47. Elanee
47
ELANEE
M y eyes burst open as I’m ripped out of nightmares playing on a loop. My gaze darts around the dark unfamiliar room, as panic begins to constrict itself around me.
“Hey, hey, you’re okay,” Layla says as she jumps up from her seat placed beside the bed I’m lying in. She clings to me, trying to push me back onto the bed. “You’re safe. You’re safe.”
I hold onto her. Real. She’s real. “Where am I?” I gasp, trying to calm my pounding heart. The last thing I remember is being jumped in the narrow street and hearing two gunshots, and then everything else is fuzzy…
“You’re in the Armani mansion right now. Luca and Dmitri made a deal to keep you here and safe while they take care of the rest. The Lion will assume you were taken by the Italian mafia.”
My bottom lip wobbles. I’d been used as bait. I knew that. I just didn’t know when it would happen, but it didn’t take away from how terrifying it was. I still wear the bracelet and am too scared to remove it, but I also know it still makes me a liability because of the tracker inside.
Layla catches my gaze and is quick to say. “Don’t worry, they know about the tracker. In fact, they’re counting on it. They hope it’ll draw him here.”
“I’m not enough leverage for that,” I confess as I tuck my knees under my chin, trying my hardest to act the face of calm. As I’d always done, especially in front of my sister. “He won’t come here for me. But he may burn down half of New York in the process.”
Does he know Dmitri’s involved? Undoubtedly, The Lion suspects? But of course, he won’t come here for me; he could care less. But the tracker will make it obvious who had taken me. It’s all a part of their trap.
And where is Dmitri? Is he okay? Does he know The Lion is here? His father. Is this the best plan of action? Are we damning ourselves? I now second-guess everything that we’d agreed to put into motion.
“Well, considering they just burnt down The Lion’s establishment that you check in to weekly and saved the women being trafficked, as well as the warehouse with a bunch of guns that Luca’s seized, I’m sure he’ll have a bone to pick with the Armani’s as his main focus.”
My jaw unhinges. Part of me is relieved to know that horrible place has been wiped out and the women saved. However, depending on whether they’re strong enough to fight their addictions and traumas is another story. But the reality of the situation was also far greater. I whisper with realization, “They’ve started a war.”
Layla casually shrugs. “He kind of started it himself when he began conducting business on the Armani’s territory.”
Fuck. It’s all happening now.
I’m scared.
“What happened to the man following me?” I ask, recalling that he was also with me in the alleyway.
Her expression shifts into something unpleasant. “Dead.”
My eyebrows furrow as I process that. Dmitri has been working behind the scenes this whole time. And all I could do in any of it was… simply exist.
Commotion stirs outside the room, and I jump as the door bursts open, revealing Dmitri.
He’s safe.
Thank goodness.
I go to stand but freeze under his scathing gaze and disheveled state. He doesn’t look like himself. He’s a manic, wild thing, the charismatic mask he usually wears thrown to the wayside as I stare at the rawest version of him yet.
“Are you okay?” Layla asks, picking up on the strange, palpable tension.
He rubs his head, still staring at me and menacingly.
He doesn’t seem himself.
I raise my hand and go to call for him, but his words slash at me as expertly as any blade.
“Did you move to Russia for him!” he demands.
My heart drops, and my stomach twists with guilt. He watches my expression, and the wild storm was nothing compared to what it is now. Why is he asking me this? What is he saying?
“Have you just played me this whole time?” he yells.
“Dmitri, she’s resting.” Layla tries to intervene but looks between us as if she doesn’t know what to do as she stands. This wasn’t her battle to fight. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I never played you. I always wanted you, I swear.” I break apart as I say it. An ugly sense of shame wraps around me. Has he been harboring these feelings all along? He’d only ever looked at me like I was something precious. Worshipped even. He wasn’t looking at me like that now, though. I was no more than a speck of filth in his presence.
He trembles with rage. He turns and throws his fists into the wall, and I crawl across the bed desperately toward him, reaching out wanting to beg for his forgiveness but also somehow take his pain away. To right the wrong that I’d done.
“He was at your graduation,” I begin, and his gaze snaps to mine. I’m too nervous to speak, but I push through. “I didn’t know who he was at the time. I just thought he was a charming older man. It was the day after we’d had that fight, and the attention at the time was nice.”
Is this what he wanted now? Detailed information? Confusion and pain swirl in the pit of my stomach. Why is he acting like this?
His face is turning red as the vein in his neck bulges, but I continue. “I thought you’d never look at me as anything more than a friend, and I wanted to stop thinking about you every day. It was turning into a cruel obsession, and when he came…” My voice squeaks at the end. It sounds like an entirely different man I’m describing than the monster we both hate. I remind Dmitri, “I was already moving to Russia for my ballet, so it was never for him. But he was there. I didn’t realize who he was until I’d lived there for two years already… when he… he began to become cruel and his questions about you obvious.”
My bottom lip trembles as I think about the quick descension of the charming older man I thought had swept me off my feet at twenty-two. A man who promised to show me the world but caged me from it instead. “I swear had I known, Dmitri, I would’ve never gone with him.”
He sneers a hateful expression, twisting his features. His voice shakes as he pins me with a stare and says. “I have gone insane trying to free you from his grasp to find out that not only had you willingly put yourself there, but you enjoyed it.”
“I live in a state of fear!” I snap back angrily. “What part of that do you think I enjoy?”
It’s crushing and unfair. His words a twisted spite for his father that has now turned to me.
“I tried to end it once,” I say a little too quietly. “When I realized that I missed home and wanted to come back.” Memories from that night flood me. “He’d become angry. Patronizing. Perverted.” I remember it clearly. “Dance, little dove, dance,” he said. I choke at the memory of what was to come next. “I was scared, and I put a knife across his throat trying to escape, but even that didn’t make him stop. If anything, he found it amusing, and then he did so much worse. For years, I lived under his reign, so don’t you dare try to insinuate that I enjoyed it when you weren’t even there in the living hell that I was forced to stay in!”
Dmitri’s a raging, unmoving storm. I always knew he’d hate me for it. For being a silly little girl swept up in promises that I didn’t realize came with poisonous strings attached. That I’d be isolated and locked away in what someone else described as love—it was cruel and unrelenting. Nothing other than a sick and twisted game.
“I find it funny that you left all of that out,” he says, the thick vein in his neck looking like it’s about to explode. He looks like, at any moment, he’s about to go on a killing spree. Like his father, violence has always Dmitri’s solution. These last few months, I’d seen a different side to him. A more mature and loving side. But I realize that he’s still the boy hating on the world for the hand he was dealt. And I couldn’t fault him for it now that I understood his demon’s provocations. And part of me now realized somewhere, deep down, that little boy is unable to escape his father’s shadow.
“I don’t want you to hate me,” I squeak. I knew he’d look at me as he is now. Disgusted. Repulsed. Looking at me as if I’m now tainted. Wasn’t I, though?
A cruel smile tugs at his lips. “Had I known, I would’ve never fucking touched you.”
His words cut deep and tear me in two. I go to speak but can’t.
“I think we should both walk our separate ways right now,” Layla says cautiously as she steps back into our peripheral. She’d been there the whole time, but we’d been so fixated on one another. “Dmitri, you need to leave. You’re not acting like yourself right now.” And there’s an edge to her tone I don’t understand.
“Why?” Dmitri says, and it’s devoid of any emotion he’d shown me over the past few months. “We’ve said everything we’ve had to. That’s all I needed to know.”
He turns and walks out the door, and I’m too shocked and weak to tell him to come back. I don’t deserve for him to ever come back. I curl further into myself. Layla seems torn, and as much as I want my sister here to hold me and tell me everything’s going to be okay, I just want to lay in my misery. I don’t want her pity either. My actions lead me here. As much as I wanted to blame Dmitri long ago, the fault had always sat with me.
“Go, Layla,” I say quietly. Because more than ever, Dmitri needed his best friend now.
She still seems perplexed.
“Where will I go?” I say, mocking myself. “It’s not like I can run away.”
I look at her now and notice the way her expression twists and tears prick at her eyes. As I thought, someone removed my shoes before tucking me into bed. And as I suspected, my sister would’ve seen the savage damage to my feet.
“We need to talk about this,” she says gently but looks at the door.
I nod and hide my face on my knees, encouraging her to leave. She runs out of the room, and I’m left in a weighted blanket of guilt.
Dance, little dove, dance. His voice echoes in my mind, a mockery of everything he stole from me.
Why didn’t you just kill yourself? Lyle’s voice echoes.
I curl into myself further.
I was being treated as a princess locked in a tower when I was the villain. I might’ve been the puppet, targeted by his father initially, but I’d fallen for it.
All I’d done was hurt and jeopardize those who I loved.
Now, I was tired.
The fight sucked out of me… because who would miss me if I vanished?
The Lion’s voice echoes in my head.
You only have me. No one cares about you. Why would they?