Chapter Ten

Alex

On the bright side, I stopped throwing up. But that's probably because I stopped eating anything that had the potential to upset my stomach. Nikita was constantly worrying, her eyes would only leave me for a few seconds to ask Kat how the search was going for the possible cause of my sickness before they locked on me again. "Nikita." She flew to my side, kneeling beside the couch where I was resting.

"Alex? You alright?"

"Quit worrying." I growled, pulling the blanket up around me more. "Help me up?" She nodded hesitantly and slipped her hand under my side and pulled. I threw myself to my feet quickly, she caught me before I toppled over.

"Would you take it easy?" She snapped and I rolled my eyes.

"I've been on that couch for an entire day now. I need to move around before I start freaking out."

"You? Freak out? Nooooo! Say it ain't so!" Kat muttered and I glared at her.

"Shut up, pussy...kat."

"Yeah, that's original."

"Don't make me come over there!"

"Oh! I'm just soooooo scared! The handy-capped assassin is going to hobble over and cough at me until I die!"

"You know what Kat? I'm going to take your stupid computer and shove it straight up your—"

"SHUT UP!" Nikita silenced us both. Alicia's muffled cry echoed through the wall in the other room. Nikita sighed and I felt her body trembling with anger "I. Do not. Have time. To BABYSIT the TWO OF YOU!" Her voice was controlled, if not choppy, until the final part of her sentence, then she just roared like a lion. "Katrina! Keep digging into their files! I want to know what they did and when sinse the day Alex escaped!" the blonde turned back to her work, typing away furiously. Nikita turned her furious, cinnamon eyes on me and I dropped my gaze immediately. "Alexandra. I want you to sit at the table and get along." I looked up at her and opened my mouth to say something incredibly childish like 'she started it' when she snapped "Shut up." and I closed my mouth again "I want you to get along with your cousin and I'll bring you some soup and ginger ale as soon as I get Alicia to sleep again. Alright?" I nodded and she helped me to the table, sitting me down carefully in the padded seat. She disappeared for a second and then I felt the warm blanket being wrapped around my shoulders.

"Thanks" I mumbled. She didn't respond. She just stormed off towards the baby's room. There was a long, still moment of silence. Neither of us wanted to do something that would invoke the wrath of Nikita. She was terrifying when she was mad.

"You know she's only angry because she's scared right?" I blinked and snorted

"Nikita? Scared? Please."

"Seriously, Alex." She looked up at me from over her laptop. "She's afraid."

"Of what?" I asked disbelievingly.

"That someday we'll both have to repay our debts." I blinked once...twice and once again before I leaned forward

"What?" she hesitated before shutting her laptop and started fidgeting with exasperation and frustration.

"We both owe her more than we can ever put into words, Alex. She got you out of the fire, then out of the grasp of that sick son a of bitch Vlad and got you clean. She's afraid that this time, she can't save you. Like she was afraid that she couldn't save me.

About seven years ago...around the time my father thought you'd died in the fire...he started training me to take your place as the heiress to our family's empire. He...he pushed me so hard, he wanted me to learn everything I could fit into my tiny nine-year-old brain. I learned Japanese, Spanish, French, Polish, Mandarin, Taiwanese. He took me out into the woods when I was ten, taught me to make a camp, how to fight off wild animals, how to survive freezing temperatures and how to kill in self-defence. My mother didn't like it. She told my dad that I was just as much a Canadian as I was a Russian and that I shouldn't have to be Katrina Feodora Praskovia Udinov, Russian Heiress to The Udinov 'throne', if you will." She pronounced her name with a flawless Russian accent, something I'd never heard her do before, leaning back in her chair "That name was already gaining infamy before I'd even realized what it meant to be HER." Katrina said the last word like the name didn't belong to her but to someone she hated. She looked at her hands, spinning the ring around her thumb. "My mother believed I should be Kitty Peck-Udinov, daughter of Alicia Peck and Vasily Udinov; a normal, teenage girl in a normal world where my only worry would be what to wear or a math test." I leaned back in my chair, pulled my arms around me tighter. I didn't know Katrina was the next in line to take my place. She'd had to go through everything I did when I was little, probably more seeing as I was trained from birth; she was trained for nearly four years until they found out I was alive. "My father took away everything. He took away my music, the only TV we had, candy...anything that could distract me from my 'duty to control what was left to me by Alexandra.'" I winced at my name, she continued "I asked him why he couldn't take over; Nicholai was his brother, why couldn't he be the one to rule. He told me that it didn't work like that. He said that it had to be an heiress. Not an heir. A man couldn't be given that much responsibility and be expected to treat it properly. He told me that a girl, a woman, would be able to understand power; that she'd be immune to the temptation of being in that position of authority."

"Power corrupts" I murmured and she nodded at me

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely." She sipped the pop in front of her and set it back down. She opened her laptop and set it off to the side, not willing to stop the search for too long.

"Do you hate me?" I asked suddenly after a long pause. Kat looked at me from across the table

"What?"

"For taking it from you?" She laughed once and leaned back again in her chair. Suddenly she looked older than I was. The sharp, intriguing glint in her ice blue eyes took on a harder edge; more aged. More mature. It felt like I was the sixteen-year-old and she was one-hundred. I saw now that she had to mature far faster than anyone should at her age. Like she'd skipped several life times in the span of seven years. "I mean, you went through all those years of training, preparation and I show up and take it all away from you again."

"Alex. You don't understand do you?" I pulled my knees to my chest as she pulled her fingers through her short hair, pushing her bangs away from her face. Her eyes stared at me, through me like a window pane. "Your 'death' was one of the reasons I wanted to die."