18. Briar
18
brIAR
H e’s standing by my bedside when I wake up. My heart immediately starts pounding in my rib cage.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, scrambling back against the pillows.
“I need you,” he growls. His eyes drag down my body. Even though it’s just his eyes, it feels like a caress. His gaze turns my nipples into sharp diamonds. And he notices.
“What...what do you need?” I ask. I’m breathing hard, but my breaths keep getting stuck in my throat. None of the oxygen reaches my lungs, and it’s making me dizzy.
He runs his hand down his chin and curses in Russian.
“Can you put some clothes on first?” he asks.
I don’t trust myself to move. He sighs, walking over to the closet. He picks out a cotton summer dress and holds it out to me.
“Wear this,” he commands.
I take the dress from him. Our fingers brush, and it feels like a bolt of lightning straight to my core.
The puppy yawns, breaking the tension between us. He opens his sleepy eyes and lifts his small head. When he spots Dimitri, he lets out a happy bark and runs toward him.
The little puppy can barely contain his excitement. He wiggles his butt and swishes his tail until Dimitri picks him up.
It’s obvious the puppy adores him.
Dimitri’s face lights up with a full smile. I don't think I've ever seen him happy before. He looks so handsome that it feels like a punch to the gut.
“Hey, Whiskey,” Dimitri says.
Whiskey . The name suits the little brown puppy.
Dimitri holds the puppy close to his chest. It’s a strange thing to witness—a giant brute of a man holding a tiny puppy so delicately.
The need in my blood thickens.
Dimitri walks toward the glass wall and stares out at the ocean. The sight of his broad shoulders makes my thighs clench together.
Against my will, I have a vision—those broad shoulders wedging my thighs apart as he feasts on me. Gripping my hips possessively as his mouth makes love with my sex.
“You’re staring,” he says.
I blush, looking away.
“Why do you want me to get dressed?” I ask. “Are we going somewhere?”
“There’s something I need to show you,” he says. I wait for him to give me more details, but he doesn’t offer any.
I turn away from him.
I’m aware that he can see my reflection on the glass wall. But instead of going behind the dressing screen for privacy, I strip off my silk pajama shorts in the middle of the room. My bottom is still sore from yesterday. There are red imprints of his hand on my ass. And I know he can see all of it as I shimmy into the dress he gave me.
When I turn around, I see that he’s not facing the ocean view anymore.
He’s been watching me.
“You look pretty when you’re marked by me,” he says.
He puts the puppy down and walks toward me.
His face has bad intentions written all over it. His eyes make promises of sin and debauchery.
“You won’t believe the day I’ve had, solnishko ,” he says, stopping in front of me. “But you make it feel like it’s all going to be okay. You’re a bright ray of sunshine in my dark world.”
I’m overwhelmed.
Not by him. But by my body’s reaction to him.
He’s looking at me like I’m a hidden oasis in the middle of a desert. And…all I want is to comfort him.
I want him to seek refuge in me.
And that’s so much worse than the lust I’ve grown accustomed to.
“What do you want from me?” I ask.
He studies me for a moment before looking away.
“It’s about your mother,” he says. “She was found alive. In Australia. I had my men bring her to this island.”
It gets hard to breathe again. And this is nothing like the breathlessness his broad shoulders induce in me.
This feels like drowning.
“You brought her here?” I ask.“Why on earth would you do that?”
“Because I had no intention of letting her go,” he says.
I wrap my arms around myself. My body trembles as I shake my head. “You don’t know her. You don’t know what she’s capable of. She’s going to find a way. She’s going to come for me.”
“Briar, something happened.” He swallows, like he’s unsure about how to continue.
“She escaped, didn’t she?” I ask, trying to read his face.
His eyes lower to my shaking hands. I’m not proud of how terrified I am of my own mother. But this is something I have no control over.
He reaches for my hands.
And I don’t know how he does it, but he erases all of my fear. He takes it all away and replaces it with something I’m not familiar with—a strange calmness.
“She’s not going to hurt you, Briar,” Dimitri says. “She can’t.”
“What do you mean she can’t?” I ask.
“The reason I’m telling you all this is because I need you to identify her,” he says.
“What?”
“I need you to identify her body,” he says.
“I don’t follow.”
“Briar, your mother was killed,” he says. “One of my men killed her before pulling the trigger on himself. He was blackmailed into doing it. The only thing I don’t understand is what her motive could possibly be.”
I don’t know what to say.
He found my mother, and now she’s gone. She’s truly gone. It feels like a heavy weight is lifted off my shoulders.
“Are you certain that she’s dead?” I ask.
“Yes, she’s very dead,” he says.
“Then why do you need me to look at her?” I ask.
“Because there’s something strange about her,” he says.
“How so?” I ask.
“She looks like your mother, but she also doesn’t.”
“What does that even mean?” I ask. The ringing in my ears is back again.
“It means that I just need you to identify her body. Can you do that for me?”
“Do I have a choice?” I ask.
“I know you’re not used to violence and death,” he says gently, squeezing my hands.
I pull my hands away.
A humorless chuckle leaves my lips. “It’s not that I’m not used to it. It’s the opposite. Violence is all I’ve ever known. And that’s why I do all I can to distance myself from it.”
The puppy yawns in the sunlight, already sleepy again.
I know I can’t stay here. But it’s alarming how this man and this house and this puppy are starting to feel like home.
“I know I’m asking a lot. And I understand if you don’t want to do this,” he says.
“You mean that?” I ask.
He nods. “I do.”
“I want to see her,” I say.
“Are you certain?” he asks.
“I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for myself. I need to see her dead with my own eyes.”
Dimitri searches my face again. I don’t like the tenderness I see in his eyes. I much prefer it when they’re hooded with dark lust.
He escorts me out of the guesthouse.
The sun is warm against my skin, but I feel cold inside. And I know that the ice inside me won’t thaw until I know for sure that my mother is truly not a threat to my sisters and me anymore.
Dimitri walks by my side, casting furtive glances my way.
I do my best to ignore him.
For the first time since I got here, I look at the rest of the island. The main house is a sleek, modern mansion with glass walls and sharp edges. The white surface is nearly blinding under the tropical sun.
The house itself is impressive, but it’s nothing compared to the natural beauty of the lush forest it’s set against. The trees form a giant green wall that looks nearly impenetrable. And every little part of it is filled with life and vitality, qualities I wish I possessed.
Guards are stationed everywhere, but they don’t even turn to look at us as we pass by. I wonder if they were given orders not to look at me.
Dimitri stops in front of the stables. There aren’t any horses here, but I see bales of hay stacked to the side.
My steps slow when I see her.
I clamp my hand over my mouth.
My mother is tied to a chair. Her head is slumped forward, lifeless. It’s clear that they tried to wipe away as much blood as they could, but the sight of her like this still pierces my heart. She wasn’t a good mother by any means, but she was still my mother. She’s the person I used to look up to as a child, before I started noticing that everything wasn’t as it seemed.
“Come closer,” Dimitri says, offering his hand to me. “Let’s get this over with.”
I glance down at his large hand before taking it.
“She was acting strange,” he explains. “She was claiming that we had the wrong woman. She was begging us to let her go.”
“Begging?” I say, looking up at him.
“Crying too,” he says.
I glance back at my mother.
The estate I grew up in was a large one, but I knew my way around it. I knew where all the secret passageways and vents were. I eavesdropped on conversations that weren’t meant for my ears, and never once did I hear my mother beg or cry.
It simply wasn’t like her.
“I’ve never seen her cry before,” I say. “She’s too proud for that.”
Dimitri walks behind the chair and gently lifts my mother’s head. And instantly, I know I’m looking at someone who looks almost identical to my mother.
“It’s not her,” I say, peering closer. “There are grooves on her forehead. Sun spots. Fine lines. Her cheekbones aren’t as sharp. Her jaw has never seen Botox. Whoever this woman is, she’s never been under a plastic surgeon’s knife.”
Dimitri takes a deep breath. “Are you certain, Briar?”
“One hundred percent,” I say. My heart pounds hard against my rib cage. “But that doesn’t explain why she looks so much like her. Who was she?”
“That I don’t know,” he replies.
“Then why was she killed?” I ask.
“As I already told you, it was a murder-suicide,” he says.
I look at the woman. Her resemblance to my mother is jarring to say the least.
“Are you okay?” Dimitri asks.
I swallow. “It’s just a lot to take in at once.”
“I have some questions about your mother,” he says. “Is it okay if I ask them?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“Can you tell me any identification marks that your mother has?” he asks.
“Um, she has a mole on her right wrist.”
He opens the dead woman’s right wrist, showing skin that’s unmarked by a mole.
“She has another one over her upper lip. She claims that she’s had it all her life, but I know it wasn’t always there. She had it tattooed as a beauty mark,” I say.
“Anything else?” he asks.
“She has a tattoo on the back of her neck,” I say. “It’s of a long sword with a snake coiled around it.”
He checks the back of the woman’s head.
“No tattoo,” he says. “I need one more.”
“She has a birthmark on her stomach,” I say. “Right beside her belly button.”
He lifts the shirt. There’s no birthmark on this woman’s soft belly. That’s another thing. My mother had washboard abs.
I can’t stop staring at the hole in her head.
“How did you know?” I ask.
“Sorry?”
“That it wasn’t my mother,” I say, looking at Dimitri.
“You sister,” he says. “Chloe said she stabbed her, but there aren’t any scars on her torso.”
I remember Chloe telling me about that at the hospital. I wish my sister were here with me right now. She always has a way of making sense of things.
“Do you think this woman is related to my mother?” I ask him. “She could pass for a sister. Or even a twin.”
“Did your mother ever mention having a sister?” he asks.
I shake my head. “She was an only child.”
“Maybe she’s a doppelg?nger,” he says. “Someone who just had the ill fortune to look exactly like your mother.”
“I don’t know if I believe in doppelg?ngers,” I say.
“It’s said that everyone has six people in the world who look exactly like them,” he says.
“That’s the kind of stuff that exists in telenovelas and movies,” I say. “Not real life.”
“You’d be surprised,” he murmurs.
“Do you know anyone in real life who has seen their doppelg?nger?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” he says. “Vera Reznikova, the eldest daughter of the head of the Chicago Bratva, has the exact face of Damian Innocenti’s sister. The Innocentis have a pure Italian bloodline, so there’s no way they have common ancestry. It’s just a coincidence.”
I shake my head and look at the woman. She was collateral in something she was never meant to be a part of. I don’t know who she is or where she’s from, but I feel a sadness deep inside my heart.
“Are we done here?” I ask.
Dimitri nods. “Yes.”
I wrap my arms around myself. The chill inside me has spread to the rest of my body now. And not even the brightest sunlight can get rid of it.
“Why do you care so much?” I ask. “About finding my mother?”
“I want to say that I’m doing this for you, but that wouldn’t be the complete truth,” he says. “As you already know, your mother is involved in nefarious activities. She’s part of a network of individuals who have more money and power than they know what to do with. So they found a new hobby—human trafficking. They’re conducting it on a large scale, and things are starting to get out of hand.”
My heart beats hard against my rib cage as I digest his words.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”I ask.
I expect him to laugh at me for even asking that. I expect him to ridicule me about how sheltered and spineless I am. But he does no such thing.
“If I think of something, I’ll let you know,” he says. And then he steps closer toward me. He places his index finger under my chin.
And just like that, I can feel the sunlight on my skin again.
The chill is gone.
And it’s replaced by a heat so raw and primal that it rocks me to my core.
This man is danger. He’s a hunter laying out an elaborate trap. And I’m his puppet on a string, walking right into the middle of it.
I’m placing myself right where he wants me.