Chapter 8

Alessandro heard gunshots but wasn't sure from which direction it was coming. He was tempted to go back to Katerina's residence but was reluctant because of a possible confrontation with her boyfriend that could lead to his death.

Back in Katerina's home, where she was left alone with a cracked foot in a pool of her blood, mourning and troubleshooting how to free her leg of the bullet, with the assailant gone with the wind. She downplays the itch to call in the paramedics for her mother once told her that, treating one with gunshot wounds usually comes with a negative repercussion, especially when it's coming from this settlement; a neighbourhood full of thugs and violent crimes, where everyone was looked upon as suspect by the Russian law enforcement agents. She neither wants her mom nor dad to find out it was the 'one' they've warned her not to mingle with that caused the damage.

She recalls how her mom, who is a nurse, once removed a Python's bone stuck in her patient's foot and stitched it back in her presence. She stopped crying and cheers repeatedly with 'yes, I can do it as she drags herself across the floor with trails of blood following her to the kitchen where she consulted a mini drawer stocked with drugs and other clinical tools.

She unwraps a syringe and coupled it up then kept it aside. She now searches for something, "aha!" she said, it was a portion pain killer in a petit bottle. She again reached for the syringe and pierced it into the bottle via the soft cock and drains its content into the syringe's tank and then injected it into herself through a bulgy vein on her left arm and closed her eyes for a few seconds. She then grabs a pair of scissors, a razor blade and an appliance that looks like pliers and spread them before herself on the floor and set to work on her foot.

Katerina first of all sanitized the blood clothes on her foot using a pair of Scissors and cotton dipped in spirit. She cut open the spot hit by the bullet with the Scissors and there it was, partly covered with blood. Katerina smiles. She picks the pliers and sends them into the narrow hole gently. When she was sure the bullet was caught by the device, she pulls it outward. To her surprise, a short thick bronze coloured metal emerged. She shouted. The shout was more of joy than from pains. Now feeling better, she refuses on the kitchen cabinet to gather energy before the next task.

It is now 4:00 pm on the clock, one hour since she returned home together with Alessandro. She again rallies around and pulled herself up on her feet, using the dining chair for support and prepares herself a sandwich to regain lost energy. While she snacks at it, she walks gently back to the living room and saddles the chair at the computer table and sits down and began to browse, looking for a possible treatment for gunshot wounds and was lucky to trip over many. She jots them down using educated guesses.

Katerina went back to the little closet in the kitchen with the self-prescribed list in one hand and a beef burger in the other, munching and dragging herself pretty slowly. She gathers the collectables into one receptacle, swallows the ones to be swallowed and administered them into her veins those that would be transfused into her system with the syringe.

"Done!" She said to herself after wrapping up her foot with a bandage.

Katerina did not rest until she mops up the entire sitting room and everywhere that she has passed with disinfectants to ward off bloodstain and stinks.

Now that she is done with the emergency and ready to talk to Alessandro, her mobile phone was nowhere to be found.

"Could it be that Shevchenko has gone with it?" Katerina asked herself, but tadaaah! There it is, lying on the floor with a shattered screen and a vandalized sim card and memory. Katerina was hurt immensely, not because of her irredeemable expensive gadget, but for losing Alessandro's contact. A car engine raves outside, it was her mom. Katerina quickly picks up her priced belongings and kept them away in her jeans pocket.

Meanwhile, Alessandro at the restaurant where he lodges confront head-on a dish of spaghetti Bolognese and a pint of a larger bear. Flashes of what came to pass in Katerina's house continues to torment him. He asked himself, what would have happened to him had he not carry on his person that sum of money Katerina's ex-boyfriend demanded? I would have been a dead man by now. Alessandro's thoughts once more went back to the gunshots he heard shortly after Shevchenko sent him out of the house. "It could be that he has hurt her because, with that mean attitude of his, he was capable of inflicting pains on her."

With that terrible imagination, Alessandro draws out the pink paper harbouring her mobile number and dials it and put it to his ears but the line was dead. His heart skips a bit and thought of going in for the rescue but his body language tells that even if the sky was to fall on him, he would never again step his foot anywhere near that treacherous district again.

"Waiter!" he called, signalling her for his bill.

"You can keep the change," he said to her, running out of the restaurant into the chilly streets and slipped into a waiting taxi. Alessandro retraced his steps back to the garment store where he first met Katerina.

He met a middle-aged woman sitting on the table where Katerina previously sat, all pumped up with pride and self-righteousness. He remembers seeing her together with Katerina on his previous coming. He was unsure whether he talks to her or not but he later threw caution to the wind and walks up to her.

"Hi," he said, smiling broadly. "My name is Alessandro." Now the self-righteousness she assumed was punctured by Alessandro's overwhelming handsomeness.

She looked at him critically again and said to him in a Russian pervaded accent, "Viktoriya is my name; have we met before?"

Alessandro knew where she was heading with that inviting body language she was acting. He gave it no attention which naturally died off by the time he finished making his enquiries.

"Ma'am," he said, "I am an acquaintance of a friend of yours I once met here a fortnight ago, her name is Katerina.

Viktoriya looked at him with dismay and said to him,

"Katerina wouldn't want to see you anymore," she said so boldly as if she were her mother.

Alessandro knew it was out of jealousy that she enunciated those words but he reassured her that her help will not go unappreciated if she would be kind enough to arrange a meeting between them.

"When I told you that you cannot see her, you thought I was joking?"

"Why?" asked Alessandro,

"because she was shot on the foot by some heartless way wards." She said, feeling all tensed up as if to punch Alessandro in the face. "she is now receiving treatment in Saint Petersburg Central hospital."

That was what Alessandro was looking for. He thanks her and laid two crispy notes of hundred Euros on her desk and turns to leave.

"Not so fast love a bird," tweets Viktoriya, "a little bit of caveat: if you want to return to your country whole, heed my advice and stay away from the hospital because if you are caught, you shall be put to jail with no certainty of making it out alive. Wait here and I will phone her mother because she wouldn't speak with anyone except me and you can use that opportunity to speak with her too, okay?"

"Okay," answered Alessandro.

Viktoriya led him to her office carved out from the Mall with transparent glass and sat him down on a purple sofa.

"you will be okay here while I go and ease myself."

In her absence, Alessandro searches around with his eyes for something out of this world but finds nothing except for the portrait of herself with two female kids.

"aren't they adorable?" Asked Viktoriya as she returns from the convenience room. Alessandro looked up to her and then combs back his hair with his right hand and said to her, "your children?"

"yes, my children: Julie and Vienna. I gave birth to them while their father was away in the Syrian war. Till this day, they never set eyes on him," she said.

"was he killed or something?" Asked Alessandro.

"Yes, he was slain by a projectile thrown at them in a night raid from the enemy camp."

"What a pity," said Alessandro.

While he still stares at the picture sorrowfully, Viktoriya speaks Russian briefly on the phone with an anonymous woman then hangs the phone again.

"Am sorry Alessandro, it's not going to be possible for you to speak with your mate because you speak English. If you insisted, madam will know that Katerina is talking to a foreigner which will not be condoned by her; and it will ruin the good relationship between me and her family."

"Never mind Miss Viktoriya, her mother's refusal to see her daughter won't lead to the end of the world unless she is a nuclear scientist."

"Ha ha ha," laughs Viktoriya, "nimble tongue you've got there."

"I will be taking my leave, Miss Viktoriya. Please do let me know when it's convenient for me to get in touch with her. "Have this," he said, footing for Katerina's medical bills for onward delivery to her. Attached with the money was his phone number.

"That wouldn't be necessary," said a familiar voice. Alessandro turns and saw that it was Katerina. He turns again and gave Viktoriya a damning look. Viktoriya now looks back at him guiltily and sheepishly. He ignored her and focusses his attention on Katerina once again.

"Hay," he vents, " what happened to you?" Pointing at the crutches she carries and the swollen leg in bandages. Katerina said nothing about his question.

"Come here," she said. Alessandro stepped closer to her so that they feel the warmth of their breath and they sank each other's lips in their mouth in a furious kiss.

"We have unfinished conversations that were supposed to take place at your lodge, haven't we?" asked Katerina, who was oozing with sexual allure. Alessandro too did not whisper a word but she understood the mood behind his silence so she tows him away, leaving Viktoriya feeling like a bad-ass boxer that was knocked out in the first round of about.

Viktoriya beams with evil smiles then dial some numbers on her phone again and begin to speak Russian.

*******

Remember how Adam and Eve walked the garden of Eden before eating the forbidden fruit? That was how they walked into Alessandro's hotel room. Just when they were about to do the mash-up came a barbarous rap at the door that sent cancerous venom of fear through their anatomy, then the door splits open with the force of a volcanic eruption!