25. Dimitri
25
DIMITRI
T he morning after the holiday party at the Met, I’m awoken even earlier than usual by a text from Vik, telling me to come down to the warehouse by the docks. I know he wouldn’t send me a message at this hour of the morning unless it was something that I wouldn’t want to wait on, so I get up carefully, not wanting to wake Evelyn, and dress in the semi-dark, texting my driver before heading downstairs.
Last night was torture. At dinner, we talked more than we have in weeks, and at the gala she was happy and bright, talking with Dahlia and sipping champagne and finally agreeing to dance with me after a couple of glasses. I wanted to take her home and take her straight to bed. Which I did, eventually—but nothing happened, other than her falling asleep while I stared at the ceiling, wondering how I managed to get entangled with the one woman in the world who could apparently make me feel this way.
I didn’t know I was capable of it—of having to fight off deeper feelings for someone. I’ve never even come close before. And this—I feel as if I’m constantly having to ward off letting myself fall for Evelyn, from blurting out things that can only complicate matters far more than either of us are willing to entertain.
Vik is waiting for me when I get down to the docks, smoking a cigarette in the early morning light. He tosses it aside as I get out of the car, grinding it out under his shoe as he turns to me. “We got one of the Crows,” he says gruffly. “One of the guys who was there the day Evelyn almost got snatched. We leaned on him a little, just enough to make sure he really is who we thought. The rest we left for you, boss.”
“Appreciate it.” I stride towards the heavy metal door, the frigid, wet cold cutting through my jacket as I step inside and see the man hung from a meathook dangling from the ceiling.
He’s stripped down to just his jeans, his torso bearing the marks of how Vik and my men ‘leaned’ on him. Burns are scattered across his pale stomach, one of his nipples cut away and cauterized, and his mouth is swollen. His bare toes, purple from the cold, just brush against the bare ground, and I can see the swelling in his wrists and elbows from how long he’s been hanging from the hook.
Primed to answer my questions, that’s for sure. Or pissed off enough by now that he’ll fight me. But either way, he’s going to sing, and then I’ll put him out of his misery.
I shrug off my jacket, rolling up my sleeves as the man’s eyes slowly open. They’re puffy, too—Vik and the guys must have knocked him around the head a bit. I’m fine with that. They deserve to have a little fun, too. And I can’t imagine this guy made it easy for them, picking him up from wherever they nabbed him.
I reach for the knife on the table, pressing the tip against one finger as I approach him. “Whose plan was it to try to grab Evelyn outside the restaurant?” He’s already warmed up, I see no reason not to go straight to the real questions. And I’m in no mood to play games.
The man spits on the floor, eyes narrowed in on me—from anger or because he’s been hit in the face too many times, I’m not quite sure. “We were told to go with the woman. To watch for her to come out of the restaurant and then try to grab the dark-haired one.”
“What was the woman’s name?” I step closer, close enough to smell the acrid scent of his fear, and he flinches back.”
“I don’t know!” The man shouts, his voice echoing in the nearly-empty space of the warehouse. “He didn’t tell us her name. Just to follow her lead, and wait outside until we grabbed the dark-haired one on the way out.”
It’s not actually necessary for the man to tell me a name. I already know who he’s talking about, just based on circumstances—Nicci Armand, and the knowledge makes me see red. Rage burning through me at the thought that Nicci is part of this. I knew she must be, from the moment Gus told me what happened, but the confirmation makes me burn with fury all over again.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned is an old adage for a reason, but I never really wanted Nicci. She had to have known that. And she can’t have imagined that I wouldn’t find out about this, or that I’d want her once it was all over. Once she’d succeeded in hurting Evelyn.
Unless she just didn’t care.
That thought makes me angrier still. I reach up, pressing the knife tip into the cauterized wound where the man’s nipple was, and he lets out a cry, jerking against the ties binding him to the meathook.
“What was the plan?” I demand. “Once you took Evelyn, what were you supposed to do with her?”
Just saying the words aloud makes me feel ill. I’ve been angry before, felt the panicked, sick sensation of knowing someone I cared about was going to be hurt—and then, when it was my brother, there was nothing I could do about it.
This time, I can. I can stop them from getting to Evelyn, stop them from hurting her. Stop them from taking her away from me—but what startles me is just how deep that need runs, how desperately I need to keep her safe. As if what I feel for her is much, much stronger than anything I ever meant to feel.
I twist the knife deeper, and the man lets out a deep, sobbing groan.”Take her to…Valenti,” he manages. “Get you to…cede territory, for her return.” He opens his eyes again, staring at me, pure malice in his eyes. “Valenti had a betting pool on how many pieces would have to come off of her and be sent to you before you’d finally give him what he wanted.”
Rage flares up in my gut, so hot that I drive the knife in deeper, dragging it down and opening up a bleeding slash in the man’s chest before I can stop myself. “He’s going to die for that,” I promise the man. “But you’ll die first. Painfully, unless you tell me everything you know.”
The man coughs, a thick, choking sound. “The woman was…not paid. Something…else. Closer.” He smiles at me, teeth bared and bloody. “I’m not fucking…telling you anything…more.”
And he doesn’t. Not when I go to work on his fingernails, or his molars, not when I put a bullet in his knee. He’s hanging, bloody and battered from the meathook by the time the sun is fully risen, and I’m sweating, but he doesn’t offer anything else up. Just the same two words, over and over— look closer .
I don’t know what that means. When he’s so broken that he’s incapable of speech any longer, I leave him to bleed out, too unsatisfied with the responses to give him an easy death. I don’t know what look closer means, but I know I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about it until I figure it out. And I know that I want to keep Evelyn close—as close as possible—until I do.
I turn the man’s words over and over in my head, as I tell the driver to take me to the family mansion, instead of back to the penthouse. I don’t want Evelyn to see me covered in blood, and I don’t want to answer questions about what happened yet. I want time to think. To try to piece together what Nicci could possibly have been offered that would have caused her to make such a stupid fucking decision. What the Crows could have offered her that would have been worth it.
Not money, that’s for sure. Nicci has more than enough of that. It occurs to me that her father might have cut her off, for failing to close the deal with me, and I feel a small stab of guilt, but it doesn’t last. If she had been punished for my decision, she could have come to me, and I would have made it right. She knows enough about this life, about how a true pakhan should behave, to know that I would have set right any injury her father did over something that was my choice. If she chose to make a deal with the fucking Crows instead, I have no sympathy left for her.
I doubt her father did cut her off. Gossip like that spreads, and I would have heard something. My father would have said something to me, if nothing else. But if he did, it still doesn’t make sense. Barca Valenti, so far as I know, doesn’t have the resources to make up for a loss like that. To make it worth her while.
There’s something wrong with this. Some piece of it that’s missing. I text Vik, telling him to keep a lookout for anyone higher up in the Crows they can pinch. I’ll torture every man straight to Barca if I have to, and then I’ll do the same to him, if need be. Whatever it takes to keep Evelyn safe.
The ferocity of that need sticks with me, making me feel more off-balance and uncertain than I ever have before. All my life, I’ve been taught to keep my emotional distance from anyone I might care about. From a spouse, from children, from family in general—for this exact reason. Because emotion can be used against a man to make him weak. It makes him irrational, makes him lash out, makes him make decisions that he otherwise might not. It takes reason out of the equation, and reduces a man down to his basest urges.
Love, I’ve always been taught, is a weapon that’s used against you. Not something a man, let alone a pakhan , should allow himself to feel.
I let myself love someone only once—my brother, who I grew up with, who was my closest and best friend, who I covered for when his hotheaded antics got him in trouble with our father and who I would have stood by through anything. But love lured him away from us. It got him killed. And it made me spend years worth of time and resources trying to find him, to rescue him, until our father put a stop to it. Until he called me weak for exactly that.
By then, we were sure that he was dead, anyway. But I couldn’t give up. Just as I feel that same drive, that same ferocious need to get to the bottom of this, now. Not because my own position is being threatened, not out of ego, but because Evelyn is being targeted.
Am I falling in love with Evelyn? I’m not sure how I would know if I was. It’s different than what I felt for my brother, of course. Something more primal, something that pulls at me in a different way, that makes me want to hold her close and devour her, all at the same time. Something that makes me wonder how I’m ever going to let her go, when the time comes.
I should fight what I’m feeling, I know that. It’s what I’ve always been told, what I’ve always been taught. But I’m no longer sure that I want to.
Instead, I find myself wondering more and more—what would it be like, if I allowed myself to have something real with her? If we both allowed ourselves to try? And I think, after our dinner last night, that she’s wondered the same thing too. I thought I saw it in her face, as we talked over drinks…that same question. That same urge to find out what this could be like if we let it play out, and saw where it could take us.
For the first time in my life, I want to know what it might feel like to fall in love with a woman. And for the first time, I’m starting to think that I might already have.
I spend the afternoon in my office at the mansion after getting cleaned up, trying to focus on work and mostly failing. When I get back to the penthouse, Evelyn is nowhere to be seen, but I passed Gus in the hall. I don’t think she’d try to leave without him again, not after what happened when she met Nicci for lunch, and I head up to the bedroom, wondering if she’s in the bath.
Instead, I find her propped up in bed, in lounge clothes and reading a book. The curtains are open, and she looks slightly pale.
“Are you alright?” I lean against the side of the doorway, frowning, and Evelyn looks up sharply, so startled she almost drops her book.
“Just feeling a little nauseous.” Her hand comes up to touch her throat almost automatically. “I—was sick earlier. I might have caught something.” She gives me a lopsided smile. “You should probably keep your distance.”
I’ve been keeping my distance from her for the last week, but that’s not why I feel a sudden pang in my chest. It’s more the odd normalcy of the conversation, the way it feels like something any married couple might talk about. A strange, ordinary intimacy that I’ve never had with anyone.
“Let me know if you need anything.” It sounds awkward, but I don’t know what else to say. I’ve never had someone in my house while they were sick. Never wondered if someone needed me to take care of them. I glance at her once more before heading back downstairs, and I see Buttons lying next to the couch, glancing at the door as if he needs something. He gets up, pacing past me and stopping in front of where his leash is hung on a hook near the door, and I frown.
It seems like he needs to go out. I start to pivot to go back upstairs and let Evelyn know, and then I hesitate, remembering how she looked. Tired and pale—definitely like she was getting sick.
I’ve never had a pet. Never had much to do with any animals, really. But after a moment’s more hesitation, I reach for the harness and leash, looking down at Buttons.
“You gonna make this easy on me?” I ask him, and his tongue lolls out, his small, furry ears twitching as he looks at me. “You are pretty cute. I can admit that.” I look at the harness for a moment before figuring out how it goes on him, and as I clip it on, he leans against my leg. “Decided I’m not so bad, after all?”
I take the dog out to the elevator and down to the main floor, ignoring the curious looks of my men stationed around the penthouse and lower floor as we walk out to the back courtyard. I let out the length on Buttons’ leash a bit, letting him sniff and walk around while he does his business, and then we head back up to the penthouse.
When we walk back in, Evelyn is standing at the kitchen counter with a takeout menu in her hand. Her eyes go wide as she sees me standing there with Buttons, and I shrug.
“You said you weren’t feeling good. I figured it was the least I could do.”
“The least you could—” She trails off, her mouth parted slightly, and I lean down to unhook Buttons from his harness. When I straighten again, that same expression is still on her face, and I chuckle, hanging up the harness and leash before walking over to her.
“It wasn’t that big of a deal,” I tell her, and she swallows hard, finally nodding.
“Of course,” she says softly. “Not that big of a deal. Thanks.”
Her eyes meet mine, though, as she says it, and I can see that it meant something to her. That I stepped across some line that made her soften to me—that there’s a moment here, if I want to take advantage of it. That this moment could change something between us.
I almost step closer to her. I almost close that distance between us, lean in, and kiss her. It would be so easy. Everything that I’ve been feeling today, every question I have about how it would feel to let go, to explore what I feel for her—I could have it answered, right here.
But instead, I step back. Evelyn swallows hard, again, and I feel the moment between us break as she looks back down at the menu, one of her hands tightening against the counter where she’s leaning against it.
“I’m going to order soup,” she says, her voice cracking slightly. “Do you want anything?”
There it is again. That intimacy. That normalcy . It strikes a chord deep within me, a craving that I’ve never felt before, and it fucking terrifies me. I’m the heir to the Manhattan Bratva, a man who has tortured and killed other men, a man who doesn’t know what it really feels like to fear something.
Until I’ve met this woman, who makes me feel as if I’m coming undone.
I shake my head, taking another step back. And then, giving into cowardice for the first time in my life, I pivot on my heel and walk away.