11. Dahlia
11
DAHLIA
I t’s just after ten in the morning when I find the notice on my door.
I woke up late, having used another sick day so I can try to figure out what the hell I’m going to do now. I managed to choke down a few bites of oatmeal before my stomach threatened to rebel, and tried to start doing a few of the chores that were neglected while I was gone, including taking out the trash.
I’m on my way back from the chute when I see the paper taped to my front door, and the large letters at the top of it.
Eviction Notice.
My stomach drops instantly, dread and nausea overwhelming me as I cover my mouth with one hand and snatch the paper off of the door with the other, rushing back inside. I make it to the kitchen sink before I throw up, the paper fluttering down to the counter and staring up at me as I grab a glass for water to rinse out my mouth.
I knew this was coming. I knew it. But the sight of it in black and white feels like a punch to the gut. I read the notice twice, and I know there’s nothing I can do. Not really.
I could try to pawn some jewelry, even though just the thought makes my face burn hotly, shame rippling through me. I probably have some other things I could sell. But that won’t fix next month, or the month after. It won’t give me enough to put down first and last and a security deposit on a new place, not in New York. It might buy me a little time, but ultimately, this will just happen again.
I can’t afford this apartment. I already knew that, but I thought I would have that fifteen thousand to help me move. I thought?—
I thought so many things that have turned out not to be true.
Fighting back tears, I reach for my phone, calling Evelyn. She answers on the second ring, her voice immediately worried when she hears the tears in mine.
“I’m getting evicted.” Saying it out loud is even worse than seeing the notice, and I slump down to the floor, my back against the counter. “I just got the notice on my door. My father froze the joint bank account, so I have maybe…two hundred dollars? I don’t know what I’m going to do. And don’t say you’ll pay it, Evie, because I don’t want you to do that. It’s not a long-term solution, anyway.”
Even as I say it, I know what the long term solution is. I’m sure this baby is Alek’s—there’s no doubt in my mind about that. There’s no one else that it could be. And marrying him would solve every problem that I’m facing right now.
I just can’t quite believe that’s the only way.
“Come over,” Evelyn says immediately. “Alek isn’t here, he went out. Just come over, and we’ll figure this out. Or I can come over there?—”
“No, I’ll come to you.” The thought of spending even another second here, knowing I’m about to be ousted, makes me want to burst into tears all over again. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
The moment my footsteps echo in the entryway of the mansion, Evelyn pops out from the small living room, her hair up in a messy bun and her forehead creased with worry. “Dahlia,” she whispers, hurrying towards me to give me a hug. “Come on. I’ll get some tea, and we’ll figure this out.”
Thirty minutes later, I’ve filled her in on what happened when I went back home, on the final argument with my parents, and finding out that the accounts had been frozen when I got back. Evelyn clicks her tongue against her teeth, her eyes narrowing angrily.
“I always thought your father had a stick up his ass,” she mutters. “I didn’t like him when I met him at our graduation, even though I didn’t tell you that. But this is so much worse than anything I would have thought he’d do.”
“I know.” Tears well up in my eyes. “I knew it would be hard, on my own, but I thought I had time. I thought I’d at least have the money that was left. And now…” I bite my lip, hard. “I think I’m going to have to take Alek up on his offer.”
Evelyn’s brow furrows. “What offer?”
Somehow, it doesn’t surprise me that he didn’t say anything. “He came to my apartment yesterday evening. He offered to go ahead and marry me. To ‘take care’ of me.” I press my lips together, anger resurfacing at the memory of the conversation. “He made a point of telling me there wouldn’t be any affection or physical contact. And that if the baby turned out to not be his, he would want a divorce immediately.”
“He—” Evelyn blinks rapidly. “That’s a surprise. He was so angry at Dimitri for even suggesting marriage.”
“Maybe he felt guilty afterwards.” I shrug, the gesture lighter than what I really feel. “I don’t know, Evie. I don’t really care, honestly. But I don’t know what to do, and if I’m going to have this baby…”
“Is that what you want?” she asks softly, and I close my eyes for a moment, my teeth sinking into my lip again.
“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “But every time I think about the alternative, I feel…wrong. I know going ahead with the pregnancy isn’t the smart thing to do, and that it doesn’t make any sense, especially when Alek really wants nothing to do with any of this. But I just feel…”
“That’s what matters,” Evelyn interrupts. “I was so scared when I found out I was pregnant. I didn’t think Dimitri loved me, or that I was ever going to love him. I didn’t think that any of this would work. But it did, and?—”
“You and Dimitri had…something more than what Alek and I do, though,” I point out. “Alek hates me. And sometimes…honestly, after the last couple of conversations, he’s starting to make me hate him.”
“Oh, trust me, I made Dimitri furious sometimes,” Evelyn says with a laugh. “And sometimes I thought I hated him, too. But we were both dealing with our own demons. Our own things that we had to work through before we could find each other on the other side. I’m not saying it’ll work out that way with Alek. But this is all your choice, Dahlia. And if you want to take a chance…”
“I could divorce him eventually,” I blurt out. “If I’m miserable. Once I have a chance to figure all of this out, to save up for a move…if we still hate each other this much, I’ll divorce him. There’s nothing stopping me from doing that, right?”
“It’s frowned upon in families like these,” Evelyn says. “Dimitri won’t like it, but like you said, he can’t tell you what to do. He can’t stop you from filing for divorce, even if he could tell Alek not to. So technically, no. Alek, from what I’ve heard, has never been one to put a lot of weight on tradition, anyway. If you’re both making each other miserable, he probably wouldn’t fight it.”
“It would buy me time. Is that terrible of me?” I whisper, looking at my best friend. “To do this to buy myself time?”
“Maybe,” Evelyn says carefully. “But he’s been pretty terrible to you. He’s my brother-in-law, and he’s been through a lot—I don’t even know what, exactly. I don’t think Dimitri does, either. The way he’s behaved towards you is atrocious, though, in my opinion. I don’t know what’s going on with him, but I don’t think it excuses it.”
“I’m glad you have my back.” I give her a small, tight smile, the best that I can manage. “So that’s—is this what I’m doing? Marrying him for now, to buy myself time?”
“I married Dimitri as part of an arrangement between us. It was never supposed to be anything more than a business deal.” Evelyn laughs. “Far be it from me to tell you that you’re doing anything wrong by trying to get some time to get back on your feet.”
I swallow hard. “So what now?”
“Do you want to go home? I can tell Alek that you want to talk to him when he gets back. There’s no telling when that will be.”
I pause, considering. Part of me isn’t sure if I want to be here when he gets back, but another part likes the idea of waiting for him, of catching him off-guard, the way he did to me yesterday. I’m angry and hurt and confused, and part of me wants to take that out on him in some way.
He’s been through a lot. I don’t even know what, exactly. Evelyn’s words from a moment ago ring in my head, and I frown, biting my lip. I remember the scars I felt on his body when I touched him, that map of ridged flesh that told some story that he clearly didn’t want me to see, and I wonder if there’s more to his attitude than I’m letting myself see. If there’s a reason for how he’s acting, beyond him just being an asshole.
A part of me wants to pry into it, but I can’t find the energy right now. Every part of me feels taken up by the weight of what’s sitting on my own shoulders right now, and I don’t know if I have space for anything else. If I can bring myself to wonder about what’s happened to Alek when right now, I don’t even know where I’m going to live unless I marry him.
“I’ll stay and wait,” I tell Evelyn finally. If I go home to my apartment, I’m just going to sit and catastrophize about all the ways this could go wrong, and sink into a pool of depression over the impending loss of my apartment and the fear of what’s coming next. At least here, I have the distraction of being with my best friend, and I can get the satisfaction of catching Alek off-guard when he gets back.
Evelyn does everything she can to distract me in the meantime. She orders lunch from a nearby Italian bistro that we both like, and we sit in front of the fireplace in the living room, nibbling at pasta and salad and talking about the belated honeymoon that Dimitri wants to take her on to the Amalfi Coast.
“A ‘babymoon’, I guess is what everyone calls it these days,” she laughs. “Since I’m already pregnant. A last hurrah before we’re parents, although we’ve never actually been on vacation together. But now that the shop is coming along, and my shoulder is healed—” she rotates her shoulder a bit as she says it, wincing slightly. I feel a pang at the memory of how close I came to losing my best friend—when she was captured by a rival gang and nearly killed. Dimitri saved her, and his persistence and dedication to making sure she was safe made me like him better, more than anything else. “Maybe in June, we’re thinking it might be a good time to go.”
My stomach tightens, the idea of Evelyn and Dimitri going on vacation suddenly cast in a new light. June isn’t all that far away, only a couple of months, and now I envision myself alone here in the mansion, into my second trimester of my own pregnancy and alone with Alek. A shiver of fear runs down my spine, my stomach flipping at the uncertainty of everything, and I momentarily wonder if I’m going to be able to keep my lunch down.
Evelyn must have seen the blood drain out of my face, because she covers my hand with hers, looking at me reassuringly. “Of course, if things aren’t okay here, then we won’t go,” she promises. “Things are a little different now. And I’m going to make sure you’re okay through all of this, Dolly. I promise.”
She hasn’t used her old nickname for me in a long time—Dolly, like I call her Evie—and it sends a warm feeling through me, making me momentarily feel like maybe things will be okay. Like at least I have my best friend, even if everything else is crumbling around me.
And then I hear the door open, the heavy tread of boots out in the entryway, and every muscle in my body locks up again.
“Shit.” Evelyn tenses too, and I take a deep breath, pushing myself up off of the couch.
“I’ll go talk to him,” I say quietly, and head towards the doorway of the living room.
When I step out, I see Alek in the entryway, heading for the stairs. I clear my throat, softly at first and then a little louder, calling out after him.
“Alek.”
He freezes in place, and I get that brief moment of satisfaction as his hand goes still on the railing, his shoulders immediately tensing as he turns around a moment later.
“You just keep popping up, don’t you?” he says, his jaw tight, and I narrow my eyes, a flood of anger and hurt making it momentarily feel hard to breathe.
“If you’d used a condom the way I told you to, you would never have had to see me again,” I bite out. “But here we are.”
His face is utterly expressionless, except for that clenched jaw, tight enough that I’m surprised I don’t hear his teeth crack. “Here we are,” he echoes. “What do you want, Dahlia?”
Despite everything, hearing him say my name in that roughened voice, his Russian accent coloring the edges of the word, makes a shiver of desire run down my spine. He’s hateful, and angry, and I should regret every moment of that night we spent together—but looking at him, I know what happened was all but unavoidable. I’ve never seen a man so perfectly crafted to make me weak for him.
“I came to tell you that I want to take you up on your offer,” I choke out. “The marriage.”
One of Alek’s dark blond brows rises, almost up into his hairline. “Yesterday you were telling me to get out of your apartment. What changed?”
My stomach twists at the thought of admitting to him that I found an eviction notice on my door this morning. “Does it matter? Do you care ?”
He looks at me flatly. “No. So, you agree to my terms for a marriage? No?—”
“No expectation of affection or physical contact. Sure.” I narrow my eyes at him. “After the way you’ve acted, I don’t want you to touch me again anyway. So that should be easy.”
Something dark and dangerous flickers in Alek’s eyes, but he says nothing for a moment. “And if the child isn’t mine, we’ll divorce immediately,” he adds finally, and I clench my teeth, but I nod.
“Since you seem so insistent on not believing me, yes,” I snap. “But it is yours.”
He shrugs. “We’ll see.”
It takes everything in me not to stamp my foot and scream in frustration, but I can only imagine what Alek’s reaction to that would be. Probably to call me a child or taunt me in some way, and I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.
Better get used to it, if you’re going to be married to him for a while.
“Is that all?” he asks, and I blow out a sharp breath between my pursed lips.
“I guess it is.” I swallow hard, trying to wrap my head around how all of this is happening. I’ve never spent a lot of time imagining what a proposal or wedding might look like for me, but I know it wasn’t this. An angry man staring me down from a distance, looking as if he feels as trapped as I do right now.
“I’m sure you and Evelyn can hammer out the details.” He pivots, turning away from me and heading up the stairs, and for a brief second, I have the strangest urge to call after him. To ask him what Evelyn meant earlier, when she said he’d been through a lot.
But I doubt he’d tell me, if he hasn’t even told them.
Evelyn emerges a moment later, her lips pressed together in a thin line. “You heard most of that?” I guess, and she nods.
“I’ll tell Dimitri,” she says. “And then it’s time to make sure you have the best wedding we can throw together.”
—
I don’t have any real desire to make anything out of this wedding, but I know Evelyn is trying to repay what I did for her when she agreed to marry Dimitri—when I made sure that she had a gorgeous wedding dress and everything that could make the day as good as it could possibly be for her.
The week after the decision is made passes in a whirlwind. Dimitri is clearly pleased that Alek has stepped up, and promises me that as a part of the Yashkov family now, everything I need will be taken care of. I can’t pretend that it’s not a relief to hear that, when everything is so uncertain, but what I didn’t think about until Evelyn brings it up is that I’m going to have to move into the mansion sooner rather than later.
“You have three days before you’re supposed to be out,” she says, giving me a sympathetic look. “You might as well go ahead and move in here, rather than waiting and going to a hotel, or something. It’s not as if you and Alek are going to share a bedroom after the wedding, anyway.”
It hits me that that’s true—another strange part of this ‘marriage’. I won’t share a room or a bed or a life with my new husband…just a child, and I can’t begin to imagine how that will work out. But, I remind myself, if it doesn’t work—if he’s as terrible at being a father as he seems to be at being a person, generally, then I can leave. I can take my baby, and go, and I doubt he’d even try to come after us.
“I’ll send over as much help as you need to move,” Dimitri promises, and he does just that. Getting me out of my apartment is a flurry of activity over the next two days, so much so that there’s hardly any time for me to let myself be sad over it, which is a blessing in disguise. Evelyn helps me pack, and there’s a never-ending stream of Dimitri’s men who come in and out of my apartment, carrying boxes down to a waiting van that will take them to the mansion, or to another van that will take what I want to donate to a local charity—things like my dishes and cookware that I won’t need any longer.
It feels almost dream-like, like I’ve been snatched out of my own reality and thrust into someone else’s. It’s not until Evelyn shows me to my room on the second floor of the mansion that it hits me, as I step inside, and I feel my throat tighten with tears that I try very hard to not let fall.
“Alek’s room is towards the back of this floor,” she says as we step inside. “I asked the staff to make up this room for you so there’d be as much space between the two of you as possible.”
“Thanks,” I manage, looking around as I take it all in. The room itself is beautiful. It has a large window that overlooks the gardens to one side of the mansion—currently just beginning to bloom with April flowers—and a soft-looking armchair next to it with a throw blanket over the back. The furniture is all dark, carved wood, the bed, nightstand, vanity and wardrobe all matching, and the floor is a wood that’s a few shades darker still, with a large blue and white rug stretched over the middle of it. There’s a four-poster bed made up all in white, with an embroidered lace duvet and piles of pillows, and a door on the far side that I assume leads to a bathroom. It’s luxurious and beautiful, even with the boxes piled along the walls and on one side from my apartment that all need to be unpacked, and I know Evelyn went to a lot of trouble to try to make me feel at home here.
But I can’t help feeling trapped, all the same. I press my hand against my still-flat stomach, reminding myself of why I’m doing this, even though it still doesn’t feel real. None of this does.
“I have an appointment for us tomorrow to go look at wedding dresses,” Evelyn says. “I know you might not really care about that, but I think it’s worth trying,” she adds. “You can have some part of this for yourself, even if your groom isn’t making this easy for you.”
I nod, biting my lip. My immediate reaction is to tell her not to bother, that I’ll throw on a dress from my closet and call it a day, but I know she’s trying to make this better for me.
“There’s tradition that has to be upheld too,” Evelyn says quietly, as if she can hear my racing thoughts. “Even if you wanted to just go to the courthouse and be done with it—which I’m sure you probably do—Alek is the second son of the Yashkov Bratva. If he’s getting married, it’s expected that it’ll be an event. We have to go along with that, for the sake of the Bratva. If Alek was married without any ceremony, the other bosses might take it as an insult—the ones Dimitri is allied with. The Irish and the Italians.”
I nod numbly. “Sure. Whatever we need to do.” I can understand the need for all of that, theoretically, but it’s not really sinking in right now. I’m not sure anything will. Not until all of this is over—but right now, I can’t see when it will be over. There’s so much to get through before then.
Evelyn pauses. “Do you want help unpacking?”
I shake my head. “No. Thank you, though. I think I just…need a minute.”
Evelyn nods. “Dinner is usually at seven-thirty. But if you want me to have the staff bring you up a tray so you don’t have to sit at the dinner table with Alek, I understand. It’s no problem.”
“Okay,” I whisper. “Thank you.”
Evelyn steps forward, giving me a quick, tight hug, before walking out of the room and closing the door gently behind her. I look around the room that’s my home now, at the piles of boxes that still need to be unpacked, and I feel that heavy, sinking sensation start to pull at me, dragging me down.
I drop to the floor, pulling my knees up to my chest as the tears finally start to fall. They start slow, then tear out of me in deep, wracking sobs, and I press my forehead to my knees, wondering how everything unraveled so quickly. How my life could have changed so fast—an unexpected pregnancy, the loss of my home, being forced to choose between marriage to two different men, neither of whom really wanted me.
I don’t know how long I sit there and cry, or how much time passes before I think I hear the tread of heavy boots in the hallway outside, stopping for just a moment outside my door. My stomach tightens, and I stifle a sob, sure that it’s Alek and not wanting him to hear me cry.
After a moment, the footsteps move on. And I bury my face in my arms and start to cry again.