Chapter 53

State Hospital #18, Moscow, Russia

-

Dimitri Marick opened the door of the hospital room and saw that both his wife and son were asleep. They looked as though they hadn't moved since he peaked into the room late last night.

He was pleased but at the same time envious that Andrei had more success than he did in convincing Alex that she shouldn't be alone.

Twisted into a semi-fetal position, one of Andrei's legs dangled over the chair's armrest while the rest of his small frame curled into the seat.

Dimitri tiptoed into the room, squeezing Andrei's shoulder.

The gesture woke him up and Andrei stretched.

"Why don't you head back to the hotel and get some real sleep and eat some breakfast?" Dimitri whispered. "I'll stay here now."

Andrei yawned, pushing himself out of the chair. His legs were wobbly and he made a face. "My leg is sleeping," he mouthed. He didn't protest when Dimitri gave him a handful of bills to take a taxi back to the hotel.

"I will come back soon," was all he said. "Then you can take break."

Dimitri watched him as he stumbled out of the hospital room, massaging his leg to restore its circulation. It was understood that they would take care of her together.

'We've become a family,' he thought, watching him leave. 'The three of us.'

Dimitri sat down in the same chair Andrei had slept in and pulled out the three items he'd put in his pocket before leaving the hotel this morning.

They were the three things Alex had removed before heading out to the bridge in Paris to meet Cesar Faison. Her watch, her wedding band and the necklace and horseshoe-shaped pendant he'd given her the night before.

Tempus Fugit, Amor Manet.

Dimitri ran his index finger over the inscription on the pendant.

Time flees. Love remains.

Was it really possible that night in Paris took place only a few weeks ago?

"I wish I had your way with words," she'd told him that night.

He'd told her that it would have been a redundant skill.

"Your eyes say more than I could ever express with words."

They spoke about his trip to New York, about the latest results from tracks in Austria, Hungary, France and England, and, of course, about Andrei.

It was an utterly ordinary conversation.

And then, in an equally ordinary moment, he'd given her the necklace. While the candle flickered between them.

He remembered Alex pulling out her glasses to read the inscription and the smile it had brought to her face.

Tempus Fugit, Amor Manet.

She had loved it. Loved its double entendre.

"I'm not a humble man, Alex."

She'd chuckled at the understatement.

"But sometimes, your love, it humbles me. To think that someone like you, chose to marry me."

She had wiped away an errant tear. "God, you're making me cry."

"That was the last thing I wanted to do…but I wanted you to know, now matter what happens, how many arguments we have in the future, that my love will always remain."

"Amor Manet."

"Yes, amor manet. But what I really want to say is that I want us to grow old together.".

"We will." She had raised a glass in the candlelight. "To love, and future grey hairs."

On the bed next to him, Alex gasped, yanking him out of the past and catapulting him back into the present.

Something had jolted her awake and she was pushing herself off the bed. Dimitri saw her trying to rip a bandage off her arm. She partly succeeded, tearing off a good chunk just below her elbow.

"Get it off! Now!"

Dimitri jumped up and grabbed her wrists, before she could do any more damage.

"Alex! Stop it!" He tried to push her back down onto the bed. "You're going to hurt yourself."

Her eyes were wide open, terrified and pleading. "Take it off….please…take it off!"

She struggled against his grip with surprising strength, managing to twist one of her arms free.

"Alex, darling…you had a dream. That's all. Stop fighting me." He tried to keep his voice calm, even though stopping her from injuring herself took a sizeable effort. "Alex, look at me," he insisted.

Dimitri debated whether to press the blue button next to her bed for help but decided against it. He still didn't know what had prompted the doctor to put the restraints on her earlier and he didn't want them to see her like this. Out of control.

If anyone could calm her, it was him. He'd dealt with her nightmares before.

"Alex, darling…look at me," he repeated, forcing her to focus on him. "It was just a dream. I'm here with you and you're safe."

He felt her body relax, her arms no longer fighting his grip.

Her expression changed, from one of terror to one of awareness. She gasped for air. "Get off me…please. Get off."

Dimitri nodded, still holding on to her wrists, loosening his grip. "I'm not going to hurt you, darling. You know that." He paused, his eyes never leaving her gaze. "Promise me you'll do the same?"

"Yeah…" She bit her lip. "I promise."

He kissed her hands before letting go of them. "I love you."

She pulled away from his grasp, visibly exhausted from what had transpired. "I'm sorry…I'm sorry I scared you."

"You don't have to apologize."

Dimitri saw the loose bandage on her arm, and then something odd caught his eye. He moved to take a closer look. More than just a burn scar on her skin, he saw a distinctive pattern.

Letters.

Seeing his stare, Alex pulled her arm away.

"Darling, let me see…" Gingerly he got a hold of her arm, slowly able to make out the letters.

n d r a.

"What happened to your arm, Alex?" he asked, puzzled. "Did Faison do this?"

Alex answered him with silence and Dimitri moved a finger along the bandage, gently pushing back what was still covered to reveal another two letters.

x a n d r a.

"What the hell is…?"

"It's…it's my name." Alex told him. "After Faison found out who I was, he wanted to make sure he wouldn't mistake me for Anna again."

Nausea rose in his throat. Dimitri suddenly felt sick.

The letters of her name were permanently branded onto her skin. A lifelong reminder of what happened at Alexei Estate.

Dimitri swallowed, suddenly unable to look at her.

'What kind of monster…' Livid anger replaced the sick feeling in his stomach.

He imagined the pain she'd felt, making it hard to hide his rage.

"Alex…I'm…I'm going to get a doctor. To fix the bandage you tore off," he told her. His voice sounded foreign to his ears.

"You can't fix it," she said softly.

"The burns…they're still raw," he tried to explain, unable to look at her arm any longer. "You need to cover them…"

"No," she got a hold of his hand. "No doctor. Please. Just stay with me."

He couldn't. The air in the room was suffocating him.

How could stand to look at her when he'd failed her so miserably?

He loosened her grip on his hand. "I'll be back with the doctor."

"Dimitri…don't blame yourself." She could read his mind as well as he could read hers. "Please stay." Her voice choked and he thought she might cry.

"I'll be back," he promised her, leaving the room.

Anna's Apartment, Paris, France

-

"Are you sure you don't mind doing this?" David Hayward asked the Irishman.

Dan O'Toole flashed Robin a grin. "No. I don't mind at all. In fact, I don't think I've had much of a chance to spend with Leah since I watched her come into this world."

"I don't think this is such a good idea after all," David hesitated.

"Would you stop it?" Robin groaned, carrying her sister in her arms. "Mom needs you. You said so yourself."

"So do you two."

"Dan is not just putting surveillance on the apartment, he's staying here, inside it, with us. I hate to break this to you, but we're probably safer now than when you were 'guarding' us," Robin reminded him. "Now move it, so you don't miss your flight!"

David took Leah from her arms, kissing her forehead. "I'm gonna bring your Mom back with me, okay, princess?"

"You do that," Robin agreed, glancing at Dan.

With Leah still in his arms, David pulled Robin into his embrace, kissing her on the cheek. "I owe you one for arranging this…"

Robin blushed. "No you don't. Just look after Mom and bring her and Alex back safe."

He nodded. Serious. "I will. Promise."

State Hospital #18, Moscow

-

"It's better now, isn't it?" he asked her after the doctor left.

Alex nodded, indifferent to the fresh dressing on her scar, but not wanting to deprive him of the need to make something right. "Yes, thanks."

"Is there anything else you need?"

"No. Really...I'm fine."

Outwardly, he seemed calm and if she hadn't known him as well as she did, she wouldn't have known it was a facade for her benefit, one that took considerable effort on his part. But she did. And she hated the pretence.

"Dimitri…" she started.

"I brought you something," he interrupted, as though sensing she was about to broach a subject he wasn't ready to discuss. He reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out three items.

Her watch, her wedding band and the beautiful necklace and horse-shoe shaped pendant he had given her in Paris.

Alex reached out for them and cupped them into her palm. "I missed these."

Dimitri wrapped his hand around hers, kissing it, as he closed his eyes. "I missed you so much." His hand was shaking, betraying what his face tried to hide. "It's going to be okay, darling. I'm going to ask the doctor if you're well enough to be moved and then I'm going fly you home to Vadsel. You remember that doctor that treated old Karolina when she had her bout of pneumonia last winter? He practically moved into the estate…"

Alex bit her lip. "Dimitri, I won't need a doctor once I leave here…"

"You need time to get well. And you can't possibly do it here in this hospital. Have you noticed that the bed you're on is rusting? There's a crack in the window and…"

Tears welled up in her eyes. "Dimitri, stop it…"

"Darling," he still held on to her hand. "I promise you everything is going to be okay. However long it takes, that doesn't matter. And if we have to find a specialist to get rid of the scar, we'll find one. You remember, when I first came to see you, don't you?" he asked, brushing a tear from her eye. "I was dying and you found a way to save my life…"

"This is not the same…" she said softly, interrupting him this time. "You don't owe me for curing your illness."

"I'm going to make sure…" he repeated, putting his arms around her when she moved to sit up.

He loved her so much.

She saw the fear in his eyes. The fear of not being able to make things right.

Alex said nothing else, letting him envelop her in his embrace. When he helped her lie back down, she told him she was exhausted and closed her eyes, feigning sleep until he left the room.

She didn't care about the scar. Instead she curled up, moving a hand to her stomach, thinking about the life that was growing inside her. Cesar Faison's child.

'How are you going to fix that?'

Later

In the waiting room

-

Andrei Marick spotted his father sitting alone, holding a cup of coffee in his hands. There were other people in the waiting room but Dimitri had distanced himself from them as much as he could, sitting in a corner chair, pushed up against the wall.

"Is Alex sleeping?"

Dimitri nodded.

"How come you are not staying with her?" Andrei asked, unnerved by Dimitri's faraway stare.

Dimitri turned to him. "I went to speak with her doctor. I want to take her home to Vadsel as soon as possible."

Andrei sat down next to him, noticing that his coffee cup was empty. "That's a good idea," he agreed. "Alex, she loves it there."

Dimitri said nothing.

"Are you okay?" Andrei asked him. "Is Alex okay?"

Dimitri answered neither question, the frown lines along his eyes deepening.

"Hey," Andrei nudged him. "Is something wrong?"

Dimitri met his eyes again. "He hurt her, Andrei. He really hurt her."

"What do you mean?" he asked, narrowing his thick brows.

"He branded her name into her arm."

"What?" Andrei didn't understand.

"He branded her with a hot iron, like an animal…"

Andrei's pupils widened in shock. "Does it…does it hurt very much?"

His father didn't answer him.

"I'm afraid to ask her what else happened when she was with him. I'm afraid…" Dimitri's voice broke. "I'm scared to ask, Andrei, because I'm afraid that she'll tell me…and I won't know what to do…"

He was weeping now.

Andrei put his arms around him. "Yes, you will. You will know what to do," he assured him. He smiled a lop-sided smile. "And if you don't, Alex then will understand. She always says to me that she is smarter than you."

British Airways Flight 118, en route from London to Moscow

-

"You can't sleep on planes either, huh?" the woman next to him asked.

"Yeah," David Hayward mumbled. She must have noticed him flip aimlessly through the in-flight magazine that was tucked into the seat pocket in front of him. He wished he hadn't made his restlessness as obvious as to make her think he wanted a conversation.

Small talk with a stranger was, in fact, the very last thing he felt like engaging in. He hoped his monosyllabic grunt of a reply made that clear.

"Neither can I," she replied. "Knowing there's a 30,000 foot drop underneath our seats always makes me sort of uneasy, if you know what I mean." She had an American accent. It sounded southern, but it wasn't distinct enough that he could narrow it down to a state. "Are you going to Moscow for business or pleasure?" she probed.

David turned around to face her, taking his first good look at the woman sitting next to him. She wore a red two-piece suit, with a bright matching lipstick that made her generous smile seem larger than it was. Her blonde shoulder-length hair was held in perfect place by amounts of hairspray that would undoubtedly be considered environmentally hazardous in most European nations.

"Business," he mumbled.

"Well, of course you are," she agreed enthusiastically. "Does anybody really visit Moscow for pleasure?"

David shrugged, hoping maybe that no answer at all was the way to go.

"Oh dear!" she cringed with a squeal, grabbing his arm with her hand well-manicured hand. He noticed that her nail polish perfectly matched both her suit and lipstick. "I'm so sorry. Did I just put my foot in my mouth? Tell me you're not a Muscovite?"

David managed a chuckle. "No, it's okay…I'm not."

A sigh of relief draped the woman's face, followed by another smile. "Oh good lord, you're American! I couldn't tell before, but now…lemme guess, East Coast?"

David sighed. "Pennsylvania, by way of California."

"What a coincidence. I was in Philly for work, only last week." The woman's smile broadened. "What kind of business brings you to Russia?"

"I'm going to see my wife."

"Well, isn't that funny, 'cause I'm going there to see my husband, except…" she paused. "He doesn't know I'm coming."

Another chuckle lifted his cheeks. "Neither does my wife."

The woman laughed. A deep, hearty sound. "Let's hope they don't mind."

"Your husband would be a fool if he did," he told her, remembering the kinds of clichés he used to utter with such conviction that women actually believed them.

The blonde woman blushed. "Well, aren't you a charmer."

David felt a twinge of guilt. "It's the truth," he mumbled.

"My husband is helping a friend of ours in Moscow," she explained. "But this friend is involved in some dangerous business, so I got tired of sitting at home and worrying about both of them."

"I know what you mean…" David mumbled.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name…"

"It's David." David held out his hand, offering her a vaguely polite smirk. "David Hayward."

Five brightly painted fingernails wrapped themselves around his hand with surprising strength. "I'm Tiffany," she told him, smiling. "Tiffany Hill."

State Hospital #18, Moscow, Russia

-

"So. Did your little failed escapade finally make you realize that you're no match for your sister, Sasha?"

Alex wondered how the same despicable voice always somehow wormed its way into her head. Wondered whether it would do so for the rest of her life.

She shut her eyes tightly. "Go away, Mum…"

Laughter filled the room. "Truth hurts, sweetheart, doesn't it? I should know."

Alex ignored her.

"Look at you. Lying here in a hospital bed, hurt and weak and losing your mind. It's pathetic. Anna would've killed the bastard."

'Anna would've killed you by now,' she thought.

"Sasha, look at me when I'm speaking to you!"

A hand reached out for her arm and Alex opened her eyes with a gasp.

"Mum!"

She sat up in a panic only to see that her hospital room was empty.

"It's your imagination…" she told herself out loud, feeling the racing beat of her heart in her throat. There was no one here. Dimitri must have stepped outside and Charlotte couldn't be here.

Yes, she could.

Faison had secured her release from prison. Her mother was free to come and go as she pleased now.

'Stop it,' Alex thought, glancing wildly around the room. 'Stop letting her drive you mad.'

She threw her legs over the side of the bed, grateful that its bars were already lowered.

Stiff and sore, she walked awkwardly towards the washroom door, like a child taking its first steps.

"Get a grip," she hissed under her breath, when her knees started to shake, terrified that maybe Charlotte Devane was lurking inside the bathroom.

Instead it wasn't her mother's face that shocked her. It was her own; staring back at her from the mirror above the sink.

Her long hair was a tangled mess and the only colour in the greyish pallor of her sunken face was the deep, dark blue underneath her eyes.

It was like looking at a stranger.

Anna's layered cut framed her face. Thick blonde highlights mingled with the dark brown she was accustomed to.

The sight made her cry.

"I'm so tired of being you, little sis," she told the unforgiving mirror.

She reached to turn off the lights, not wanting to look at the reflection a moment longer and when she did she spotted a set of keys lying on the floor.

Alex picked them up, recognizing the key chain. A chunky, red Swiss Army knife with Andrei's initials engraved on it. It was a gift from Dimitri.

Andrei must have dropped it while he was in here, Alex realised.

Holding the pocketknife in her hand, she pulled open the blade and then flipped it back into the knife again.

The light was still on and it was still Anna's face that stared back at her from the mirror.

"I'm not you, Anna," she whispered. "Not anymore."

She pulled out the scissors from the pocketknife and ran a finger along its blades.

Unable to take her eyes off the mirror, Alex brought the scissors up to her hair and started to cut it.

It was a drastic decision, but maybe, Alex thought, maybe it would free her from seeing her sister each time she looked into the mirror. She couldn't picture Anna with short hair.

Her hair was thick and the scissors were small, and it was a slow, tedious process, hampered by her shaking hands and the tears that started to cloud her vision.

An odd satisfaction filled her when she saw the blonde highlights fall to the ground, along with the other, darker strands.

So absorbed was she in what she was doing, she didn't hear the sound of the door opening.

Alex heard a footstep and when she turned around, she saw that Anna's image had left the mirror and was now standing in the bathroom alongside her.

Her twin sister looked at her in shock.

"Alex? What are you doing?"