Chapter 35
Emma woke as she was rudely bundled into a vehicle by rough hands. “Gonna kill you,” she slurred, unable to work her limbs properly. She flapped a hand and smacked herself in the face.
“Yeah, yeah,” came the soldier’s voice. “Pretty little girls should stay away from guys like the Actuary. Take that as a word of advice from an old man.”
“Old man,” Emma repeated, shocked by the excruciating heat coming from behind the soldier as he strapped her into her seat. The whole world felt hot and orange. She couldn’t cope with it and closed her eyes. Disjointed voices sounded in her fuddled brain, swirling words which made no sense.
“You need to get that looked at by a doctor.”
“I’m fine. I need to get Emma home.”
“We didn’t expect the Contessa to be tooled up like that. A gun yeah but...sorry mate.”
“Yeah well, you live and learn. Clear up here. Make sure nobody gets out.”
“What about Hack...”
“Nobody!”
Emma shocked herself awake again as her head hit the side window of the car. Daylight burned her eyelids and she writhed on the seat. A large hand pulled her head sideways and held it there while she drifted off again. “Sleep it off, dorogaya,” came Rohan’s soft voice.
“Cheating bastard, pig, cat, dog! You like her!” Emma heard herself say, realising it didn’t make sense but unable to correct it, despite very much wanting to.
She slept deeply without dreams or any sense of time. Daylight hurt her whole face as Rohan stood next to her, shaking her awake. “Time to get out, Em,” he said nicely, looking startled at her reply.
“Eff you!” she shouted into his face.
He blinked, dark lashes swishing across a cut under his left eye and he pressed his top teeth down into a swollen bottom lip. “Nice!” he exclaimed. “Someone’s never playing with the Irish git again!”
“Effin’ effs,” Emma groaned, feeling like a rag doll as Rohan’s strong arms snaked underneath her and snatched her from the passenger seat like she held no weight. Rohan’s body jolted under her as he navigated stairs and balanced her against the wall while he unlocked a door. It banged behind him and Emma felt soft mattress under her back. Thinking she was still in the manor outside Falkirk, Emma tried to stand and make a run for it, lurching into a long desk with a sharp edge and flailing around on the carpet.
“Bloody hell, Em!” Rohan exclaimed. “Just trust me, dorogaya! You’re safe. We’re going home to Nikolai.”
“My Nicky! Not yours, mine!” Emma sobbed, crawling back onto the bed and burying her face into the pillow. With great relief, she drifted back into the drug induced fog.
When she woke again, it was to find cold water on her face and splattering down her body. She screamed and jerked backwards, finding a hard naked chest against her spine. Emma looked down, horrified to see pink feet coming into focus, followed by pink legs, a pink stomach and some nicely rounded pink breasts. She ran her hands down them, coming to the conclusion they were hers and gasping again as the cold water attacked her face. Turning she found Rohan’s firm chest inches away from her nose. So she hit it. “Stop!” he ordered, grasping her painful wrists. “I need you to wake up. I’ve tried everything else. Durak gave you too much. Come, wash the blood off.”
Emma looked down, noticing the red splatter in the shower tray beneath her and panicked, letting out a pathetic yelp of fear.
“Not yours,” Rohan said urgently. “Don’t worry. It’s someone else’s. Wash it off.” He turned the temperature of the water up and squirted a bottle of shower gel into his palm from a tiny motel container, using most of it. He rubbed it over Emma’s body as she watched his hands in shock. The memory flashed back of the oriental man’s startled face as the soldier stuck the knife through his artery and she jumped. Rohan placed a firm hand on her upper arm, cursing as the soap made getting a grip impossible. “It’ll be like that for a while,” he said softly. “You’ll have flashbacks but they go eventually.”
“Get your hands off me!” Emma snapped, taking over the washing of her own body, disconcerted by Rohan’s obvious interest. She turned away from his arousal, visible through his tight fitting trousers. Glancing down, Emma saw his socks soaking up water. He didn’t realise she knew about his leg and grudgingly she allowed him his privacy, pressing her hands up into her sore neck.
“You need to wash your hair,” Rohan stated. “You’ve got...stuff in it.”
Emma ran her wet hands over her curly mop, extracting clots of the man’s blood and she shrieked again, almost slipping in her anxiety to get away from herself. Rohan pushed her gently in the back and increased the temperature of the water, soaking her hair and rubbing more motel products into her soft curls. He hissed with annoyance as he rechecked the label on the bottle. “Sorry, I washed it in conditioner. Does it matter?” His accent sounded heavily laden with tiredness and Emma felt a flash of guilt. She turned to look at him, her breasts pressed against his hairy chest in the small space.
“What the hell happened?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Of course I do! I was dragged away from my son by thugs connected to a man I thought was a mathematician.”
“Nikolai’s fine.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do, Emma! Why don’t you trust me?”
Emma snorted. “I’ll never trust you again!”
Rohan spun her around and ran his hands down her slick back. His fingers massaged the knots out of her shoulders as the soap left her body and Emma resisted the urge to groan with pleasure. “My whole body hurts,” she moaned.
“I’m sorry. Eddie drugged you.”
“Why? I was helping.”
Rohan sighed and his fingers ceased their probing of her sore muscles. “He said you were losing the plot and it kicked off right then. He didn’t have a choice.”
Emma sighed. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“You don’t need to.” Rohan’s tone was hard and uncompromising. “It’s my job, nothing to do with you.”
“Fine!” The emotional wall around Emma’s heart began to rebuild, brick by solid brick. Rohan’s dismissal of her in the ornate room bit at her ego and the way the Chinese woman said his name, pricked at her ready store of jealousy. Alanya and Felicity conspired against her in the deep recesses of her brain and Emma shut down against her husband. Tears welled behind her expressive eyes as her need for self-protection vied with the knowledge this man was her soul-mate. “I want my son.”
Rohan nodded. “Yeah, we’re going home, as soon as you’re dressed.”
Emma wrinkled her nose against the thought of underwear she’d slept in. Rohan saw and his lips turned upwards in a tight smile. “I bought clothes.”
Emma cocked her head like a small bird and Rohan concentrated on washing conditioner from her fringe. “Clothes?” Emma swiped the back of her hand across her eyes and nose.
“Da. Yours were ruined.” Rohan bit his lip and focussed on her hair, massaging the water through the curls like his life depended on it.
“So are yours now.” Emma placed an index finger on the soaked waistband and felt Rohan shiver at her touch. She saw the concentration in his face as he worked hard not to look down at her luscious body. “Did you have an affair with the Chinese lady?” Emma asked, looking up into his face.
“What?” He looked shocked and stopped, his elbows close to Emma’s face as he kept his hands against the side of her head, halted in the rubbing motion. His expression was non-plussed.
Emma shrugged, her voice haughty. “That’s why you ignored me, isn’t it?”
Rohan’s jaw dropped, his patience snapping. “That bitch tried to kill me twice now! And what did you think I’d do, Em? Rush in and twirl you round like in a musical? Did you want to die? Smert’ - so final. No more mother for Nikolai?”
Emma pouted and pushed her bottom lip out and shook her head. “No.”
Rohan p
laced a soapy index finger under Emma’s chin and forced her head up to look at him. “Emma Andreyev. You know the safe world Anton Stepanovich created for you in his stories is not real, da?”
She let out a laugh, the beginnings of hysteria. “Look at my life!” she stammered. “Of course I know!” Emma heaved in a giant breath and pressed her fingers over her lips, seeing a blob of blood wiggling around the plug hole beneath her. She sniffed and sobbed at the same time, choking on her misery. Rohan wrapped his arms around her, crushing her into him. Her naked legs felt odd against his wet trousers, the material rough against her skin. Rohan hushed her and pressed his lips over hers to prevent her soul escaping through her gut wrenching cries. Emma wrapped her arms around her husband’s neck and held onto his strong body. Her emotions seemed to tumble from everywhere, out of sync and nonsensical, but at the same time overwhelmingly real.
The warm water cascaded over them, running down Emma’s head in rivulets, deafening her with its hiss and wreathing her in confusion. “Ro, I’m sorry,” Emma cried and her lips strayed to his. Rohan gasped as his lips parted and Emma kissed him, wishing things were different and she could go back in time seven years. “I wouldn’t leave,” she sobbed, “I’d tell you everything. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Her lips slipped over his slick wet skin and she felt his resistance as his body stiffened.
Rohan hushed her with softly spoken Russian and Emma gulped in sadness, doubting he understood her agonised ramblings anyway. When the shower gave them a startling douse of ice cold water, they both jumped and Rohan laughed. “Time to leave, dorogaya.” He smiled sadly, pushing dark hair away from her forehead.
Emma looked up at him, her huge brown eyes laced by luscious black eyelashes. “Ro,” she whispered. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m so confused about everything.” Her vision popped out and back again, blurring and then struggling for purchase. Rohan saw. He kissed her gently, his wet lips enticing, offering solace and sanity.
“Talk when we get home, dorogaya,” he whispered, his eyes filled with hope. “Make decisions then. Get dressed for now and we drive home.” He turned to open the shower door and Emma shrieked.
“Rohan! You’ve been stabbed! Did the woman do that?” Bile rose into her throat as she saw the parted oozing skin and exposed fatty layers between his left shoulder and his spine. Her eyes watered and she put her fingers hard to her lips.
Rohan nodded and reached behind him, unable to stretch far enough to touch the wound. Finally his finger pads closed on uppermost edge of the cut and he winced. “Hurts, da.”
Emma used medical tape from Rohan’s small first aid kit to tape up the gaping hole in the muscle above his shoulder blade. Her fingers shook and she felt terrified of hurting him more. “You need a surgeon,” she said softly, resting her face against his bicep. “Ro, I can’t do this.”
He nodded, his eyes shrouded in pain. “Da.” He used his right hand to reach up and massage Emma’s head through her wet hair. “Sokay, dorogaya, I’ll sort it when we get home.” His fingers snagged in her curls and Emma’s brow knitted in irritation, tilting her head backwards and exposing her soft neck. Rohan’s guard dropped for just a second and she saw the aching need in him. His eyes strayed to her neck and he lowered his lips, kissing softly in a line up to her jaw. He let go of her hair and tugged at the skimpy towel around her. “Em,” he whispered. “Em.”
Emma let the towel drop to the bed and kissed his open lips, searching his eyes for anything which might give her a clue of how he really felt. His blue eyes sparkled like an aqua sea in the yellow streetlight from the window and his palms felt rough against her ribs. Rohan pushed her back and lay half across her on the double bed, his trousers still wet from the shower. Emma reached for the button at the waist and instantly he froze. “No.” He pushed himself up and stood, his body rigid. “We’re leaving soon. I’ll dress.”
Emma sat on the bed, pulling the scratchy towel around her in embarrassment as Rohan’s strong muscles flexed. He snatched clothes from the open bag on the floor and stalked off to the bathroom. Emma dried her tears of humiliation with a corner of the towel, licking her wounds yet again. “I’m so done with this,” she whispered to the empty motel room. “You never trusted me, did you, Rohan? Don’t worry, now you don’t have to.”
Emma grappled in the carrier bag laid on the chair, hauling out a pair of expensive jeans and a cute sweater. She snapped the price tags off with her fingers. There was no sign of underwear and she grabbed at her own, lying on the floor next to the bed where Rohan dropped it. Blood stained her faded pink bra and her knickers smelled of smoke. She sniffed the fabric in confusion. A faint memory of fire crossed her consciousness and she grabbed the white blouse and the jeans she arrived in. The distinct scent was released immediately but the sight of the blood spatter on her blouse made her drop it to the floor in fear, stepping back to examine her hand. The stains were dried and crusty, but it was enough to drive her to the small kitchenette to wash her hands frantically with washing up liquid, making them red and sore with her need to clean them thoroughly enough.
Rohan clattered around in the small bathroom and Emma raided his bag while he was busy, stealing a pair of clean boxer shorts to wear under the jeans. It wasn’t comfortable but better than nothing. She pulled the sweater over her head, feeling naked without a bra.
When Rohan emerged from the bathroom he looked more composed, smiling in approval at Emma’s clothing. “Good.” He nodded. “Put the ruined clothes in the black bag. Don’t leave anything here!” he warned.
Emma’s face fell and the image of the man falling throat first into the soldier’s embedded blade coursed before her eyes. She gulped and sat down on the bed. “Are they all dead?” she whispered.
Rohan’s eyes flared, warning her and Emma fixed her gaze on the ceiling. “I only hit them over the head. They would have woken up again.”
“Not necessarily.”
“But...” Emma began and Rohan held a hand up to silence her.
“No more!” he told her and she bit her lip.
“The sooner I leave, the better,” she said through gritted teeth. “Hopefully Felicity’s my size and then she can have these.” Emma flicked her finger at the sweater covering her naked torso and Rohan’s eyes narrowed. As she passed, he reached out and grabbed her wrist. The reddened skin ached and she winced and tried to drag her hand back. “Get off!”
One handed he reeled her in, his brow knitting against the pain in his back. Emma crashed into his chest, her hand outstretched. Rohan tasted of toothpaste as he kissed her, pulling her into him and refusing to let her go, even though she struggled. His tongue was gentle and probing in her mouth and Emma let out a howl of rage and confusion, pushing Rohan away with a huge effort and no longer caring if she hurt him. “Touch me again and I’ll kill you!” she threatened.
A sultry look lit her husband’s face and the smallest smile turned his lips up at the corners. Emma sat stubbornly on the bed and watched Rohan collect the clothes into a black bin liner. “What about Christopher?” she asked. “Please just tell me about him?”
Rohan’s face curled into a sneer and he ignored her as though she hadn’t spoken.
“Did you kill him too?” Emma asked. “He didn’t deserve that! He was...”
“He was a big Irish durak!” Rohan snapped. “We make our own luck in this life. Don’t speak of him again!”
Emma hugged herself tightly, drawing her legs up onto the motel bed. “I hate you!” She watched Rohan stuff the rest of her clothing into the bag, but protested when he gathered up the jacket she borrowed from him. “No! Not that! I like it.” She stopped when he glared at her. Emma bent forwards and scooped up her old ankle boots. She flung them at him one at a time. “Here, take it all then. I don’t bloody care!” She looked down at her bare toes and regretted it.
“I got you some other footwear.” Rohan indicated another carrier bag, which Emma hadn’t seen next to the door.
She shook her head an
d buried her face in her knees. “You’re taking my old life away. You’ve no right.”
“It’s evidence. I forgot to buy socks.” Rohan threw a pair of his at Emma and she left them where they lay, resisting the urge to look in the bag as he tossed her holey old boots into the black bin bag.
“What about the gun?” she muttered from between her knees.
Rohan looked up at her startled and his lips parted. “Gun?”
“In the right pocket of your jacket. Why don’t you just blow my brains out too? It would definitely be easier for you. Then you could torch this place and wash my blood down the shower drain.” Nicky’s face flashed past her inner vision. He laughed as he rode an old bike which he shared with Mo back on the estate. The tyres were flat and the pedals long gone, but his pink cheeks were flushed with enjoyment as the boys created their own fantasy world. “Look, Mummy, I’m Harley Man!” he squealed and Emma gulped. She felt immediate guilt at the thought of leaving him to scratch through a life without her and pressed her eyes to her knees, smelling the newness of the jeans. She heard Rohan sifting through the bag. He swore in Russian as he pulled the handgun from her pocket and held it up to look at. There was a series of clicks as he disarmed it and when Emma peeked he looked back at her, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Bloody safety was off, Em!” he chastised her. “You could have blown us to shit when you were tossing around in your sleep.”
“Shame I didn’t!” she muttered stubbornly. “And I didn’t ask you to nearly get me killed or drug me up to the eyeballs, did I?” She raised her voice to a shout and Rohan decided it was time to leave.
Emma refused to wear the socks or new boots Rohan produced from the bag, skirting round them and waiting outside in the hallway barefoot. A passing couple stared at her pale toes as they walked down the stairs to reception. Emma flounced by, knowing she drew attention to herself and not caring. She cared a great deal once they got outside into the below zero temperatures of a late Friday night. She tiptoed across the freezing car park, the cold concrete burning her feet. Whenever Rohan looked around, she walked normally, cursing her bloody mindedness but determined not to give in.
He dumped his bag and the rubbish bag into the boot, flinging the new boots in on top. Emma noticed a beautiful cashmere coat in another bag, which bulged enough for it to be full length. His hire car was beyond the main car park and rested on gravel, covered in a layer of hard ice. He left the car unlocked and went back to the reception to pay for the room. Emma picked her way across the sharp stones, feeling Rohan’s smug eyes on her periodically as he enjoyed her suffering.
He spent time defrosting the car when he returned and Emma shivered in her seat, worrying about what Nicky must be thinking about her absence. “We’ll hit the motorway soon and then it won't take long to get home. I'll drop you at the house and return the car,” Rohan announced, cranking the gears into reverse. “I’ll have a bonfire tomorrow and burn evidence.” Tiredness made his speech flip back into broken English.
“Where are we?” Emma asked.
“No matter.”
“I want to know how long before we get back!” she snapped. “I just want my son!”
“Another three hours.” Rohan clicked a switch on the dashboard to activate the central locking. “Get Nikolai tomorrow.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Emma shouted and lurched at Rohan, slapping him on the arm and causing him to swerve. He set his jaw and ignored her, finally fed up with her antics. Emma felt crushed inside as her whole world came crashing down. She would get Nicky in the morning and do what? Go where? She didn’t have enough money for a coffee let alone a train ticket.
The sickness in her gut returned and Emma curled up on the seat and went to sleep, her head periodically thudding against the cold glass next to her. She didn’t speak to Rohan again, waking groggily when they got back to Market Harborough. He parked in the garage at the bottom of the garden, forcing Emma to walk the length of the gravel and freezing cold grass to the back door. The absence of Farrell’s excited tail wagging hit her hard and Emma stumbled up to her room, slamming the door behind her and crawling onto the bed, exhausted.