Sinful Addiction

Part 23 - Barton Showed?

"Is Miss Petrova here?" Axel asks one of the construction workers as he makes his way across the main.

"Yea, she's in her office. Name?"

"Axel Davids."

"Petrova, there is a Mr. Davids here to see you, are you free?" He asks into the radio.

"Yea, if he brings me a new drill battery."

"You still in your office?"

"Uhh not exactly, just tell him top floor." The man hands Axel a spare battery and points him to the elevator.

Reaching the top floor he walks out of the neon-lit hallway into a large room. The cement floors have been replaced by black and white marble tiling. Long couches stretch across the room. Marble top tables and various seating options fill the space. Admiring the room he finally spots Alexia who has climbed up and worked her way around a rafter behind the bar that she is dangling off of while screwing in brackets to secure the glass shelves right below. "You have my battery?" She asks when she hears footsteps approaching.

"Yea, here." He jumps up on the counter to reach her.

"Can you hold this?" She moves his hands to the right place. "Yea, like that. Thanks."

"Mhm...This place looks amazing, Twinkle-Toes," he says as he continues to look around the space.

"Thanks! Still a lot to do before tonight but I'm feeling good. I know you didn't come here just to act like a clamp for me, so what are you doing here Axel?" She asks a little bit more accusatory than she intended but Axel is one of the last people she expected to visit. It's not that they don't get along it's just that with her not speaking to August there really is no reason for the two of them to have contact.

"What happened between you and August?"

"I don't want to talk about it." She says as she finishes drilling in the last screw. "There was something he wanted to know and unfortunately, I couldn't give him the answers he was looking for." She picks up one of the heavy crates filled with various top-shelf liquors.

Surprised by how easily she lifted it he starts to help her shelve it all. "August told me that you know about what he used to do for a living. All of it."

"Yea, he told me—or I found it out for myself, I guess. Although I didn't know about the whole—acid, teeth pulling, and how it was basically a performance near the end—thing until a few days ago but yea I know about Casper."

Even though August told him she knew, he is still shocked by her calm demeanor as she recounts everything they did. "Clever...Anyway, you and I both know that I never believed you were just a dancer. Or that you are now just a club owner."

"Yea, so?" She asks growing more and more annoyed, she has managed to keep August off her mind for the past weeks but this is making that pretty much impossible.

"So, I don't know what happened between the two of you, but whatever it is, it can't be worse than finding out he used to kill people for a living. He's making everyone's life hell. He's never sober and keeps showing up to work with bruises."

"I'm sorry that you have to deal with that but he made the decision to break up. Not me." She continues unloading bottles but the sound of the glass slamming on glass is making it apparent she is not happy about this whole conversation. "If he is in a piss poor mood then that is nobody's fault but his own because I told him that I can't tell him what he wants to know right now and he doesn't want to wait until I can. He wants to come up with his own conclusions and call me—Look, he is the one who decided that all of a sudden I am untrustworthy and I can't be with someone who doesn't trust me." Alexia tosses the empty crates to the floor then picks up the next one and lets it slam against the bar as the bottles inside rattle.