Tempted By Redemption

𝐱𝐱𝐯𝐢

I had a toxic addiction to her, the need to feel her soft skin under my palms, her soft voice whispering my name, it had me like an addict ready to kill for his fix.

I hated this feeling, the burning in my chest, the tingling in my fingers to grab her throat and choke her as she moaned my name.

I hadn't realized that my prey was now finally next to me, but what didn't surprise me was Theodore Knight was not a male, it was a female, it was normal in the Mafia, changing of gender or name.

Hiding in plain sight, playing your game was an unknown that was learned from the back of our hands. Theodore or Theodora leaned against the black couch with sex on the beach in her hands as she sipped it softly while her eyes calculated my figure.

She was dressed in a pearl white dress, the choker on her neck had a name ingrained of some bastards, her nails coated red as her lips and her sharp eyes narrowing me down.

She chuckled under her breath, she knew what was about to go down, she knew her life was now on a silver platter ready for me to devour and ruin, and yet she was clam as if it wasn't her that was going to die.

"Andrei Kuznetsov, the devil himself is here to kill me, what an honor right?" Her voice of strawberry and vodka said, there was a familiarity to her sound which I couldn't put my finger on. I didn't react to her words, my eyes still on her zeroing down on her.

"You probably don't remember me, do you? Hell, if you hadn't saved me that day I wouldn't have too," her words confused me before it clicked in place, Theodora Knight, wife of Javier Knight the obnoxious, selfish, and abusive bastard.

Four years back when I had received a tip on Javier confessing that he was the part of The Grand Ring, an underground sex trafficking business run by Francisco and his greedy mates. We couldn't stop them until recently a year ago after Francisco had died, but still, it operated under the instructions of Luigi.

Javier Knight was one of the biggest bidders in the business buying off little girls and raping them in the grand celebration that took place every night whenever the most girls were sold.

He would take them against their will in front of everyone as the men cheered, laughed, and drank. He would make them scream, bleed, die while still breathing before finally shooting them in the head.

Theodora was sick of his innuendoes and tipped me off, but somehow Javier had got a piece of information on her putting a bounty on his head. The poor bastard didn't know who exactly was killing him and tortured his wife before finally, I put a bullet in his head.

From that day onwards I didn't hear about Theodora in four years, she went offline, her parents had sold her to Javier in the first place and she didn't have friends to rekindle her relationship with.

But the collar told me another story.

Theodora had a spark in her eyes I had never seen before. The small gleam of a smile, and only then did I notice the small bump in her belly, she was pregnant.

"You finally remember me, don't you?" Her voice had broken me out of my thoughts and I smiled softly.

"I do Theodora...?"

"Ivanova."

"Italian?"

"Yes, Dante Ivanova," I knew who he was, he was surprisingly not the type I thought he was, a glare etched on his face or a cold smile on his face for his next victim. Dante Ivanova was an alias of mine, he was an FBI agent hiding in the dark for the Mafia.

Seeing Theodora like this with him was odd, but the more I pictured him, the grumpy asshole with a beam of sunlight beside his arm somehow fit together.

"Why did you come here Theodora knowing your life was on the line?" She chuckled under her breath before her hands cradled her belly as it was her most precious gift and it was.

"I knew Ross would ask you to finish me after our deal, and I didn't want to miss the chance of meeting my savior besides, Dante is taking care of him right now." I raised my eyebrow at her statement before she shook her head, dismissing my question.

"I heard that you have a girl of your own now, you moved on,"

"Not anymore." A frown graced her lips before she took the scotch out of my hand and rested it on the table.

"What happened Andrei?" Her question left me thinking, why? I wanted to fucking laugh at my state, I was a fucking pussy I couldn't fight my own battles instead I drowned myself in alcohol.

"It's... complicated,"

"I didn't think Andrei Kuznetsov would ever use complicated in the status of his relationship," she was right, it surprised me too.

"You don't know a lot of things about me, Theodora,"

"True, but I do know what love feels like, I experience it every day for my husband and my child. And I know that even after everything we've been through I trusted in myself. Trust yourself, Andrei, that's all you could do to save you and your woman." Her words had struck me, jabbed me in the heart, and left me bleeding.

She was true though wasn't she? Trust in me, I never did though, trust myself. That is. I hated myself over the years, killed myself in the darkness, cut myself in my shadows.

But when she walked in, my darkness lit up with a candle, enabling me to see the truth, myself, my future, the traces of my wife's murder.

A bittersweet slid on my face before Theodora stood up her husband, Dante Ivanova standing by her side now his arm aligned across her waist. He nodded at me before they left.

I stared at the scotch in form of me, I scoffed, before picking it up and gulping it down. My shadows now coming in front of me, their dark pasts released and I knew what I had to do.

~⚜~