8. Alek
8
ALEK
“ W hat the fuck are you doing here?”
The words come flying out of Dahlia’s mouth before I can even fully process that she’s here , in my brother’s house, sitting next to my sister-in-law like they’re old friends.
Maybe they are. It occurs to me as I stand there, frozen, that I know next to nothing about Dahlia. Maybe she is friends with Evelyn, which would make this one hell of a coincidence. There’s not nearly enough degrees of separation in my life right now for my peace of mind, if that’s the case.
“I’m Dimitri Yashkov’s brother,” I tell her icily, when I’ve recovered enough to speak. “ That’s what the fuck I’m doing here.”
“Alek,” Evelyn chides gently, her voice slightly strangled, and I wonder why. I look between the two women, one of whom is chalk-white and faintly green around the edges, and the other who looks like she’s piecing something together at long last. Evelyn is the latter, and her eyes widen slightly as she looks at me a moment longer, and then turns back to Dahlia. I can see an understanding dawning on her face, although I don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on.
“Oh, Dahlia,” Evelyn says softly. “He’s not?—”
Dahlia gives a small, frantic nod, and I frown. I can only imagine that Dahlia spilled some of the details about our night together, if she and Evelyn really are that close, but the look on Evelyn’s face is reminiscent of what she might look like if someone had died. Like that night was the worst thing that could have happened to Dahlia, and frankly, I can’t help but find it slightly insulting. I left quickly afterwards, yes, but based on Dahlia’s reactions in bed, she was more than satisfied. And it was only ever supposed to be one night.
My fingers curl against my palms. It had been a struggle to get her out of my head afterwards, just as I’d known it would be, but I’d managed. I’ve ended up with my hand around my cock remembering that night more than once, but it’s been days since even that has happened. And now, by some godforsaken coincidence, she’s here , in my brother’s house. I feel a jolt of anger ripple through me, one of the few emotions left to me. As if New York weren’t fucking big enough, I have to run into her again here ?
I wanted to leave her behind after that one night. But it doesn’t seem that I’m going to be so fortunate.
“What is he doing here?” Dahlia hisses, to Evelyn this time, and Evelyn frowns.
“He’s Dimitri’s brother,” she says softly, as if I didn’t just fucking say that.
“Dimitri’s brother is dead, isn’t he?” Dahlia stammers, reaching up to rub her hands over her face. “I remember you telling me?—”
Something tightens in my stomach at the thought of the two women talking about me. At the thought that Dimitri must have talked to Evelyn about me, in order for her to know enough to tell Dahlia. There’s so much about what happened that I still don’t know, that I decided to come back to the mansion to find out, and Dahlia’s presence here is an unwanted complication that makes me itch with the desire to tell her that she needs to leave.
But I don’t have any real power here. This is Dimitri’s house, and clearly she’s welcome here. It makes me feel like even more of an outsider in my old home than I already do, another reminder of how the world here moved on without me while I was gone, and that uncomfortable feeling in my stomach intensifies.
“It’s a long story,” Evelyn says softly. “One that we don’t know all of, yet. Alek just agreed to come back to stay with us for a little while. He got in last night, actually?—”
She trails off abruptly as Dahlia sucks in a shaky, ragged breath, swallowing hard as she shakes her head.
“No.” Her teeth sink into her lip. “Oh my god, this can’t be happening. You can’t be here. You can’t —” She sucks in another breath, and I frown at her, irritated at the dramatics.
“It was one night, Dahlia,” I snap. “If you’ve never had a one-night-stand before, let me assure you, this is awkward for us both, but?—”
“She’s pregnant, you asshole!” Evelyn snaps, her usually calm demeanor suddenly shattering out of what I can only assume is protectiveness for her friend. She angles herself towards Dahlia, glaring at me, but I barely register her furious look as I realize what she just said. Dahlia shoots her a look that’s somewhere between desperation and disbelief, and I feel like I’m in some kind of alternate fucking reality as I look at them both.
Fuck. “You can’t be serious,” I growl, even as the memories of that night come flooding back, threatening to send every drop of blood in my body straight down to my cock despite the inappropriateness of the moment. I remember her telling me to get a condom, how I’d been too eager to get inside of her, the sight of her swollen, wet, pink flesh spread open in front of me so enticing after so many years of going without. I’d fucked her raw for those few minutes up against the wall, and I hadn’t been able to stop myself from doing it again. I was barely able to stop myself from coming inside of her. Pulling out of the heavenly grip of her pussy wrapped tightly around me was nearly impossible.
And now, if she’s telling the truth, I should have done it anyway, I think grimly. At least I would have gotten the pleasure of coming inside a woman bare for the first time in five years.
But she can’t be telling the truth.
“It’s not mine,” I growl dismissively. “I pulled out. It must be someone else’s.” The arrogance in my voice is meant to mask the flicker of fear that I feel, coiling around my heart in a cold knot, and I hate that this woman seems to be the only one who can make me feel anything after so long.
“You’re being a dick,” Evelyn snaps. “How dare you just assume that it can’t be? If you pulled out, that’s not fucking good enough?—”
“What’s going on here?”
My stomach drops as I hear Dimitri’s voice behind me, confused and yet somehow still authoritative. He’s embraced his role of pakhan , that much is clear, and it’s evident in the way he speaks and carries himself. Evelyn is the only one he softens around, from what I can tell in the very brief time I’ve been here.
“Your brother ,” Evelyn says icily, “is trying to say that my best friend is so much of a slut that she apparently can’t know who the father of her child is.”
I shrug. “Your words, not mine.”
Evelyn’s eyes blaze, and for a moment I think she might jump at me and scratch my eyes out. But Dimitri speaks up first, holding up a hand as he moves around me and into the living room, looking at Dahlia and his wife.
“Wait a second. Dahlia’s pregnant?” He frowns. “Explain.”
“She just got back from D.C., and she needed me,” Evelyn says, her voice softening as she looks at her husband. “So I brought her here. She only just told me. And then Alek walked in, and he?—”
“It was one night,” Dahlia says, her voice still panicked. “But there hadn’t been anyone before that for a while, and not since?—”
Dimitri reaches up, pinching his nose between his thumb and forefinger, before dropping his hand and looking between Dahlia and I. “You two slept together?”
“I can’t believe we’re having this fucking conversation,” I growl, at the same moment that Dahlia’s cheeks flush, and she nods.
“Yes,” she whispers, and my jaw tightens.
“We’re both fucking adults,” I snap. “I don’t need your permission for who to fuck, brother, even if the woman in question did accidentally end up being your wife’s best friend. Trust me, if I’d known, I wouldn’t have touched her.”
Dahlia jerks as if I slapped her, but I ignore it. I’m having a hard enough time not staring at her as it is, and it’s taking every ounce of self-control I have to keep my arousal from becoming blatant. Even like this, her eyes red and teary and her face flushed, she looks fucking gorgeous. Her blonde hair is a mass of wild, loose curls around her face, and her lips look pink and bitten, like she looked when I had her up against the wall of that elevator.
I can still remember the way she tasted. I’ve thought about it every time I’ve come into my fist these last six weeks with the image of her in my head.
“Family meeting. Now,” Dimitri snaps, moving further into the living room. “ Now ,” he growls again as I hover in the doorway, and I narrow my eyes at him, going to stand near the fireplace as he sinks into the chair next to Evelyn.
Somehow, they all end up facing me, and I feel like I’m on fucking trial. My teeth grind together. “I’m not a part of your Bratva any longer, brother,” I snap. “You’re not my pakhan .”
“That’s not how it works, and you know it,” Dimitri says evenly. “You’re my brother. Yashkov blood, and my heir, until my son is born.” He glances at Evelyn, and then back at me. “So yes, brother . I am your pakhan. And we are going to talk about this.”
Dahlia looks frantically at them both. “What’s going on?” Her voice is high and thin now. “I just wanted to talk to Evelyn. We don’t need to have this conversation?—”
“Yes, we do.” Dimitri levels a narrow look at her. “You’re saying that you spent the night with Alek, and now you’re pregnant? And he’s the father?”
“What is this, a fucking episode of Judge Judy ?” Dahlia exclaims, looking desperately at Evelyn. “Yes. I’m sure he is. But he also left immediately afterwards, and he never tried to find me again. So it’s clear he didn’t want more than the one night, and I know he doesn’t want this , so I will figure it out on my own, and?—”
“Good.” I push myself away from the mantle. “I’m glad we agreed.”
“Don’t fucking move,” Dimitri snaps. He looks back at Dahlia, his expression turning cool. It’s the expression I saw him use when talking to Vik and Gus, last night after we arrived. The expression belonging to the Yashkov patriarch, the boss. “If he’s the father of your child, Dahlia, then he’ll marry you.”
The words drop into the room like stones in a river. Dahlia’s mouth drops open, and I bark out a bitter sound that’s almost a laugh.
“Like fuck I will.”
Dahlia is shaking her head, and Evelyn looks shocked. “Dimitri, I don’t think that’s the way we need to go about this,” she says softly, reaching out to touch the back of his hand, and Dimitri narrows his eyes.
“He needs to take responsibility for this. If he got her pregnant, then he needs to provide for her and the child, and?—”
“I agree,” Evelyn says hastily. “But marriage is a little unnecessary. Financially, yes, he needs to provide, but?—”
“I’m sitting right here!” Dahlia exclaims, her eyes wide. “I’m not marrying him. You’re my best friend’s husband, Dimitri, and I love you like a brother, but you’re not in charge of me , even if you might be in charge of him .” She looks sideways at me, for a brief second, her gaze cutting away and back to Dimitri almost immediately, as if she can’t stand to look at me for long.
“Once again, we’re in agreement.” My jaw tightens. “Are we done here?”
“No.” Dimitri’s voice rings out, a sharp finality in it. “I am the pakhan , Alek, and I say you will marry her. I am the head of this family, and you?—”
“You can’t tell Dahlia what to do,” Evelyn cuts in, her hand still gently on Dimitri’s. “I know you’re upset with Alek, and I know things are tense between you, but this isn’t just about him?—”
“I won’t allow?—”
“I don’t care what you’ll allow !” Dahlia’s voice rises, and she shoves herself off of the couch, her entire body trembling. She looks at Evelyn, her teeth sinking into her lower lip, and I have to fight off the urge to go to her. I don’t want her , I remind myself. I don’t want her , I only wanted the one night . But the sight of her standing there, slender and shaking, makes me feel a long-forgotten twinge of an emotion that I don’t want to remember.
“Thank you for coming to get me,” Dahlia says to Evelyn, not looking at Dimitri. “And thanks for listening, and taking care of me. But I need to get back to my own apartment and think. I wasn’t expecting—” She swallows hard. “This is a lot. But I’m not going to be told for the second time in two days who I’m going to marry. And like you said, Dimitri can’t tell me what to do.”
She gives Evelyn an apologetic look. Evelyn casts a pointed glance at her husband, and stands up too, her hand going to Dahlia’s back as she starts to follow her out of the room. “We’ll talk about this later,” she casts over her shoulder to Dimitri, who looks as if he’s about to explode. “I’ll get you a ride back to your apartment,” she adds to Dahlia, and the two women walk out of the room, disappearing around the corner.
Leaving my brother and I, alone in the room together.
“I’m immeasurably disappointed in you.” Dimitri’s voice is heavy as he looks at me, and I narrow my eyes at him.
“Didn’t you get your wife pregnant by accident, too?” The words come out sharp, cutting, flinging back what he told me last night in an effort to begin to bring me back into the family. He’d confirmed my suspicion that I’d had when we met in the graveyard, that Evelyn is pregnant, and admitted that it was unexpected. Now, as I throw that knowledge back like a weapon, I see his face tighten.
“I married her,” he says flatly. “Which is what you should be more than happy to do right now, to make things right with Dahlia.”
“She doesn’t want to marry me. Which makes the situation completely different.”
“She’d come around.” A muscle ticks in Dimitri’s jaw, though, and I can see that he doesn’t quite believe that. I get the impression that he’s known her for a while.
“I doubt it.” I press my lips together, looking in the direction that the two women walked away. “I’m not in the business of forcing women to do things they don’t want to, either. If she wants to go it alone, that’s fine with me.”
Dimitri looks at me as if I’ve grown another head. “She’s going to have your child , Alek. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“She says she is.” My jaw tightens. “Doesn’t make it true.”
“You’re calling her a liar?”
“I’m calling her a woman I knew for less than fifteen minutes before I had her in the back of a cab with my cock down her throat.” I see my brother wince, but I don’t really give a shit right now. I’m not going to be walked into another trap based on a woman’s word.
“Alek—”
“If she wants something from me, she can prove it’s my child. If not, then I have no interest in getting involved.” Without another word, I stalk past Dimitri towards the doorway. If he wants to try to stop me, he can, but more than anything else, I want this conversation to be over.
But with every step, as I stride out of the room and towards the stairs that will take me up to my own bedroom, I feel a weight pressing down on my shoulders. What if she’s telling the truth?
I pulled out, but only just in time. And that’s no guarantee, I’m smart enough to know that. I should have used a fucking condom. I was weak, desperate for that pleasure, for the feeling of skin on skin, warm heat enveloping me and pulling me in for the first time in years. I forgot my better sense, and acted on instinct. Out of desire and emotion, as if I didn’t learn my fucking lesson over the last five years.
If Dahlia is carrying my child—my stomach clenches, my jaw locking, and I slam the door of my bedroom hard behind me as I walk in, long-buried emotion struggling to rear up. There’s so much that I’ve locked away, so much that I can’t begin to let myself think about it, or I’ll drown in it. And this threatens to bring it all back, to break open the lock and let the floodgates open.
I suck in a sharp, ragged breath through my teeth. No decent man would abandon a woman pregnant with his child. I know it, and Dimitri knows it, which is why he’s so fucking disappointed with me. Clearly, he believes Dahlia. And that disappointment stings, prickling over my skin and threatening to reawaken those lost feelings of wanting my big brother to be proud of me.
I thought I was past feeling anything at all, anymore. But I can feel cracks forming, old emotions threatening to slip through. And right now, I think I’d do just about anything to keep from having to face all of that.
Including pretending like the conversation downstairs never happened at all.