Chapter 10 Dimitri
DIMITRI
Dawn breaks through my office window, painting everything in shades of blood and gold.
I’ve been sitting here for hours. Six? Seven? I don’t know and I don’t particularly care. Time stopped having meaning the moment I heard that heartbeat on the ultrasound. That fast, steady thump-thump-thump that changed everything.
The whiskey bottle sits on my desk, half empty now. Or half full, depending on how you look at it. I’m looking at it as half empty because that’s how everything feels right now. Empty. Like someone reached inside my chest and ripped out everything that mattered.
I pour another glass, my fourth. Or fifth. I’ve lost count of that too.
The amber liquid burns going down, but it’s not enough. Nothing is enough to erase what I learned yesterday. What I know now. What I can never unknow.
Eight weeks pregnant.
I do the math again, even though I’ve done it fifty times already and the numbers are seared into my brain. Eight weeks pregnant means conception happened ten weeks ago. Two and a half months. Early June.
When Alexei was still alive.
When he was sneaking off to “meetings” and “negotiations” and coming home smiling like everything was fine. When he was standing in my office, asking for more responsibility, begging to be included in the family business, looking me straight in the eye and lying.
Because he was with her. With Vera. With an Ashford.
I’ve never felt such betrayal before.
My baby brother. The last person in my immediate family. The one I protected, sheltered, kept safe from the worst parts of this life. He looked me in the eye every single day for eight months and fucking lied.
I drain the glass and pour another.
Eight months. That’s how long they were together. Eight months of secret meetings, secret everything. Eight months of him sneaking around behind everyone’s backs, playing Romeo and Juliet with a girl whose family was openly hostile to ours.
And he never said a word.
He never pulled me aside and said “Dimitri, I need to talk to you about something.” He never gave me the chance to—well, what? What would I have done if he’d told me?
I would have lost my fucking mind. I would have forbidden it. I would have maybe locked him in this house to keep him away from her.
So he lied instead and kept it secret. He chose her over—
No. That’s not fair. He didn’t choose. He just... he wanted both. Wanted me, wanted his family, wanted his life here. And wanted her too.
And now he’s dead, and I’ll never get to ask him why or hear his side of the story. I’ll never get to understand how my brother—my carefree baby brother—fell for an Ashford and kept it hidden for eight months.
The intelligence file sits on my desk. I’ve been staring at it for the past hour, seeing it with new eyes. Reading between the lines I missed before.
Subject: Vera Ashford
Age: 24
Known associates: Close with mother (Elena) and younger twin sisters (Natasha & Lydia, age 12). Limited social circle. No serious relationships on record.
Note: Surveillance indicates subject has been seeing someone.
Frequently leaves the Ashford estate in evenings, returns late (between 11 p.m. - 1 a.m.) No identification of companion.
Meetings occur at various neutral locations, like restaurants, hotels.
Subject takes care to avoid detection. Identity of romantic partner remains unknown.
Unknown.
They couldn’t figure out who she was seeing. My investigators—the best in the business—couldn’t identify him.
Because it was Alexei. My brother. Who knew every surveillance trick, every way to disappear, and every method to stay hidden. Of course they couldn’t track him. He’d learned from the best.
He’d learned from me.
The thought makes me want to put my fist through something, like this entire fucking house.
I taught him how to disappear and how to avoid tails. I taught him how to move through the city without being tracked. These are skills I gave him to keep him safe, and he used them to sneak around with an Ashford.
The irony would be funny if it didn’t make me want to vomit.
And Vera. She knew. From the intelligence file, it’s clear she knew what she was doing. Takes care to avoid detection. She was hiding it too. She was actively working to keep it secret.
When did she find out he was a Volkov? When did she make that realization and decide to keep sleeping with him? Did she always know? Did she purposefully get pregnant?
The rage rises again, hot and sharp. She knew. When I married her, when I stood in that courthouse and put a ring on her finger, when I took her to my home and—
Oh God.
The realization hits me, and suddenly I’m leaning over, my stomach heaving. I barely make it to the trash can before I’m vomiting up whiskey and bile.
I slept with her.
I slept with my brother’s girlfriend.
On our wedding night, when I took her to bed, when I touched her and tasted her and made her come apart under my hands—she was already pregnant with Alexei’s child.
And I fucked her anyway.
I retch again, even though there’s nothing left. My whole body shudders with disgust and self-loathing.
I defiled my brother’s girlfriend. His pregnant girlfriend. The mother of his child.
What kind of monster does that make me?
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and slump back in my chair. The room spins slightly but whether it’s from the alcohol or the revelation, I can’t tell. It’s probably both.
She tried to tell me that night. Didn’t she? When she stammered about not expecting to consummate the marriage, looking so scared I thought she was just afraid of me. But maybe she was afraid of this. Of the violation of sleeping with me while pregnant with Alexei’s baby.
And I dismissed her fear. Told her we were going to make it official whether she liked it or not. Took what I wanted because I could, because she was legally mine, because I was too focused on revenge to think about—
To think about the fact that she might have a reason to be terrified beyond just general fear.
“Fuck,” I mutter, pouring another glass but spilling some of the liquid on my desk. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Alexei would hate me for this. If he were alive, if he knew what I'd done (like sleeping with his girl, making her miserable, trapping her in a marriage while she carried his child) he’d never forgive me.
Hell, I can’t forgive myself.
But he’s not alive. He’s dead. Buried. Gone. And all I have left is this mess he left behind. This impossible, fucked-up situation where his girlfriend is my wife and his baby is growing inside her and I don’t know what the fuck to do about any of it.
The baby.
I close my eyes, and I can still see it. That tiny shape on the ultrasound screen. That flickering heartbeat. So small. So fragile. So undeniably real.
Alexei’s baby.
My brother’s child.
The last piece of him that exists in this world.
My hands curl into fists on the desk. The rage is still there, burning under my skin. The betrayal still cuts deep. But underneath all of that is something else. Something I don’t want to acknowledge but can’t ignore.
That baby has Volkov blood.
Half of its DNA came from my brother. Alexei’s eyes, maybe. His smile. His laugh. Parts of him that died in that warehouse could live again in this child.
It’s his legacy. His continuation. The one thing he left behind.
And it’s growing inside a woman I’ve spent two weeks making miserable. A woman I’ve deliberately hurt and isolated. A woman who’s been terrified of me finding out about this because she knew I could hurt her with it and destroy her and the baby both if I wanted to.
She had every reason not to tell me.
The admission tastes bitter. I’ve been a monster to her. I’ve made her life hell and called it justice, revenge, making the Ashfords pay, etc. But really? Really, I was just hurting a girl who’d done nothing wrong except fall in love with my brother.
A girl who’s now pregnant and alone and probably terrified I’m going to kill her.
Would I? Could I?
I look at the whiskey glass in my hand and the devastation of my office—papers scattered, a lamp knocked over, the frame of Alexei’s photograph cracked where I threw it against the wall in rage.
No. I couldn’t kill her. I can’t even hurt her, not really. Not after yesterday, when I saw the genuine terror in her eyes, heard her sobbing through the door after I left, and knew I’d broken something in her that might never be fixed.
I’m a monster, but not that kind of monster.
So what the fuck do I do with this information and this impossible mess?
There’s a knock on my office door.
“Go away,” I call out, my voice rough.
The door opens anyway and I growl in frustration. Only one other person would ignore that order, and the other is dead.
“You look like hell,” Konstantin observes, taking in the scene. The whiskey. The mess. Me, probably looking as destroyed as I feel.
“Feel like it too,” I mutter before squinting up at my uncle. “What do you want?”
“Mrs. Kozlov mentioned there was some... excitement yesterday. Dr. Petrov was called.” He settles into the chair across from my desk, looking at me with those assessing eyes that miss nothing. “What happened?”
Leave, I want to tell him, This is private, at least until I figure out what the fuck to do about it. But I’m too drunk and tired and too fucking destroyed to care anymore.
“She’s pregnant,” I say flatly.
Konstantin’s eyebrows rise slightly. “I see. That’s... unexpected and faster than I thought. Though I suppose it explains why she’s been unwell. How far along?”
“Eight weeks.”
He does the math quickly, his eyes narrowing. He’s always been fast with numbers. His expression shifts as understanding dawns. “Eight weeks. Which means…”
“Which means she was already pregnant when we got married.” I drain my glass and slam it down harder than necessary.
Konstantin sighs. “Well, that wasn’t expected. Who’s the father?”
The question of all questions. I should probably ease into this, but again, I’m too tired for tact.