10. Alek
10
ALEK
I can’t quite believe I’m standing here, on the other side of Dahlia’s door, my hands shoved in my pockets as I wait for her to come and unlock it. I have half a mind to just turn and leave before she can. It was a mistake to come here, I think as my jaw clenches, and I’m just about to walk away when I hear the locks click and the door opens.
What the fuck am I doing? The thought runs through my head…and then I see her face.
She looks like she’s been crying all day. Her face is swollen and flushed, her eyes red-rimmed, her hair atop her head in a messy knot. She looks as if she hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in days, and I feel a prick of something in my chest—something that feels very much like guilt. It prickles over my skin, like pins and needles after a limb starts to wake up, and I feel my shoulders hunch slightly under my jacket. I don’t like the feeling.
I don’t want to feel at all.
“What are you doing here?” she croaks, and I have half a mind to tell her that I’m not sure I know the answer to that any more than she does.
Her lips press together as she waits for my answer, impatient misery written across her face. She looks nothing like the vibrant, slightly awkward, flirtatious woman that I met at Hush, but even so, she’s still beautiful, even like this. I’m not sure anything could make her less so, and the throb of desire that ripples through me as I look at her is as frustrating as it is distracting.
I never planned to see her again after that one night. And now…
“Can I come in?” I ask gruffly, uncomfortably standing out in the hallway of her apartment. Growing up in the Bratva, I learned early to keep my senses alert and always be on my guard, but the fallout from what happened over the last five years has only made that worse. Now just being out in the open like this in a strange building for long is enough to make me twitchy.
Dahlia’s brows draw down in the middle as she frowns, and for a moment I think she might tell me no . That she might want nothing to do with whatever I’ve come here to say. I grit my teeth, meeting her tired, red-rimmed gaze.
“Fine.” She steps back, pushing the door wider as she crosses her arms over her chest and pivots, stalking back to the living room. I close the door behind me and lock it, following her as I try not to think about what happened between us in this entryway.
Either I’d forgotten just how good sex could feel, or Dahlia was better than anything I’ve ever had before. My stomach tightens at the memory of pinning her up against this wall, of her breathless moans and the heat of her body sinking into me, of how it had felt to press my bare cock against her wet flesh and sink into her.
A flood of heat rushes down to my groin, my cock stiffening, and I press the heel of my hand against it. The last thing I need is to have this conversation with a raging hard-on, thinking about spilling Dahlia back onto the couch and repeating that night instead of saying what I came here to tell her.
She’s standing by the large window at the far side of the living room, her back to me as I walk in. “Why are you here?” she repeats, and I let out a slow breath through tight lips.
“I came here to apologize,” I tell her stiffly, and she snorts.
“You don’t sound very sorry.”
“I don’t know if you’re telling the truth yet.”
Her shoulders go taut. “This is a terrible apology.”
“I’m out of practice.” My jaw tightens, and I shove my hands deeper into the pockets of my leather jacket. “I came here to make you an offer. If you don’t want to hear it, I’ll just go.”
“Did you use up all your sweet talking in that one night?” Dahlia turns to look at me, and heat licks down my spine as her blue eyes meet mine. It wasn’t sweet, I want to say. It was fucking filthy, just the way we both wanted it.
But resurrecting any part of that night won’t do either of us any good right now.
“Do you want to hear it or not?” I narrow my eyes at her, my jaw tight, and I notice that she doesn’t flinch or back down. It surprises me. Most people—especially those who know about my Bratva connections—are quick to do exactly that.
Her teeth scrape against her bottom lip, and I feel that jolt of heat down my spine again. The way her mouth felt against mine, around my cock…
I was better off when I’d let myself forget just how good all of that could feel.
“Fine.” Dahlia’s expression is blank as she looks at me. “What is it? I can’t imagine what you have to say that could make up for the way you acted when I was at Evelyn’s.”
“Evelyn’s?” My eyebrow rises. “That’s Dimitri’s house.”
“They’re married. So it’s hers, too. But I wouldn’t expect you to know how that works, since the thought of any kind of commitment makes you behave like a complete asshole and run?—”
“I’m here now.” Something burns in my gut as everything she says hits me, that feeling of old, buried feelings being reawoken lancing through me again. You have no fucking idea what I think about marriage or commitment, I want to snarl at her. My throat tightens, a barrage of everything I want to say choking me, but I hold it back. I don’t know what it is about this woman that makes me come so close to losing control, that threatens to break down all the walls I’ve so carefully constructed, but I want no part of it.
“What does that mean?” Dahlia wraps her arms around herself. “Just spit it out.”
“I’ve thought about the conversation that we had. I was startled to see you, and I was shocked by what Evelyn said. What you’re claiming?—”
“It’s true,” she interrupts, but I keep talking, forcing every word out one after the other. The sooner this conversation is over, the sooner I can leave.
“I handled it poorly. I’ve come to apologize for that. And I’ve come to tell you that I will do what I need to in order to take care of you.”
Dahlia’s eyes widen. “You’ll—what does that mean, exactly?”
“I’ll marry you,” I tell her stiffly. “But it will be a marriage of convenience only. There will be no expectation of love, and no physical contact between us. It will give you my name, my protection, and the promise that you and our child will be provided for. And of course, if the child proves to not be mine, a divorce will be expediently?—”
I’m interrupted by the sound of Dahlia’s laughter. Laughter feels like the wrong word for the sound coming out of her mouth, a bitter, sarcastic noise that I feel like I’ve heard spill from my own lips recently. There’s nothing humorous or joyful about it, and as her shoulders shake, I think she might be on the verge of bursting into tears.
“I can’t fucking believe this,” she breathes. “First my father tells me that he’ll send me to a ‘discreet’ doctor to ‘quietly’ take care of the pregnancy and bribe a man I can’t stand into marrying me. And now that I’m back home, I have you standing here and telling me that you’ll marry me, but only if I’m okay with a loveless, sexless marriage purely out of charity, and that if I’m lying to you, you expect a hasty divorce.”
Another choked sound comes from her throat, but I’m too preoccupied with the hot flare of anger that lances through me at what she said about her father. I don’t even know if I believe her, I remind myself. I don’t know if she’s telling the truth. And I certainly don’t want a child with anyone. But the thought of Dahlia in a cold doctor’s office, on the verge of ridding herself of a child that could be mine, sends a possessive fury burning through my veins and tightening my guts. And the thought of her father trying to force her to do that only adds to it, until I feel my fingers curling into my palms, hot anger throbbing through me like a second pulse.
The thought of another man touching her doesn’t help, either. Blood is roaring in my ears as I look at her, my muscles strung tight. I haven’t felt possessive over anything or anyone like this in years, so why her? Why now? I don’t know, and I don’t want to feel this way.
It brings nothing but pain. Nothing but loss, and torment. It was almost the end of me once, and I refuse to let it happen again.
“If you’re lying, then a divorce only makes sense,” I grit out.
Dahlia lets out another bitter chuckle. “If I was lying, why would I agree to it at all?”
The question makes me pause momentarily, but I just shrug. “Why does anyone lie about anything?” It comes out flippant, but I can hear the bitterness underneath, and I wonder if Dahlia can too.
“Why are you even offering?” she bites out, swallowing hard as she looks back towards the large window behind her.
“If you are pregnant with my child, then it’s the right thing to do.” It comes out flat, and I know she can hear it. But it’s the only answer I have for her. I don’t even fully understand why I’m doing this, except that the man I used to be wouldn’t have abandoned a woman he put in this situation. I’m not that man any longer—but I don’t like to think that I would do that now, either.
Unless, of course, this is all some ruse for her own gain.
“Hm.” Dahlia presses her lips together. “I don’t want your pity, Alek. And I don’t want to marry someone out of charity. I’ll figure this out.”
I hear her voice waver on that last sentence. I know she doesn’t have it figured out, and she’s clearly in distress. The first look that I got at her face when she opened the door told me that much. But it took everything in me to show up here in the first place, and her dismissal sends another jolt of anger through me.
“That doesn’t instill confidence in me that you’re telling the truth.”
Her eyes flash, and I can tell I’ve pissed her off. “Get out,” she grinds out between her teeth. “You’ve said what you came here to say. I don’t need to hear any more.”
A better man would stay and try to convince her to let me help. A better man would try to find out what it is that she needs.
A better man would simply believe her. But instead, I look at her angry expression and narrowed eyes, and shrug.
“Have it your way,” I tell her flatly, and turn to leave.
I wonder if she’ll call after me, or say she was too quick to dismiss my offer. But there’s nothing but silence behind me, until I’m standing outside the apartment door, once again in the hallway. An older woman walks past with a fluffy white dog on a leash, and she casts me a suspicious glance as she hurries towards the stairs a little more quickly. I can’t help but wonder what she would have thought if she’d seen the elevator door open that night to the sight of Dahlia pinned against the mirrored wall, my head buried between her thighs.
If just seeing me is a shock, that would have given her a damn heart attack.
Shoving my hands back into my pockets, I take the stairs at the other end of the hall. The last thing I need right now is more memories of Dahlia in that fucking elevator. My cock is still half-hard, desire pulsing through me and tangling with the steady beat of the anger in my veins, and the chilly evening air is a relief when it hits me as I step outside.
When I get on my motorcycle, I’m not even entirely sure where I’m heading. Not back to the mansion right now, that’s for sure. The last thing I want is to see Dimitri while I’m in this mood.
I’ve already started to think that coming back to the mansion to stay was a mistake. After six weeks of keeping my distance, staying in hotel rooms and prowling New York in an effort to decide what the fuck I want to do now, I decided that it was time to go home. To try and find out what happened while I was gone for five years, and why they never came for me. But from the jump, it was difficult.
Evelyn treats me like a guest, and Dimitri treats me as if no time at all has passed. As if those five hellish years were a blink of an eye, and we should go back to normal—except now he’s the pakhan , and by tradition, I should fall in line at his side. I can tell he doesn’t want to talk about the past, and it makes me wonder why.
There’s no place that feels like home to me, now. Nowhere that I can feel comfortable, or safe, where I don’t feel on edge and out of place. So it’s not a surprise that without really meaning to, I end up at one of my old haunts in Hell’s Kitchen, a dive bar called Salty Sal’s . It’s on a back street near the docks, flanked by a butcher and a sandwich shop, and it’s the most lively spot on the block at this hour. At least a dozen motorcycles are parked out back, and the front and back doors are both open, music and cigarette smoke spilling out into the evening air.
I get off my bike, fishing out a cigarette of my own as I walk towards the back door, the flame from my lighter flickering in the growing dark around me.
Before, I wasn’t much of a smoker. I enjoyed it casually, much like drinking, and women got a kick out of it. It went with my overall look—the leather jacket, the tattoos, the motorcycle. I fucked a woman on the seat of my bike once while we passed a cigarette back and forth, and I distinctly remember her coming, hard, when one of the embers fell onto the small of her back. I never saw her again after that, but she was wild enough to be memorable.
Strange, how that memory doesn’t feel as arousing, now. It’s immediately replaced by the memory of Dahlia on her knees in that cab, her lipstick smeared across the shaft of my cock as I wrapped my hand tighter in her hair, Russian curses spilling from my lips at the pleasure. Pleasure I’d forgotten, and that now I want to chase.
Which is the same reason I’m lighting up a cigarette as I walk to the back of Sal’s. That first draw of nicotine into the lungs is something I was denied for five years, along with good food, booze, and the freedom to do what I fucking pleased. So now I want all of those things. I want to feel pleasure again, because I sure as fuck don’t want to feel anything else.
Except for women. Women have been the exception to that—until Dahlia. And now, I can’t bring myself to want to fuck anyone else. I haven’t in the six weeks since I took her home. I told myself I was going back to my enforced celibacy, that I’d wrung it all out of my system that one night and didn’t need to spend time in another woman’s bed. But the truth is that every time someone has come up to me, all I see is her.
It’s fucking infuriating, and it’s only getting worse now, with what’s happened in the last few days.
Sucking in another deep drag of the cigarette, I blow out a cloud of smoke just as I reach the back entrance, dropping the cigarette to the ground and stubbing it out with the toe of my boot. A couple wearing all black are making out against the wall next to the door, and I shove past them, heading directly for where I see Sal passing out beers to a group of college-age kids.
The jukebox is playing some grating pop hit, and I figure it’s probably those same kids that are responsible. Ignoring it to the best of my ability, I take a seat at the opposite end of the bar, waiting for Sal to make his way over to me.
He’s been here since I was sixteen, when I used to sneak in after running errands for my father. I tried to pass off a fake ID once, but Sal wasn’t fooled. He let me drink anyway, saying if I was old enough to run jobs for the Bratva, I was old enough to have a beer. I’m glad to see that he’s still here—I’ve never really known how old he was, but he looks like he could expire at any moment. He’s wrinkled and slightly hunched, with wisps of white hair just above his ears, and piercing blue eyes that remain unclouded despite his age.
“Alek!” He calls out my name as he makes his way towards me, and I feel the corners of my mouth twitch, the closest thing I’ve felt to a smile. “Haven’t seen you in a dog’s age.”
“Near enough. Good to see you’re still sharp as ever, Sal.”
“I’ll be here until I’m ninety.” He flashes a broad, yellow-toothed grin. “Same thing as always?”
“You remember that, too?”
“Sure thing.” He turns, getting a cold bottle out of a fridge under the liquor shelves, and pops the cap off of the beer—a local ale that I’ve been drinking as long as I’ve come here. He pours it into a glass and pushes it over to me, then takes one look at my face and nods.
“Been gone a long time,” he says, his gaze flicking over the scar. “Glad to see you back.”
And with that, he turns to go and serve a couple that just walked in through the door.
Blowing out a relieved breath, I take a long drink of the beer. Sal’s perceptive, and I’m glad he picked up that I don’t want to talk. I don’t want anything right now other than to have a few of these, wait until it’s late enough that I probably won’t run into Dimitri or Evelyn when I get back to the mansion, and then head back.
Unfortunately, not everyone is as perceptive as Sal.
I’m on my second beer when I see someone approaching out of the corner of my eye. I turn to see a woman with short, rough-cut black hair who is dressed entirely inappropriately for the weather, in painted-on black jeans ripped in several places and a ribbed white tank top that’s cut off just below her ribs. She’s exactly the kind of woman that would have been my type at a certain point in my life—which is to say she’s hot, clearly interested, and looks like she’d be down for just about anything. I can already see her eyes running over my tattoos, lingering on the one on the back of my hand, and her red-painted lips curl up in a smirk as she slides onto the barstool next to mine without asking.
“You look like you need some company,” she says, leaning one elbow on the bar. “And maybe a stronger drink. You like whiskey?”
“I like silence,” I growl, and she giggles, a sound that feels like it grates over my skin.
“This is the wrong place to come for that, then.” She smirks at me. “My place is a lot quieter.”
“I’m sure it is. Especially when you’re there alone.” I finish my beer, motioning to Sal to grab me another when he’s free.
Her lips purse. “You need to loosen up.” She runs her eyes over me again. “Work out some of that tension. And I know just the thing.” Her tongue flicks against her lower lip in a clear invitation. “Maybe one more drink, and then I'll show you what I’m talking about?”
“I’m not interested.” I draw in a slow breath. “Go find someone else.”
Her eyes narrow, and I can see her disappointment in them, a flash of it before the rejection hits fully and she shoves herself angrily away from the bar. “No need to be an asshole,” she hisses, before stalking off.
That’s the second time a woman has called me an asshole in nearly as many days. And hell, maybe they’re right. Maybe I am an asshole now, but I think I’ve earned the right to be one.
I’ve been abandoned, betrayed, and hurt beyond comprehension. And the last thing I need any longer is a reason for another woman to get under my skin in any way. A night of pleasure isn’t worth it—as I’ve been shown once again with this whole debacle involving Dahlia.
My mood ruined, I shake my head as Sal starts to go for another beer. I toss some cash on the bar, more than enough to cover the beers, and grab my jacket, heading for the back door.
The city is full of life as I ride back to the mansion, the sounds and smells of it all around me, and it should feel like home. But I feel disassociated from it all, like I’m a ghost passing through. Like I’m not really here at all, and that same feeling persists as I head up the front steps into the mansion. This place is the most familiar of all, but I feel like I’m haunting it now, instead of living here.
It’s quiet, and as I head for the stairs, I think I might have managed to make it back without having to run into anyone. But just as my foot hits the first step, I hear Dimitri’s voice, and I groan inwardly.
“Glad you’re safe. I didn’t know where you were when you didn’t show up for dinner.”
“You sound like our fucking father,” I growl as I turn to face him. He’s wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, a drink in one hand, and I press my lips together as I fight back the urge to lash out. He looks comfortable—happy, even, and I know I should be happy for him. Instead, I feel the burn of an emotion that feels alarmingly like jealousy.
“I’m concerned for my brother .” Dimitri’s voice hardens slightly, and I can tell that his patience with my moods is thinning already. But I can’t bring myself to care. Not when that feeling of being displaced, of belonging nowhere and with no one, is beating so heavily behind my ribs.
“You’re five years too late for that,” I snarl. I see the jolt of hurt in his face, the way his hand tightens around his drink glass, but I turn anyway, stalking up the stairs into the darkness above.