Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of Kudos and BBC. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
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"It is a wise child that knows his own father"
Homer
Alexa heard Lucas get up, awakened by the ringing of his phone. She felt him slip off the bed, leaving a cool space behind her where he had been as he quietly slipped outside the room to answer the call. A few seconds later, he slipped back into the room to bring the covers behind her and give her a light kiss on the cheek.
"I've got to go," he whispered but Alexa kept her eyes closed, not wanting to deal with the awkwardness of good-byes. It wasn't as if she was going to make him coffee and make him breakfast, but ever since seeing him, Alexa felt uncomfortable knowing that their beginnings were far from the norm.
Where would such a relationship go? she wondered. How could it even work? Definitely not something that had the promise of a long-term relationship, or any kind of relationship for that matter, she thought as she listened to him close the door behind him again. Except for the sex.
Alexa moved carefully from her position on the bed, uncovering sore spots as she did so. The smell of sex still lingered in the air and as she slid off the bed, wrapping the sheet around her, she padded over to her dresser and stared at her reflection on the dresser mirror. Lucas had left bruises on her wrists where he had held her down and on her neck and chest were marks from the bites he had inflicted upon her. She had driven him mad with hunger and longing and she had enjoyed every second of it.
Her skin prickled at the thought of last night and Alexa wrapped the sheet tighter around her, sitting down as her knees threatened to give way at the memories that began flooding back. She had never expected her body to react the way it did around Lucas. It was as if her body seemed to recognize the essence of him, breaking down all the walls she had fought so hard to put up since returning from Moscow nine years ago.
For over five years, she had devoted herself to Liam and nothing else simply because she could not handle anything more than that, especially after Nathaniel died. No matter how strict he had been, he had only her and Liam's well-being in mind, and watching him slowly fade away from the cancer that ravaged him took something out of Alexa. When he died, she and Liam were truly alone. Her mother, an Argentinian national, a daughter of an ambassador herself, did not have any family in England.
But of course, there was Harry, her father's devoted friend who was never too far away, even sending his own people to check up on her whenever he couldn't. Harry could have been out saving the world, but he still managed to keep up with being her godfather, in any way he managed.
When Alexa finally decided to tackle dating, it was nothing short of disastrous, her nerves always getting the best of her. It did not matter how they looked or sounded. Each man she found herself alone with always had something that reminded her of Mikhael and the thought of even the touch of their hands upon her skin was enough to make her gag.
She saw features in him in every man who expressed desire for her, no matter how they looked. A glint in the eye, the way that he smiled, the way he spoke, or the way he smelled. It did not matter what it was, there had always been something. It all triggered the loathing and the fear within her and Alexa knew she wasn't ready. Not yet.
She wasn't embarrassed to admit that she'd sought the comfort of women for a time, seeing none of the fear that being with men had caused in her. There were no cold sweats, clammy hands, or nausea to accompany their caresses, nor their kisses, and more. She felt safe with them, often the memories of the three Chechen girls invading her thoughts, remembering their innocence.
She wondered if it was a merely a way for her body to cope with the loneliness without pushing itself to the brink of madness, a madness that emerged whenever she found herself alone with a man longing for intimacy with her. She wondered if Harry had disapproved of the brief lifestyle change, but even if he had, Harry had not said anything to her about it.
The thought of Harry brought her back to the present and Alexa walked towards the door, listening for Lucas' footfalls upon the landing. She hoped he wouldn't come back inside her room, heaving a sigh of relief when she heard him go down the stairs as quietly as he could. She smiled to herself as she she imagined him gingerly taking the steps down to the first floor. He'd acquired a bit more color since she had last seen him a few days earlier, and probably had had a few helpings of fish and chips since then, too.
With Lucas, it had been different. She couldn't explain it, but her body expressed neither the loathing nor the fear that it always had in the past with other men. Alexa blushed, her thoughts returning to the sight of Lucas on her bed, begging for her to make love to him. He would never know that Alexa had never been with any man since she returned to London nine years earlier.
Alexa wondered if Harry knew about Lucas and her, knowing that he would have completely and utterly disapproved of it. Maybe it was for the best then, she thought, that she and Lucas not see each other anymore. It would be something he would probably agree to as well. Her relationship to Harry complicated things between them. That, and the biggest thing of all, the way they had first met, the situation that they had found themselves in, igniting an unplanned bond that seemed too difficult for Alexa to break.
But she knew it was more than that.
As she heard the door close behind him, the lock clicking, Alexa opened the bedroom door and stepped outside. She went downstairs and walked towards her front door, tempted to stick her head outside, and take one last look at Lucas as he walked away. Silly me, she said to herself, acting like a damn schoolgirl. Instead, Alexa put the chain lock in place and went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee.
She walked past the living room where they had had dinner the night before, picking up the wine glasses and the plates that bore the remnants of their simple take-out dinner, the fish beginning to stink up the place. Suddenly Alexa felt a tug deep inside her chest, and she caught her breath. She leaned against the kitchen counter, fighting to control the shallow breaths that had taken over her body, her heart beating rapidly inside her chest. When it passed, she suppressed a girlish giggle, and she put her hands to her face, realizing that she was blushing.
There was no denying it. Alexa had fallen for Lucas North.
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Outside Trevor Square, Mikhael Lubienko, who had flown in using a passport as Viktor Sarkissian, crushed the spent cigarette beneath his shoe. According to his current status in the UK, he was a contractor, hired to do computer work for some hack Russian company. He stared up at Alexa’s flat, his face in a permanent grimace of pain where his skin melted from caustic acid he had poured onto his face years earlier.
Something inside him stirred at the memery of seeing Lucas North emerging from Alexa’s flat so early in the morning, just when he was making his practice run around her block for the second time. Since his arrival a week earlier, he’d often jogged around the area, checking to see who was still in the neighborhood watching her, which cars were parked as part of the MI5 surveillance team, although he could sworn he’d seen a few Russian faces as well.
Since Lucas’ release from prison, it appeared that Alexa George’s business was now everyone’s business.
Yet Mikhael wondered if the surveillance team had caught sight of him. And if they did, he would have long been arrested by now, hauled into some underground interrogation room. Arkady had assured him that no one knew he was in town. Mikhael only answered to Arkady, and maybe to the one man that Arkady answered to outside of the FSB, a man Mikhael did not know. If anything happened to Mikhael, if he were to be arrested, there was no one in London who would vouch for him, not even Arkady. Most of all, Arkady.
He was a nobody, really. And for now, as Mikhael picked the lock to Alexa’s front door, hearing the click as he pushed it open, he was fine with that.
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Alexa heard a click at the front door. She wondered if Lucas had returned, probably forgetting something. Yet as her heart began to race, she knew it was not him even as the doorknob turned slowly. She turned cold, her hand suddenly shaking. Someone was picking the lock on her door.
To her horror, Alexa realized that she hadn’t bolted the door completely, having only slipped on the chain lock instead of the heavy duty bolts that really mattered. Alexa rushed towards the door to do so just as the door pushed open, only to be jerked backwards by the chain that held it.
Alexa saw the eye first, the slit between the door and the frame allowing only half of the man’s face to be revealsed to her. “Oh my god,” she whispered as she watched the man smile. She recognized that smile anywhere.
“Hello, matryoshka,” Mikhael said in Russian as he pushed against the door again, and Alexa watched in horror as the chain weakened, the screws loosening from the frame. Her body turned ice cold, her courage threatening to abandon her as Mikhael's face appeared in front of her, his fingers slipping through the space between them.
Alexa screamed, lunging herself against the door and slamming it shut against his fingers, and Mikhael bellowed in pain, pulling his fingers free as the door slammed shut.
Suddenly the door heaved forward, Mikhael's voice grunting behind it. He was ramming the door with his massive shoulders and the door shook at the assault. One more, Alexa thought, and the door would give way.
Alexa thought of the gun she kept upstairs, the one she had just thought of taking with her to the shooting range, and she turned and ran towards the stairs just as the door shattered and Mikhael Lubienko was upon her.
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