Hidden Monsters (Volkov Bratva #4)(2)

She carried on dancing even as her feet cracked and bled, smiled when she was disappointed, and found a way to lose herself in anything near when it all became too much.

It had worked, for far longer than it probably should have all things considered, but like most illusions, it had soon run its course. When the time had come that a smile was no longer enough to fix what was broken, she hadn’t known what to do, not when she was used to solving her own problems.

But this problem wouldn’t go away, not when it clung to her in a way only death could. Alex had never thought herself immortal or immune to the effects life had on a person, but there was nothing like watching her own mother die in front of her that made her achingly aware of her own mortality and just how easy it was to lose.

But more than that, she learned the price she was willing to pay to protect those she loved.

Since that night—a night that no matter how she tried to ignore it, always found a way to plague her—Alex had tried, for her brother’s sake, to smile and go through the motions of moving forward, but the days had grown increasingly harder. If not for the fact she spent most of her nights alone, it was growing much harder to hide her pain from everyone else…until she had found something else to ease her through it.

She had grown up relatively quickly, especially living overseas and away from her family. She’d more than happily imbibed because, even at that time, she had struggled with loneliness and depression. It was exactly two years ago, she thought, when she’d first taken Valium.

It had been a single, solitary night in Paris when she was feeling particularly nostalgic and missed being surrounded by people who loved her—or the closest thing to it— back in New York City. The Volkovs weren’t perfect, and there were days when she questioned whether they truly could stand one another, but they were hers and they were all she had.

Alex had been out alone on the terrace of the dorm-style apartment she shared with two other girls. The stars were like tiny pinpricks of light in the blanket of deep navy that covered the sky. It was beautiful. It was endless. But it also felt rather empty, much like she did when she wasn’t on stage or at rehearsal.

“Why are you sulking?” asked Josephina as she came out with a glass of orange juice in hand, her dinner for the evening.

Jospehina was very much like Alex, both American and only sixteen, living like adults in a city full of passion. She was the daughter of a congressman from Georgia and a mother who served on boards and attended charity events whenever possible. Their worlds might not have been totally similar—Alex’s father was a criminal, after all—but trying to live up to parents’ expectations was something they both understood.

Alex shrugged. She didn’t know how to describe what she was feeling. Only that she wished it would end. Things were different when you were a child and didn’t understand the true nature of the life your family was involved in, but after a few years, it was hard to stay blind.

“You’re thinking too much,” she went on. “We’re on break. Why don’t you live a little?”

After their show the night before, they had a rare few days off. Normally, Alex would have taken the opportunity to fly home and spend time with Mishca if he were free, but according to the last conversation she’d had with Anya, he was seeing someone—someone who was ignorant to their world. Since the NYC Ballet Gala was only a month or so away, she figured she could wait until then to meet this person.

The other girls in their company were celebrating off in the apartment, drinking wine and flirting with much older men. Alex wished she were that carefree.

“Try this,” Jospehina suggested, pulling out the cigarette holder she always carried.

She placed it on the small, wrought iron table between them, popping it open. Inside were a number of cigarettes lined neatly on one side, but on the other were two small zipped packets filled with at least a dozen little yellow pills in one. The other held white ones.

Alex knew the girl smoked, most of them did though Alex had only just taken up the habit, but she knew nothing about the pills or what they were.

But she couldn’t help her curiosity.

Jospehina opened the baggie with the yellow, round-shaped pills with a V stamped on them, shaking out a couple. She dropped one into Alex’s palm, placing the other on her tongue. It was gone in a second.

“Go on,” she urged. “You’ll be fine.”

Alex could have denied her—she more than likely wouldn’t care—but as Alex looked down at the decision in her hand, she desperately wanted to feel better; she wanted to feel more than just like a lost soul.

She took it.

And again another night.

And anytime she felt like shit after that night.

It was sporadic for a while, and then it became more frequent once Alex was exposed to a truth she had never imagined. But even then, she was careful, trading them for bottles of hard liquor. A drink here or there was how it began. Innocent, if anyone were to judge, but one had turned into five... and now? She could finish a bottle in only a couple of hours without a second thought. That should have been the worst thing she was exposed to, but a single night had changed everything.

A night when she’d killed her own mother.

Soon enough, even those bottles weren't enough to escape her own memories.

Now that alcohol wasn’t doing what she wanted, she needed something more, but she didn’t really know what she wanted.