Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
DEMITRI
Will I ever tell Mia that I’ve now searched her entire house and learned all her secrets? No chance in hell. I want her to tell me her secrets. I want her to fucking want to tell me her secrets. And, more importantly, there weren’t any to learn. Her house is fucking spotless—and impersonal, just like she wants the world to think she is. It’s a small two-story, and until I snuck up there tonight, I’ve never been upstairs. I wonder if she’s got cameras in the house? There are no pictures on the walls, no photo albums, no notebooks or journals, nothing on the fridge. Even her bookshelf is weird, with all the books facing in, so it’s just blank pages shown. She might be a little psycho for that, and I should probably be worried about staying here.
Not going to change how I feel about her, though. That ship has sailed, and yeah, I know that makes me pathetic, okay? Deal with it. I never wanted to scale her walls—just her body. But then I started talking to her. And not only is she stunning and beautiful and has an ass that can make a man fall to his knees, she’s so fucking smart, and funny, and sarcastic. She deals out shit better than anyone I’ve ever known. When she comes home after a long night at the bar and puts her hair up and those librarian glasses on? I’m a teenager trying not to jizz in his pants. She is what fantasies are made of. All the fantasies.
So, I’ve let her string me along for four fucking years. I’ve taken her drips and scraps and lapped up every little bit of her she’s let me, and I’m addicted. When she forgets that her walls are steel covered in concrete covered in brick and shows me the cracks? I live for those moments. They don’t happen often, and they never last long, but they are worth every agonizing hour of waiting.
I’ve pulled a faceless book off the shelf and discovered it’s a paranormal romance about the four horsemen of the apocalypse and settle in to read. Yeah, I read romance books. Knowledge is knowledge, people, and I’ve learned some of the coolest shit from these books. I’ve also picked up a few moves, not that Mia would ever let me try them. At least not yet.
I don’t know how long I’ve been reading when I hear Mia pull into the driveway. But I don’t put the book away. I might be completely under her spell, but I have some self-respect—and the book is getting really good.
“Evening, dear.” I grin, looking up at her when she comes through the door. “How was your day?”
“Smartass.” She huffs out a laugh, dropping her oversized bag on the floor by the couch before falling into the cushions. She rolls her head, looking at me. She’s exhausted but fighting it. “Finish all your snooping already?”
“Unfortunately. No salacious diaries or naked photos in the bedside table. I’m really disappointed.”
“You didn’t look hard enough.”
“You weren’t going to be gone long enough for me to test the floorboards.”
“What’re you reading?”
“ Obsession. ” I hold up the book for her to see.
“Ahh, that’s a good one.” She winks at me and sits straight up on the couch. “Well, come on Beluga Boy, let’s go to bed. You have to be up in the morning, and this wasn’t a scheduled evening.”
I jolt at her words. And completely glitch. Bed? Like, a bedroom? Upstairs?
She looks at me, her forehead crinkling in confusion. “You alright?”
“To bed? I figured…” I trail off. She sighs and closes her eyes. Not in an irritated way, but in a lost the war kind of way. Her shoulders drop, her fingers fidget with the edge of her shirt. I stand, moving until I’m standing just outside her personal bubble. “Mia,” I say quietly. “I can sleep on the couch. You offering to let me stay the night is more than I thought you’d do, so the couch is fine, okay?”
Without opening her eyes, she raises her head. “I don’t want you to sleep on the couch, Dem.”
“What do you want, Mia?” I inch closer.
“I want you to tell me what happened tonight, but I can’t stay vertical while you do. So, you’re going to go upstairs with me and we are going to slip into bed and you’re going to tell me a nighttime story.”
“I’ll come back downstairs when I’m finished if that would make you feel better?” I offer.
“It wouldn’t matter,” she mutters to herself.
“What wouldn’t?”
“If I scream, you’ll hear it no matter where you are.”
The statement is like a gut punch. Nightmares. The woman has nightmares and is afraid of screaming in the middle of the night.
“My only question is what do I do if you start throwing punches?”
Her lips quirk up on one side. She’s trying to hide her smile but failing miserably.
“Guess it’s a good thing I don’t do that, isn’t it?”
“Yet to be determined.”
“So you coming or not?” she asks, opening her eyes and finally looking at me. I don’t know what I see in them, but I’m not capable of saying no.
“Lead the way, Krasotka .”
Without another word, Mia turns and walks to the stairs, not pausing before ascending them to the master bedroom at the top. I follow silently, grabbing my overnight bag from beside the couch. She points to the hallway bathroom before turning into her room. I guess that’s my sign to stop there first. I hear the water in her en suite turn on through the wall and take my time changing into a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a clean t-shirt. The thing with Mia is to always prepare, but never assume. If something happened between me leaving the bar and her getting home, her anxiety would have been triggered. But then she would have come through the door ready to swing at someone. I have no expectation, but I brush my teeth and put some fresh deodorant on before leaving the bathroom.
Mia is already sitting up in bed when I hit the door. She’s wearing one of my old t-shirts and has her hair piled high on her head, all of her makeup washed off and those fucking glasses on her face. She’s beautiful. She also has a no bullshit look on her face. No sex. Got it.
“Do you have a side?” she asks as I walk into the room. “Of the bed?”
“Not particularly. The middle?” I smile, going to the empty side.
“Ready to talk about it?”
“No. But I don’t know that I’ll ever really be ready to talk about it.”
“But you will? With me?”
“For you, I’d do anything.”
It’s not until the words are out there that I realize how true they are. I love this woman. And if I could ever rid myself of the shackles of my last name, I’d throw all pretense out the window and swear my life to her. But I can’t do that, and I guess she finally needs to know the full story why.
She’s staring at me, not talking, chewing her bottom lip. I reach over and pull it free. “Don’t hurt yourself because of me, Krasotka . I’m not worth it.”
“Fuck that, Demitri.”
“Mia, you don’t understand. All my life, I was a tool. A pawn. A chess piece in a game I never wanted to play. People treated me special because of my last name, because of my dad. They didn’t understand why I had issues with what I saw going on around me. And then they tried to destroy me to keep me in my place.”
“What happened?”
Closing my eyes to try to shield myself from the pain, I blow out a breath and begin. “I don’t know how much you know about my family, but my father was Ivan Pavlov, the leader of the Russian Bratva on the east coast. He was not a good man. Drugs, guns, women. That was his life, and he bought and sold everything with the blood of others. One of my first memories is my father hitting my mother because she told him no. She had just given birth to my sister and ended up with a c-section. The woman couldn’t even stand up straight and he thought he owned her and could use her as he wanted.”
“Oh.”
One word, said with so much meaning behind it, I can feel her pain.
“If this becomes too much for you, tell me to stop. Please.”
“No. Keep going.”
“After that, they lived as a married couple only. I know my dad regretted what he did, but not enough to do the right thing. Mom stayed because she knew he’d never let her take me with her. I was a boy. My dick guaranteed I’d never do anything of my own free will.” I can’t help the bitterness in my voice, but I continue. If I don’t get it out now, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to. “Mom died a little every day. He slowly killed her by flaunting whatever side piece he was fucking that week in front of her. By the end, she was a shell of the mother I knew when I was little.”
“How old were you?” Mia asks, whispering. Like speaking loudly would change the way this tragedy ends.
“I was fourteen. My sister was eleven. But where I wanted nothing more than to run away from that place and that life, she craved the attention my father didn’t initially give her. She paid attention and soon became his right hand. If it were up to my father, he would have found somewhere to hide my body, but some of my uncles didn’t believe in women running the show. And none of the other men working in the ‘business’ did anything more than treat women as their property.”
“I’m sorry.”
I give her a small smile before continuing. “I tried to run away when I turned fifteen. I thought I was a man then. Ivan beat me to the point of hospitalization when they found me. It was while I was healing that I met Mika and fell in love. With her and cars.”
I pause to take a breather. This is the hard part, the part that reminds me why I’m okay with the parts of Mia that she’s willing to share with me and don’t push her for more. More would put her in danger. More would put a timeline on her life, and I can’t do that to her. Or me. Because I know I’d never survive.
“Tell me,” she quietly demands.
“Mika’s dad was on the payroll. Vasili worked on all the cars the family owned. Turns out, the garage he worked out of was a front for my father. All he ever wanted to do was work on cars and not get sent back to Russia. His wife was born here, and he was afraid, as were some of the others who had been here a long time. Anyway, he started taking me to the garage and showing me how to do some basic stuff. Mainly, I handed him tools while he did the work. But I started picking up things, and before too long I was doing oil changes and basic mechanical tasks. I started learning about custom rebuilds and my first car was a sixty-nine Dodge Dart Custom. It was this hideous baby poop brown, but that thing was a fucking tank Ivan had lying around the property, so Vasili helped me restore it and paint it.”
“Sounds like he really cared about you, Dem.”
“Yeah, he did.”
“What happened?”
“I was working with Vasili one day in the garage and this girl came in wearing a school uniform. You know the one—plaid skirt and white button up blouse. Her socks went to her knees, and she had brown penny loafers on. Her hair was dark, dark brown, long and straight, and that day she had it pulled up in a ponytail that bounced when she talked. She stopped by to tell her dad about a test she aced that day, and I was hooked. After that, she would stop by almost every day, and eventually I gathered up the balls to ask her out.”
“That’s sweet.” Mia has a wistful smile on her face, like she’s reliving her own first love story. Only I know how that one ends, and it’s almost as tragic as mine.
“It was. Until my father got wind of it. Her ‘Russian stock’ wasn’t Russian enough for the heir of the Pavlov family. He demanded I break it off with her before I did something stupid like ‘fall for the girl.’ He threatened me, he threatened Vasili. He beat the maids to let me know how serious he was, but I didn’t care. I loved her. We were going to get out and never come back. Until she didn’t.”
Mia reaches over and silently grabs my hand. She knows the sweet is about to become scary.
“We had plans to go to the movies one Friday night, and she never showed up. Vasili disappeared from the garage and some other guy, one of Ivan’s stooges, started coming in and keeping an eye on me. I had more guards around me at all times. Fuck, I couldn’t even piss in peace. But I found ways around them. I had lived in that house and hidden from my father more than they knew, and I snuck out every night trying to find Mika.”
“Did you find her?”
I shake my head slowly, the pain resurfacing in my stomach. “No. And it wasn’t until my father started making these passive comments about my future and any future women I would be with that I knew he had done something to her. As punishment.”
“What did he do, Demitri?”
“He sold her.”
My voice is raw, barely audible, but I know she heard me when I hear her intake of breath. I can’t look at her, not with the guilt I carry with me every fucking day.
“Dem, it’s not your fault.”
“Yes. It is.”
“No. It’s your father’s fault, and you had no control over him or what he did. You were just a fucking kid, for God’s sake. Fuck. I’m so sorry.”
“That’s not all of it, Mia. She’s dead. And it’s all my fault. Because I loved her, she’s dead.”
“No.” She shakes her head almost violently, cupping my face and turning it to her. “No.”
I close my eyes and all I see is Mika’s body, beaten, used. Too thin.
“They knew I was close to finding her. He fucking killed her because I almost found her. And he sealed my fate and made sure I’d never try to leave again.”
“But you did.”
“It took years, Mia. Years of watching and waiting. Knowing things that he did to other people. How can I not be just as dirty as he was? I…I did things, too.”
“You did what you had to do to survive.”
We sit in silence for a few minutes, neither of us knowing what to say now that my pain and shame have been unleashed into the room. She finally looks at me, but I don’t see pity. I see determination.
“What happened tonight?”
I tell her about the theory that I have a sister and how I think I probably have more than one. When I’m finished, she nods her head.
“Then it’s settled. Until you can talk to this Aunt Linda, who I’m going to need to meet, by the way, you’re staying with me. Here.”
“I can’t put you in that kind of danger, Mia. I just told you what those people are capable of. If this is real, and they are looking for me, you’ll be in their way. I can’t have you be collateral damage.”
“So you’ll just disappear again like you did four years ago? Ghost and leave me in the dark? For how long this time?”
“I—”
“No. I’m a fucking adult, Demitri Pavlov, and I make the decisions about my life. Not you. Not your family, who may or may not be a threat. Me. And my decision is to help you. To fight with you. For you. Do you understand?”