Right Behind You

Chapter Forty-Four: Ice Melts

"Look, I want you to myself

But I know you just left someone else
I know you did, he did a number on you
That must be why you move so icy
Icy like 1017
Icy like there's nobody who'd ever need
Better not give that all to anyone but me
Patient as could be, but

I still need some satisfaction
A little less talk and a little more action
I need you out in Jamaica, relaxin'
Thought I had everything somehow."

-Drake ft. Young Thug (Ice Melts)

Andrei: 

It felt as if not one day had passed that I didn't dream of her. I would close my eyes and see her right in front of me, her beautiful smile, her sun-filled eyes, the way her hair would frame the outline of her face. That dream would be my heaven, my vacation, the release from the world I had made an oath to. The next morning, I would wake up and every single time I would look off to my side expecting to see her there sleeping peacefully beside me and every single time I would be disappointed.

This was my life now.

After she had left, I wanted to go after her. I wanted to tell her not to leave me, how much it hurt me to see her go without the notion if she would ever be back again. Seeing her drive off broke me, I know I should've left it alone. Let her go and live her life the way she wanted to, but I had to make sure she was okay. I remembered way after she had left that she had taken her phone with her; I forgot to take the tracking device out of that and with that knowledge, I had gone to my surveillance room and turned it on to see where it was last reported. That's when I had hit a dead-end only to find it dead somewhere off the end of the freeway in Atlanta.

I tried to take that a sign to leave well enough alone, but the itch came back. I was a hacker, after all, I searched for her bank records and soon enough I saw the latest of her transactions being in San Antonio. I had planned to go there, maybe talk to her see how she was doing—after all, it had been a few months since she left at that point, but ultimately once I checked once more and saw a huge influx in the money I had given her in the duffle bag being thrown into the account.

Then nothing.

No transactions for three years straight.

Something had to have happened, right? She couldn't have just fallen off the face of the earth. But she did, I went to San Antonio where these transactions were occurring and traced it all to this hardware store that doubled as an apartment complex. The car I had given to her was there, but there was this guy who was using it now and I had no idea who he was. Where she had gone, I had no idea.

Then I returned to this endless black hole that had consumed my life since I was young.

I was in my surveillance room leaning back against my chair, I closed my eyes. So much time has passed, things have changed, and I was still here. Working for him. God, I hated him so fucking much he didn't even know.

"Uncle, Andrei." I felt tugging at the ends of my slacks and I opened my eyes and looked down.

Staring back at me with the intense blue-eyes the family seemed to carry very strongly was my nephew, Alexei's son Leonid. Somehow, he had managed again for the fifth time to get into my room. At his age of three years old, he was very active walking around finding anything he could touch. Like my desk that he was now banging his hands on.

I quickly grabbed him, pulling him into my lap.

Leonid looked back at me with a goofy grin, opting to instead playing with the buttons of my shirt.