Chapter 45: Codename: Blackheart Chapter Forty-Five

Everything was peaceful and painless. I was dreaming about the hikes I used to take with my family. The fact I was dreaming means I’m still alive and if that wasn’t proof enough, then the fact my body is shocked into a state of consciousness as I feel excruciating pain shoot through my neck would be a dead giveaway.

I feel disoriented and yet every pain receptor in my body feels like it’s been amped up to a thousand, so I can’t stop the scream that escapes me. I feel something sharp in my neck and the warmth of my blood gliding down my skin. I try to move but I instantly realise my arms and legs are bound. What hell have I woken up to now?

“Got it!” I hear a man’s voice declare.

“Good, now destroy it so no one can use it to track her here,” says a woman’s voice… a familiar woman’s voice at that.

I hear the sounds of feet shuffling against concrete and a door that needs some oil, opening and closing. There’s an echo when the door shuts indicating I’m in a very empty room. A cell maybe? Something is covering my eyes, so I can’t see shit. Every inch of my body is in searing pain. My chest feels like an elephant is sitting on it, I can’t catch my breath, and yet, it feels as though my poisoning symptoms have subsided just a little.

“Time to wake up,” the familiar voice says as the blindfold is pulled from my eyes. I squint and try to adjust to the darkened room I am in, with a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling that’s barely illuminating shit. I look forward and see a set of ocean-blue eyes glaring at me, though one is unusually wide and milky in colour. A young blonde squats before me looking at me with so much hatred and contempt she’s close to burning a hole through my skull. There’s muscle weakness on the right side of her face, and she’s lost lip definition and control on that side allowing me to see more of her teeth than I’d like. The skin across the right side of her forehead is extremely smooth and the difference in texture and colour would indicate it is a giant scar. She looks ugly as fuck.

“Hadleigh,” I croak in acknowledgement.

“So you recognise me,” she says bitterly.

“Well, you got a lot uglier since I last saw you. Which, if I recall, was when I was putting a bullet through your head,” I say apathetically. I assess the binding around my ankles and note them to be duct tape. My hands are bound at the back of the chair, also with what feels like duct tape. Oh, fun. Hadleigh’s fist suddenly connects with my face and all I can think is how my mother can throw a much better punch.

“I’ve waited years to get my revenge for what you did to me. You ruined my life!” she screams as she throws another punch.

I spit a wad of blood onto the floor and look up at her in amusement, “I don’t know, I think you look better this way,” I mock, earning me another punch to the face.

“I was beautiful. Every man wanted me, and now look at me,” she says as she rests her hands on my knee. I try not to make a sound at how much her added weight hurts me as she brings her face to mine, “LOOK AT ME!”

I stare at her, unfazed by her outburst, but more concerned with my own pain, exhaustion, and laboured breathing. “I’m looking. What’s your point?” I ask as I spit more blood from my mouth and try to get a handle on my breathing.

“You’re not an easy woman to track down. I mean, first I had to find out who was the woman who tried to kill me and why,” she says, standing up straight as she slowly paces in front of me. She’s wearing all designer clothes. Designer black slacks, designer navy blue blouse, and some very stylish Louboutin black high heels. She’s definitely not dressed for a torture session.

“I’m more upset about the ‘tried’ part. I’ve spent years thinking I had killed you, so this doesn’t look good on my resume,” I say shamefully.

“You think you’re so clever. I did the impossible,” she gloats, “I got you out in the open. And maybe my first attempt failed, but do you know how good it feels knowing I was able to poison you while you were safe inside The Tournament? Or the fact I was even able to kidnap you while you were in the middle of your final fight?” she says, smiling maniacally, “God! Name one other person who could do any of that?” she shouts euphorically. Whatever drugs she’s on, someone give me some.

Even though it hurts beyond imagination, I laugh. I laugh and embrace every sharp, burning, painful sensation that comes with it because it’s fucking worth it. This bitch is still crazy. Scratch that, she’s even crazier. She really classifies everything I went through in that shit hole as me being safe? Does she not see the state of me?

“This the part where you tell me it was you behind the Grigoras plot?”

“So, you’ve put it together,” she says in approval.

“Let me get this straight. You tried to kill me and failed, so then you had me poisoned inside The Tournament, and instead of just letting me die from either the poison or my competitor – which was about to happen, for the record – you kidnapped me and brought me here, which actually saved my life, all so that you could be the one to personally kill me. Have I got that right?” She stares at me silently, her good eye twitching as the idiocy I’m calling out registers in her tiny, damaged brain. “You’re a fucking idiot,” I laugh.

She lunges at me, grabbing my throat and forcing me to look at her ugly mug, “I beat you, and to prove it, I have a surprise for you.”

She lets me go, and I cough and cringe from the burning that causes my throat as she opens the door gesturing for someone to come in. She has a lopsided Cheshire Cat smile on her face as a familiar 6’3” frame slowly enters the room and guilt-ridden ocean-blue eyes stare down at me.

“Heart…” he whispers brokenly.

Hadleigh raises her hand to silence him, “You recognise Alec don’t you? You two got awfully close, right?” she says gleefully, “Poor Blackheart had no idea he was double-crossing her the entire time,” she chuckles sweetly. “Tell her,” she instructs him, but he stares at me in silence.

I glance from one to the other with an unimpressed look on my face, “He doesn’t seem to understand the instruction. Maybe if you tried calling him Elijah, that might help,” I suggest. Both their heads turn to me so fast it almost sends a gust of wind my way. Absolute shock is all over both their faces and despite my pain, their reaction has me feeling pretty fucking good. “Oh, I’m sorry, was that supposed to be a secret? Whoops,” I say sarcastically.

“You knew?” Alec – also known as Elijah – whispers in shock.

“I told you, I’m good at what I do,” I smirk.

~ FLASHBACK A MONTH AGO~

“So, since obviously, my answer is yes to being the awesome godmother of your baby boy, how’s about you give me the information I want?” I say getting back on track while I simultaneously monitor Alec and the dickhead following me.

Mikhail chuckles, “A deal’s a deal. Get ready for this. Wasn’t easy to find but you came to the right place,” he boasts.

I roll my eyes, “Spit it out already.”

“So impatient. Anyway, I ran the background on this Alec Lowell, and you were right to be suspicious. I checked all the data of these sites and all the information you found was only input into the system a month ago. Prior to that, none of the information on Alec Lowell existed,” Mikhail informs me.

I shake my head, “Explains the shadow and his apartment. I’m being set up.”

“It looks that way, but I was able to run facial recognition software and though it seems like some information on your guy has been erased, they didn’t get all of it, and I’m better,” he gloats.

“See, this is why I don’t need to praise you. You praise yourself enough for us both,” I tease.

“Rude. Anyway, Alec Lowell’s real name is Elijah Bressett, born 01/08/1993 at Hayward Area Memorial Hospital in Wisconsin and is the only child of Sonia Bressett. No father is listed on the birth certificate. I’ve done a thorough check on him and there is nothing criminal in his history. Not even so much as a parking ticket, which is somewhat ironic because his listed profession is test-car driver,” Mikhail informs me.

I look through the window of the café as Elijah sits down to enjoy his usual order of spinach, feta and egg white wrap and a Brazilian mocha cola iced coffee. The man is painfully predictable.

“So, how does this exceptionally boring guy end up part of a plot to set me up to the point they even create a fake identity and fake criminal record for him?” I ask. Mikhail is silent on the other end of the line. “I can practically hear you smirking, so out with it.”

He laughs, “You know me too well. So, I continued to dig, and I did find his mother Sonia started receiving regular payments from an offshore account five months into her pregnancy and is still receiving them today. I figured it had to be the baby daddy, so I traced the offshore account and was able to trace it back to another account based in the US and you’ll never guess who it belongs to,” he says excitedly.

I watch Elijah carefully from the street. Even from here, I can see his piercing ocean-blue eyes and as I observe them, the pieces begin to click together.

“Peyton Grigoras.”

“Damn, I was hoping I would get to reveal that. But you’re right, the guy who hired you is his dad. So the question becomes, what did you do to piss this guy off so much that he would use his own son as bait to lure you into the open? A son he doesn’t even seem to care about. The money seems more like payments to buy the mother’s silence if you ask me, and she’s not the only one,” he adds in disgust.

“How many baby mamas does he have?”

“Just one more from what I could gather, a woman named Layla Freling. Not much on her, she’s as normal as Sonia Bressett. Only thing they have in common is their shit taste in men,” he chuckles.

“Wait, did you just say Layla Freling?” I say, standing up straighter, “Did she have a daughter named Hadleigh?” I ask.

“How’d you know? Yeah, she has one child, a daughter named Hadleigh. Layla began receiving payments from Grigoras six months into her pregnancy and continues to receive them. Elijah and Hadleigh are half-siblings.”

“Fuck,” I say as I slump against the tree and rub my face. It’s always about revenge; it’s always about fucking revenge. That’s why Peyton looked so familiar! It wasn’t because I knew him, it was because I recognised some of his features in his gold-digging daughter. “Now it makes sense. Peyton is getting revenge on me because I killed his daughter.”

“Umm…” Mikhail sings awkwardly.

“What?”

“She’s not dead.”

“Mikhail, I personally put a bullet in her head,” I tell him.

“I’m not saying you didn’t, I’m just saying you didn’t kill her. Sorry, Alina but you weren’t successful on this one. I’m looking at her medical records now. Hadleigh Freling was admitted to Lariboisière Hospital in France, 14/02/2018. She was reported to have a gunshot wound to the head, but when police found her, she was still breathing. The bullet managed to avoid every major artery and vital part of the brain, and after extensive surgeries to remove the bullet, she survived. Left pretty deformed, but very much alive,” he says sympathetically, “Sorry, but it sounds like you fucked up.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. If my dad ever finds out I failed at putting a simple bullet in someone’s head, I’ll never hear the end of it. I can’t believe I fucked up this bad. I should have just slit her throat.

“Just fucking great,” I mutter.

“What are you going to do now?” he carefully asks.

I glance at the reflection of the dickhead following me and then look at Elijah eating his food. I could just walk away, but then they’d try to track me down again and if they were successful I wouldn’t know when they were coming. Now that I know who is behind this and why, I’m already ten steps ahead. I can use this to my advantage.

“I’m going to let this play out.”

“What?” he exclaims.

“They don’t know that I know the truth, and this moron following me hasn’t clicked on to the fact I know he’s there. I can use this to my advantage. So, I’m going to keep playing along and let them come for me, and when they do, I’ll be ready.”

~END OF FLASHBACK~