
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Chapter 175
And? What did it say?
Paul nodded at Leah, and she passed me a note. I took it from her trembling hands, noticing how she refused to look at it again. I smoothed out the piece of paper and read it.
“My Helen of Troy–The face that launched a thousand ships”
I swallowed. It was a cryptic message. A cryptic message that came from a cryptic mind.
Do you know what this means?” Paul asked.
I looked at him, not saying a word. I have read enough books in my lifetime, I knew all about Greek Mythology and who Helen was, and what happened when she was taken from her husband.
When I didn’t say anything Paul went on telling me about it, “Helen of Sparta, was a figure in Greek mythology said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. She was the wife of Menelaus, the king of Sparta, but she was abducted by the Trojan prince Paris and was taken to Troy. Helen’s jilted husband Menelaus convinced his brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, to lead an expedition to retrieve her. As a result, Menelaus led a war against Troy, resulting in Paris‘ death and the rescue of Helen. A massive war was mounted on her behalf, Nikolai.”
Leah crossed her arms, visibly shaken. “It must have come from him. No one else could have sent something like that. Not like this.”
I inhaled sharply, nodding. I was getting the point now. It must have come from him. There was no one else that could send us this kind of message. It was clear, god, it was crystal clear.
“Your husband might have just announced a war and I am sure he is going to ruin our everything”
“You know, Paul, in some versions of the story, Helen may have gone willingly and her husband needed to understand that!” I snapped.
Leah flinched slightly at the sharpness in my tone, but she said nothing, only watching me carefully.
Then her voice came, soft and unsure, “Did you hear that your father–in–law died?”
I blinked, taken aback. “What?”
Leah nodded, exchanging a glance with her father. “Alessandro’s father, Vittorio… it was all over the news a while ago.”
I grabbed the remote in a rush and began flipping the channel’s frantically, my heart pounding now not from fear, but from the realization that things were shifting behind my back.
“The funeral for the Russian–American business tycoon Vittorio De Luca was held on Wednesday at New York City’s St. Vincent Ferrer Church.”
I stopped flipping the channels and raised the volume. They were really old news but I still wanted to watch them.
“The Russian–American billionaire, who died over the weekend at the age of sixty–three, was famous for his charisma, his cutthroat business policies, and for being allegedly involved in illegal business and for his personal life, which was treated as tabloid fodder.”
My mouth slightly parted as I saw him dressed in all black, his men were all around him, they walked into the church, and I could only see his back. The cameras were being shoved in his face but his body language screamed that he was the least bit bothered by all of it.
“Since Vittorio’s death, charities and fans have revealed that the billionaire was also a dedicated philanthropist, making large donations, and working hard to keep them out of the public eye.”
‘Vittorio’s son, Alessandro De Luca delivered a beautiful eulogy at his father’s funeral.”
I tuned out the voice of the reporter as I stared at his face, standing up at the podium.
“Vittorio De Luca had donated millions of dollars over the years, and was determined that no one outside the charity know how much he had
Chapter 175
given… the voice fell on my ears somewhere far away.
All I could focus on was him, he looked just as I remembered him. It had only been a year and two months but I felt like it had been a decade since I last saw him. His loyal men were in the frame too as they walked down the street and sat in their cars; Vladimir and Antonio,
“Vittorio’s death has ruined everything, Alessandro is now more dangerous‘, Leah spoke as she watched.
1 faced Leah and stared into his eyes, ‘Leah, he doesn’t get to scare us. I’m not gonna wait around anymore, I’m not gonna count any more days till Alessandro gets here and sheds the blood of your men.”
Paul frowned, shaking his head, ‘What do you mean?”
1think it’s time, let me go back to him and legally get a divorce…”
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