Chapter 47 Secrets
LISA
"I'm an illegitimate child," he told me casually and my jaws figuratively dropped to the ground. Of all the things I was expecting him to say, this was the last one, in fact, this wasn't on the list at all.
I wasn't expecting him to say this and I did not believe him at all because who would, nothing about him screamed illegitimate child at all.
Just like nothing about you screams bloody assassin, my subconscious mocked me.
"You really don't expect me to believe that, do you?"
He shrugged casually, "no, I don't but the fact that you don't believe it doesn't mean that it's not the truth."
"Come on Axel, I don't understand why you feel the need to make me have leverage over you but it's really not needed, I told you what I told you because I wanted to, not because you forced me so you don't have to make up a lie about yourself just to make me feel better that I shared a weakness with an enemy."
"I don't care about you enough to try to make you feel better because you told me something that you shouldn't have, you can think of this as a truce if you think I'm doing this because I want to make
you feel better."
A slight chuckle escaped from my lips.
"So you really want me to believe that you're an illegitimate child?"
"Like I said earlier, I don't care whether you believe or not but it's not going to change the truth."
"And what's the truth?"
"That my dad had me by a whore?" he said it so casually as if that wasn't a lifelong trauma on its own. My heart clenched for him and I couldn't help but wonder how he must have felt as a kid,
knowing that
A common whore that was popularly referred to as cummares was who gave birth to me.
I knew enough about the mafia to understand that most mafia lords collect females from slave auctions, the ones that were taken to pay off their family's debts and all, and most of them were made into cummares, an object of sexual release for their masters they spread their legs for any time they want them to. They literally don't have any life apart from being fucked and raped. Most of them have their wombs removed so they'd not risk getting pregnant and I was sure whoever gave birth to Axel must have been an exception for her to have gotten pregnant and then given birth to him. "Tell me more," I found myself saying and he exhaled softly before leaning against the backrest of the bench.
"I didn't always know that I was part of the Ivanov family, at least, till I was five or six years old, I grew up alone with my mom in the ghetto and we were so poor that we couldn't afford to eat once daily, a few times mom had money from guys who made her moan all night, she'd spend it to get her next fix..."
Fuck, my heart clenched, even more, she wasn't only a whore, she was an addict who getting high was more important than feeding her five-year-old child.
"I grew up like that and I thought it was normal because all around me, the families were like that so we the kids learned to fend for ourselves by doing petty stealing, scavenging through dustbins and
all. That was my life until a man I'd never seen showed up in our house one day and he put a hole in her head.
What?
I gasped, my hands flying to cover my now-opened mouth.
"He killed her?"
"Yeah, right in front of my eyes."
"And you were five?"
"Yeah, I was too stunned to process it, I didn't even know what it meant at that point that there was a hole in her head and she was bleeding but as an adult, looking back at it now, I think I was glad
she died at that time."
What? I knew she was a whore and an addict who never took proper care of him but she was still his mother and weren't kids supposed to always have a soft spot for their mothers?
Mama died a very long time ago and till today, I still wasn't over her death.
"But she was your mom and no matter how bad she was, you should feel some sort of emotions for her."
"I did not, I've never done and I never will. She never showed me love, she never made me know what it feels like to experience a mother's love. I've never known love, not in its so-called purest and
genuine form and I can't give back what I've never received, maybe that's why it's so easy for me to become a mad man, to completely turn my humanity off, that is if I've ever had one in the first place."
Wow! Spoken like the Axel Ivanov that he really was.
"So the man that I later discovered was my father and the Don of a mafia group took me to a house that I thought was always going to exist in my dreams, gave me a room that was way bigger than the apartment I shared with my mom, a wardrobe that was full with clothes that I'd never finish wearing and be told me that I was going to live in that house from then.
I couldn't believe it but it was happening, I was being thrust into a life that I never thought I could belong to and I had no option but to start living a life that was full of money and glamor and maids
And servants waiting on me all the time and of course, blood and guns too."
Of course, blood and guns were synonymous with growing up in a hardcore mafia family.
"I only had a step-sibling, Roman and he was older than me by a couple of months, his mom was late so it was just the two of us and he never failed to remind me that I was a whore's child and that I'd never amount to anything, he was so sure that he'd become the Don and chase me out of the family when the power is in his hands."
He chuckled slightly when he said the last part and I couldn't help but chuckle too because guess who the joke was on now? Roman! Because most people didn't even know about his existence, Axel
Ivanov was the one dominating the Ivanov mafia.
And I could only imagine the kind of sacrifices he must have made to get there.
In a way, it made me feel similar to him, we were both people that had to break our backs to get to where we were today.
"Dad never made that distinction that I was an illegitimate child though, he treated me the same way he treated Roman, made us sit through training and critical meetings so we could get a hang of
how the business works from a very young age. I became fully interested in the dynamics of business, randomly suggesting a plan to get rid of our enemies only for the plan to be a genius one that
really worked and put us all out of a decades-old dilemma."
And right there was the beginning of Axel Ivanov.
"It worked, my status increased among the men, I was made a Capo before 16 and I trained till my physical strength was on par with my intelligence, making myself unrivaled and publishing whatever
plans Roman has for me."
"You don't sound like you hate it," I pointed out and he stared at me pointedly for a while as if he didn't understand the logic behind my statement.
"I don't sound like I hate it because I don't hate it."
"So you really enjoy all the fights, the blood, the killings?"
"Even if I don't enjoy them, I was born into this, it's all I've known all my life, and to be honest, there's an unrivaled thrill that comes with torturing men that cross me, nothing gives me as much
satisfaction as watching them bleed."
Urgh, I take it back, we were not similar in any way.
"Here I, thinking we have something in common."
"And you think that something could be not craving bloodshed? Hell No, nothing gets me more in the mood than the idea of bloodshed."
"Urghh," I shoved him away playfully, albeit subconsciously, "I should steer clear from you then."
"Eeeh, come on," he pulled me closer to himself, returning my playful gesture, "we both know you can't steer clear from me."
"Don't think too highly of yourself, you're not irreplaceable."
"Really?" he tilted my head up so I could meet his scrutinizing and intense gaze, "don't be so sure about that, we both know nobody makes you scream as much as I do."
I started to reply but the words died in my throat. I knew he just made an innuendo about our sex lives but my sudden muteness wasn't about that, it was about our proximity, our closeness, we've
never been this close except we were having sex and while the hug that happened earlier this evening still plunged my mind and I still didn't know what to do with his I had hugged him in a moment of sheer gratitude when I wasn't thinking straight, this closeness wasn't something I knew what to do with it.
His hand was thrown around my shoulder, pulling me closer to him, putting no distance between us, our eyes were locked together, his dark and intense and scrutinizing as if he was looking into the
deepest part of my soul.
It was something as simple as locking eyes, nothing as intense as sex but it made me feel like we were exchanging something much more personal, something deeper.
It seemed like we were having the deepest intimacy.
I bolted out of his hands and flew to my feet.
"Urhmm, it's getting..." I cleared my throat, "we should go back, I'm sure they must be done by now."
Something flickered in his eyes before it got locked away, his eyes going back to the dark and unreadable one as he stood to his feet.
"Yeah, we should leave."