Broken | Lucas North - Spooks/MI5 Story [Featured]

Chapter 15

Mikhael touched his face.  “Do you know he did this to me?  The scars that I had to melt away myself because no one would do it for me.   No one would help me for fear of Arkady Kachimov.”

Alexa shook her head.

“He found out our little secret.  That you were alive.  Not only that, but that his own little pet, Lucas North, had been the one to find you and return you back to England.  Did you know that he was the only one who had access to the spy when he was imprisoned in Russia?”

“You paid for it,” Alexa said, bringing back the conversation to what was important to her.  She would learn about Lucas’ imprisonment through Lucas himself.  There was no time to dwell on hearsay.  “This lie you told him about me being dead.”

“It wasn’t a lie,” Mikhael said.  “He saw it with his own eyes.  He saw me shoot you, saw the blood, and he left.”

For a few seconds, Alexa didn’t speak.  She couldn’t find anything else to say.  All she wanted to do now was listen to Mikhael speak and maybe in so doing, she’d be able to put the puzzle together.  How could she have managed to hide such event from  herself and lock it up in the deepest recesses of her brain?

“I thought I missed at first,” Mikhael said bitterly.  “I saw all that blood and I thought I had killed you, that you didn’t listen to me tell you to not move.” 

“But I did listen,” Alexa countered.

Mikhael smiled, nodding.  “Yes, you did.  That gave me some hope, Alexa.  It gave me hope that maybe you...you trusted me after all.  Just as you need to trust me now.”

Alexa looked away from his gaze.  For months she had thought Mikhael to be the devil, sent to capture and torment her.  But when she met Arkady, she knew then what mask the devil really wore.  How could she have suppressed such memories, not even recognizing Arkady when he had come to visit her at her office months earlier.  And even then, at the foundation gala where he told her that he knew about her relationship with Harry.  How could she have not remembered him then?

“You trusted me with your life, did you not, Alexa?”  Mikhael asked, breaking through Alexa’s thoughts.

Alexa nodded.  “Yes.”

“Well, now the chess master is at it again, and all his pieces are on the board, ready for their next move against the queen.  But it seems that your king, this Lucas North, has abandoned you, yes?”

The mention of Lucas’ name made Alexa’s pulse quicken.  She wondered if he even knew where she was.  Had Lucas really abandoned her?  

“What about you, Mischa?  What are you in Arkady’s game?”

Mikhael took a deep intake of breath as soon as she called him by the one name Oksana used to call him, the same name he would hear from Alexa’s lips when she played the role years ago.  Such was the treachery of women, he thought to himself.  Alexa had played the game of pretending to be Oksana to save herself, making herself party to her own fate.  But as he gazed at her, his breath caught in his throat. 

Memories of his Oksana refused to die away, not now that he had found Alexa again, the perfect twin to his own Oksana.   Oksana would have looked just like her still, he thought, but Mikhael forced himself to be alert.  His Russian wife was of a different world, just as she now existed on a different realm, so far from where he was now.  Let her rest in peace, he reminded himself.  Let her and Niko get the peace they deserve.

The ship hadn’t left port yet, the delays in its departure enough to warrant suspicion on his part.  But for now, as long as the horn blasted once more, it meant that the ship was on its way.