A/N: HEY EVERYONE SORRY I DIDN'T POST YESTERDAY, I GOT HIT WITH A REALLY BAD FEVER SO I ONLY JUST GOT TO FINISH THIS CHAPTER. STILL A LITTLE SICK SO I DONT KNOW IF I CAN MAKE THIS WEEKS FOUR CHAPTERS BUT I WILL TRY. ALSO I HOPE YOU ALL ENJOY THIS CHAPTER. ONE OF MY FAVORITES SO FAR.

AS ALWAYS ENJOY! AND PLEASE RATE AND LEAVE A COMMENT!

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Standing at the door was an ugly looking, pissed off, and crazy looking man. The most notable was that he held in his hands a knife about six inches long. As Leo looked at Sadia’s face, he recognized that look only as pure and utter terror.

“Yusef!” she shrieked if fear as she saw his knife.

“You little whore! This is where you’ve been, huh you bitch? With this piece of white trash selling yourself in a dingy house! You’ve gone so low as to sell yourself to pigs but won’t do it for real men. I should just kill you and then have this trash here fuck your bleeding corpse. Who knows maybe I can kill you without damaging your organs.” He fumed as he walked over to them with the blade.

Leo was in between then and put his hands up to try and stop the crazed yusef, but before he could try he attacked them. Leo in a split second pushed her behind him and put his body in front of the blade. The replicator layer could stop bullets up to a .45. A little knife would do almost nothing to him, at least that’s what he thought. The man seeing that Leo was now in the way decided to slash upwards towards his neck. The man however in his rage couldn’t really aim all that well and ended up way higher than that. Deep and serious the knife cut through a side of his cheek nearly cutting it all the way through.

It was at that point Leo’s adrenaline kicked in. leaned forward and kicked the man in the chest as hard as he could, throwing the man back. What Leo didn’t know was that since he was wearing the replicators as a sort of second skin it enhanced his strength for combat. The man was flown back and thrown back against the broken door that was hanging off by a hinge. Leo then rushed in to kick the knife away as he told Sadia to call Alexi. The man was now laying on the ground unconscious or dead, Leo couldn’t tell.

Sadia was shaken up and holding on to Leo with a fierce grip after she got off the phone. A minute later a confused Alexi came into the room, he looked at the man and them the cut on Leo’s face. Cursing in Russian Alexi pulled out his phone and called someone and spoke to them in Russian. After a few seconds, hanging up he walked over to Leo and checked on his face.

“What happened?” he asked.

“My husband, he found me and tried to kill me.” She explained before Leo could say anything.

“Fuck. Leo did you do that to him?” Alexi said as he looked into Leo’s eyes.

“Yeah, I pulled her out of the way and he slashed my face, then I got so pumped up I kicked him in the chest.”

“Hell Leo, you killed him. He’s not breathing.” Alexi said.

Stunned at the news Sadia looked at Leo in fear and awe, while Leo was starting to feel sick. He didn’t mean to kill the guy, only get him away. Leo was beginning to feel his gut wrapping itself in knots at the revelation. The tightness hit him, he was about to throw up when Sadia wrapped her arm around him and whispered to him, “It’s ok Leo, Its ok. Don’t worry everything is going to be fine.”

Leo looked around as everything went black. In the darkness he saw Yusef charging at him again, except this time he looked like a corpse. He has grey skin, black eyes, and yellow teeth. It was as if Yusef had come back from death and was searching for him. He felt cold, clammy, and like his heart was trying to run out of his chest. He ran from the walking corpse, but to no avail the corpse was catching up.

“NO!” he yelled as Yusef kept after him in the darkness. With the blade in his pale grey hands he lunged at him, impaling him in the heart.

Shaking he sat up in his bed with Sadia there trying to keep him calm. Sweat ran down his back and face. He could feel his heart sill beating like a drum as he looked around on the bed. The first thing he noticed was that it wasn’t the basement where he normally slept, he was an unfamiliar bed. The next was that he was with Sadia and seeing her without her hijab on. He looked at her and again he fell into a deep trance of her eyes. Falling deep into her eyes he finally calmed down enough to think clearly.

“I tried to wake you up but you just started thrashing around.” She whispered to him as she walked over her closet. Pulling out a towel she walked over to Leo as so he could wipe his own sweat away. “You passed out after you heard you… heard the news.”

Grabbing the towel Leo wiped his forehead and heck when he felt his whole body go cold. Feeling around him he noticed he made most of the bed damp with his sweat. He noticed that although the replicators were on his body they just let the sweat through.

“I hope you don’t mind but I had Alexi bring you upstairs, he said he’d ‘take care’ of the body. Whatever that means.” She revealed as she took a seat on the bed next to him.

“I see.” Leo said in a dead tone. He knew he’d killed the man in self-defense but it didn’t change the fact that he still did it.

His first kill.

“Leo, stop.” Sadia pleaded.

Confused Leo just looked at her as he tried to figure out what she meant. Before he could say a word though she explained things too him.

“Leo I know that look in your eyes, that is guilt. I know because every night I would look in the mirror and give myself that same look before I ran away. I know that look Leo but don’t blame yourself, he was going to kill us and you saved us.” She pleaded with him.

“Also I know what it’s like to take a life, I think it’s time I told you why I ran away.” She despaired as tear drops flooded her eyes. Leo sat in silence as he watched her fumble her hands around as if she had a nervous rub.

“It started two years ago, Yusef and I were married and happy with our lives. During that time my mother and father were still alive and quite wealthy after moving here from the Saudi. They were rich, his family was rich, so they weren’t worried about money when I was married off. Then one morning I woke up and I overheard Yusef screaming on the phone.

“His family’s money was tied to terrorist attacks in England where under severe pressure from foreign powers, froze his accounts. After that my life went downhill, my family had no way of contacting me and I had no way to contact them. From that day forward I was what people call ‘a slave’. With the money from his family frozen, Yusef became more agitated, violent, and abusive. In all that time he’d been pushing me to try and support him with my own assets, mainly my body. He wanted me to sell myself to his rich friends so he could have spending money. After he tried a few times to convince me, I knew it would get worse. So I ran away and used some of the money I had stolen from him. That day an old woman saw me crying my heart out, she came up to me and started talking to me, gave me a hug then introduced me to Alexi. That same day she offered me protection and had her son do it, and he couldn’t refuse her. He may be a gangster, but he has a good heart.” She sighed as she continued her story.

“Did you know his mother lives three houses from here? You could never tell but he’d kill anyone she tell him to.” she said as she fiddled with her fingers, as she stared off to some distant corner of the room.

“Alexi protected me, his babushka protected me, and now so have you.” She cried, pushing her face into her hands and breaking down.

Leo just pulled her in and gave her a deep hug. Not one of lust but one of care. The kind of hug you give to someone who just really needs it. Embracing him broke her, it broke down her last wall of fear of Leo. The wall that had separated her from a relationship with him, that made her fearful of violent men, except that for the first time she met a man that wasn’t violent to her. For the first time in her life, she completely trusted someone other than her father.

With these walls broken down she looked up and fell asleep in his arms.