37. Dimitri
37
DIMITRI
“ Y ou son of a bitch,” I say, standing.
The detective keeps his eyes on Briar.
“You seem like a good person,” he says. “Please leave my apartment before the police take you in for investigation.”
“Why did you call them?” Briar whispers. “We were just here to talk.”
“You forced yourself into my home,” he says. “I had no choice but to call for help. There’s a reason Malorie hasn’t been able to touch me all these years. I sought asylum in France. The government has been protecting me.”
Briar stares at him, her eyes filled with disappointment.
Despite everything she’s been through, she’s still taken by surprise when people let her down.
I pull my gun from its holster and aim it at his head.
“I was going to try to be sympathetic, but you leave me with no choice,” I say.
This is what happens when I try to be the good guy.
Time and time again, I’m reminded that the only way to get any work done in my world is to be an asshole.
“Here’s the deal,” I say. “I know about your secret apartment upstairs. If you don’t take me there within the next ten seconds?—”
The detective huffs. “You think I’m scared of taking a bullet?”
“No, I don’t think you are,” I say. “But you are afraid of something bad happening to your sister. I know where she lives. And if you want her to remain safe and sound, you’ll do as I instruct.”
He glances at the front door.
In a few seconds, the police will break it down.
To help him make his decision faster, I walk toward him and press my gun to his temple.
“ Move , motherfucker,” I say.
With his jaw set, he walks toward the bedroom. We follow him.
I do a quick scan of his bedroom. There are piles of laundry on his bed and a wilting plant on the windowsill. Like the rest of this apartment, everything is in a state of disarray and decay.
The detective places his hand over a portion of the wall. I watch with curiosity as a red light scans his hand. He pushes at the wall, and a portion of it slides open to reveal a secret passageway. There’s a narrow spiral staircase that leads to the apartment upstairs. We step inside.
“Do the police know about your second apartment?” I ask, keeping my gun pointed at him.
“They don’t,” he says, his mouth set in a firm line.
I know he’s telling the truth.
He might have sought asylum in this country, but that doesn’t mean he would ever trust the government again. Not after what happened the last time.
In my research, I learned that he bought the penthouse apartment upstairs under a fake name. His intent was to use it for escape in case of an emergency. It was a safe house of sorts.
And he’s beyond pissed that I know about it.
As the wall behind us slides shut, I turn on the flashlight on my phone. In the background, I hear the front door breaking open. The police will search the apartment and come up empty.
“Will they be able to open this?” I ask the detective, tilting my head toward the wall.
“No, it’s activated by biometry,” he says. “And it blends into the wall, so they won’t be able to find it either.”
I can feel Briar watching me.
I don’t like that she’s a part of this, but I don’t have a choice. This has to do with her mother. She needs this closure before she can move on from her past.
I position myself in front of Briar as we climb the staircase.
When we reach the top, the detective scans his hand once more. The wall opens to reveal the second apartment.
My eyes sweep over the space before I enter it.
“How did you find out about this apartment?” the detective asks.
“It’s my job not to miss the finer details,” I say. “But I seemed to have underestimated you, anyway. You called the police right under my nose.”
“I had no choice,” he replies.
“It goes unsaid, but if you try anything stupid now, your sister will pay for your mistakes,” I say, looking at him to make sure he understands.
A storm is brewing in his eyes, but he gets it.
We walk through the second apartment. It’s an even more depressing version of the one downstairs. There are cobwebs in every corner, and the furniture is sparse. I want to crack open a window to let some air in, but I don’t want to risk the police seeing the movement.
I do a thorough scan of the place, making sure all of the doors and windows are locked.
Briar clears her throat. “There’s something I want to say.”
She sits on the edge of the couch and motions for the detective to sit down.
“Dimitri, can you please put the gun away?” she says, turning toward me. “It’s not necessary.”
I want to argue, but the fiery look in her eyes tells me she’s going to get her way. I lower my weapon.
She turns her attention back to the detective.
“Look, I’m just going to say this once, so I hope you listen,” she says. “My mother is an unstoppable force of evil in this world. She’s hurting children. Trafficking helpless women. Making deals with other despicable people. And from what little I know about you, I know that it was always your intention to make a difference in the world. This is your chance. And we can’t make any promises, but we’ll do our best to make sure none of it is traced back to you.”
The detective stares at a stain on the carpet. Just when I consider using more threats to get him to speak, he looks up.
His eyes are glassy with unshed tears.
“I owe it to Megan,” he says. “I want to tell you the truth not because you asked to hear it but because I need to make things right. Malorie took everything from me, and I need to do the same to her.”
Revenge.
He’s finally speaking my language.I put my gun back in its holster.
“After what happened to my fiancée, I stopped caring about things,” he continues. “I stopped caring about my appearance, my job, the rest of the people still in my life. I had a feeling Malorie was behind it, but there were never any clues. All I knew was that someone was after me. And they were powerful.”
“So you left the country,” I say.
He nods. “I thought it was for the best. But after the grief settled, I was filled with shame. I hated what had become of my life. I hated how powerless I felt.”
“My mother has a way of making people feel that way,” Briar says, pursing her lips.
I want to pull Briar into my arms.
After listening to the detective speak, I’m reminded once again of how fickle life really is. How you can lose everything in a single moment.
As the Pakhan of my Bratva, I always knew that my end would come sooner rather than later.
But for the first time, I don’t want to die. Not when I finally have something to live for.
I clear my throat.
“Tell us something that the rest of the world doesn’t know about Malorie Thorne,” I say.
He takes a deep breath. “I always knew that something about her wasn’t right. Her tears were fake; her eyes were too cunning. Everyone else saw what she wanted them to see, but I saw through her bullshit. And I suspected that she wasn’t the person everyone believed her to be.”
“You realized that she was a cold, vindictive bitch?” I say. “We already know that about her.”
“I’m not talking about her personality,” he says. “I’m talking about her identity.”
He looks dazed—like he just stepped through a portal into the past, reliving some of the most intense memories of his life.
I hear a noise from downstairs. We need to wrap this up quickly.
“We found someone,” I tell him. “She looked exactly like Malorie. A DNA test showed that she was her twin sister.”
He nods. This isn’t news to him.
“Yes, there was a twin,” he says.
“How long have you known?” I ask.
“I was a detective. It was my job not to miss the finer details,” he says, throwing my words back at me. “And there was a photograph. It was of the entire Thorne family standing in front of their mansion.”
Briar and I exchange glances.
“That was my first clue,” he says. “There was something odd about that photograph. It felt like there was more to it than what met the eye. And one night, I had too much to drink, and that’s when I spotted it.”
“What did you see?” I ask.
“The truth,” he says. “In the background, you could see?—”
He stands abruptly. Just when he does, the glass window behind him shatters. Bullets rip through his torso. I immediately lunge for Briar, flattening her to the ground.
The detective falls like a majestic oak tree, proud even in his final moments. Blood seeps from the four bullet holes in his chest.
My heart is once again pumping with pure adrenaline.
The trajectory of the bullet. It was meant for me, not for the detective. If he didn’t stand when he did, those bullets would have hit me.
I clasp my hand over Briar’s mouth before she starts screaming. I press my face against her hair.
“Baby, I know this is scary, but I need you to stay calm,” I say. “The police are still downstairs, and we need to get out of here before they find us.”
She’s breathing hard as she stares at the detective.
The light is slowly leaving his eyes, but the man is grinning at the ceiling. The smile makes him look twenty years younger. And for a moment, I see him for the man he once was.
“I see her,” he says, staring at something on the ceiling. “My Megan. She’s been waiting for me. She’s here for me now.”
And then he goes still.
Briar screams against my palm and buries her head against my chest. I hold her close as more bullets pepper the window. The rest of the glass shatters. From where I’m crouched, I can see the face of the hitman poised on the rooftop of the opposite building.
He locks eyes with mine.
With a manic grin, he moves his firearm, pointing it at me now. He’s about to press the trigger when someone beats him to it.
The hit man slumps to the ground, face down.
Dead.
“Dimitri, what’s happening?” Briar asks softly.
I’m at a loss for words. My head is reeling. And my heart feels like it’s drowning in a flood of emotions.
The front door is thrown open. A man’s silhouette appears against the gloomy Parisian sky—tall, broad, muscular. He steps inside. Icy-blue eyes land on mine.
“Hello, brother,” Rurik says.
My heart takes its final breath before it submerges.
I stand. “Rurik.”
“Quick,” he says. “We don’t have much time. You need to get out of here.”
“How did you find me?” I ask him.
“I always know where you are,” he says.
I hear a helicopter approaching. We’re on the rooftop, but there’s not enough space for the helicopter to land. This was the backup plan I had in case we couldn’t get away by foot.
I take Briar’s hand and help her up.
Rurik’s eyes flick to Briar. For the first time, he smiles.
“So you’re the girl who made my brother go crazy,” he says. He extends his hand toward her. “I’m Rurik. It's nice to meet you. Although I wish we could’ve met under more pleasant circumstances.”
Briar is still in shock as she shakes hands with my brother.
He leads us outside, where the helicopter hovers over the building. Two knotted ropes dangle from the aircraft.
“Go ahead, solnishko ,” I say, handing one of the ropes to Briar. She wraps her arms and legs around it. My men easily pull her up.
“Come with me,” I say to Rurik.
“I want to, but I can’t,” he says.
“Is there anything I can say that will change your mind?” I ask.
“I’m afraid not,” he says.
My little brother always liked doing things his own way. If he’s choosing to disappear for a while, he must have a reason for it. And when all of this is over, he’ll tell me all about it.
“I’ll always have your back,” Rurik says in Russian. It’s his way of telling me that he loves me.
Words evade me, so I pull him in for a tight hug. Sadness swells and surges inside me. Loss is something I’m familiar with, but I’ll never get used to a life without my brother.
“Go back to that island,” Rurik says. “You’re safest there.”
I look at the scars on his body. It’s the evidence of the torture he went through because of Max Montgomery.
“I haven’t forgotten,” I tell him, looking at a jagged scar on his collarbone that’s still healing.
“I know,” he replies.
We say goodbye.
I join Briar on the helicopter. We need to make a fuel stop between, but otherwise, we’re good to go. Briar climbs into my arms. I hold her against my chest.
“I’ll bring you to Paris another time, solnishko .” I press a kiss on top of her head.
“It all feels like one bad dream,” she says.
Welcome to my life .
“Are we in trouble with the French police?” she asks.
“No, they’ll blame it on the hitman and move on,” I say.
“Who sent the hitman?” she asks.
“Don’t worry about that right now,” I tell her, holding her close. I reassure myself over and over again that she’s safe.
“Was it my mother?” she asks.
My men and I exchange glances.
I recognized the hitman. I know who he works for. And it’s not Briar’s mother.
“Dimitri, if you really want this relationship to work, you can’t keep hiding things from me,” she says.
I press my palm against her belly.
How do I tell her that our whole relationship was built on a mountain of lies? I’m not the man she thinks me to be. She hasn’t seen the savage side of me. All she really knows is that she likes the way I make her feel. But she’s barely scratched the surface of who I am.
If she knew I was a wolf under sheep’s clothing, she’d run for her life.And before she does that, I need to be the one to let her go.
Because I haven’t just been lying to her, I’ve been lying to myself too.
I didn’t want to accept the truth.
And the truth is that she can’t ever truly be happy in my world.