Chapter 16 Dimitri
DIMITRI
I’m avoiding her.
It’s pathetic. Goddammit, I know it’s pathetic, but three days after that conversation in the library, I’m avoiding Vera like my life depends on it.
Maybe it does.
Because things are getting too fucking complicated in ways that have nothing to do with bombs or bullets and everything to do with the way she looks at me. The way I look at her. The way being near her makes me want things I have no right to want.
So I’ve thrown myself into the investigation with an obsession that borders on madness.
I spend eighteen, sometimes twenty hours a day in my office, surrounded by files and photographs and timelines and nothing fucking adds up.
Crime scene photos from Alexei’s death. Surveillance footage from the peace meeting bombing.
Forensic reports from the car bomb. Personnel files on every single person who had access to our schedules.
I’m looking for patterns. Inconsistencies. Anything that will tell me who’s trying to kill us.
But every time I find a thread, it unravels in my hands.
The forensics from Alexei’s scene still don’t match.
Powder burns suggest shots fired from farther away than the coroner’s report indicates, but when I call the coroner to ask about the discrepancy, he insists his report is accurate.
Three of my most trusted men identified the body.
I identified the body. The DNA analysis confirmed it was Alexei.
So why does something still feel wrong?
The peace meeting attack. Someone knew exactly where everyone would be positioned. But tracking down who had access to that information leads me in circles. There’s just too many people, which means too many possible leaks.
The car bomb—same story. Sophisticated device, perfect placement, exact knowledge of our route and timing. But the components are so common they could have come from anywhere. The detonation method is so standard it tells me nothing about who built it.
Someone is very good at covering their tracks. And that someone is smart and careful with resources and inside information.
Someone I probably trust. Or used to trust.
I growl at the thought of being betrayed. When I find that person (because I will find them), they’re going to wish they were never born.
Instead, I pour another cup of coffee (my eighth today, or maybe my tenth, I’ve lost count) and pull up the personnel files again. Seventeen people had access to both the meeting location and our route the day of the bombing. Seventeen people I have to consider as potential traitors.
The names blur together. They’re men I’ve known for years, who have proven their loyalty a dozen times over. They’ve bled for this family and lost friends and brothers in service to the Volkovs.
One of them sold us out.
Or maybe it’s not one of my people. Maybe my uncle was right and it’s an Ashford. Maybe this whole peace treaty was a setup from the beginning, a way to get close enough to destroy us from the inside.
But that doesn’t explain why they’d target Vera. Why bomb a car she was in? Why risk killing Vincent Ashford’s oldest daughter?
Unless it’s what Konstantin said and the Ashfords determined she was acceptable collateral damage to them. Maybe Marcus has decided that eliminating me is worth the sacrifice of his niece.
But could Vincent Ashford be so cruel and callous to order the execution of his eldest daughter?
The thought makes violence surge through me. No one touches her. No one. I don’t care what side of this war they’re on.
I scrub both hands over my face, a wave of tiredness pulling at me. I haven’t slept in—what? Forty-eight hours? More? Time has lost meaning. There’s just the investigation, the files, and the endless fucking search for answers that refuse to come.
My office door opens without a knock.
“You need to eat something.”
Mrs. Kozlov stands in the doorway, holding a tray.
Her expression is stern, disapproving in that way only she can manage.
Unconsciously, I straighten up. Mrs. Kozlov is one of the only people who I actually fear.
She changed my diapers and taught me Russian when my father was too busy.
She’s the closest thing to a mother I have left.
Which means she’s one of the few people who can look at me like I’m an idiot and get away with it.
“I’m fine,” I mutter, turning back to the files.
“You’re not fine.” She sets the tray down on my desk with more force than necessary, making the coffee cups rattle. The smell of soup wafts to me and my stomach growls traitorously. Mrs. Kozlov’s eyes gleam with triumph. “Three days. No proper food. No sleep. This is foolishness.”
“I’ll eat later,” I tell her dismissively.
“Bozhe moy.” She mutters something else in Russian that I don’t quite catch, but the disgust in her tone is unmistakable. “You said this yesterday. And day before. Always ‘later.’ Your mother would box your ears for such stupidity.”
I wince at the invocation of my mother. Mrs. Kozlov knows exactly which buttons to push.
“Mrs. Volkov asks about you,” she continues, and there’s a sharpness in her tone in the way she says the title. It’s quite hostile, but not warm either. “Every day she asks if you have eaten. If you have slept. If you are—” She stops, her mouth pressing into a thin line of disapproval.
My jaw clenches. “Vera should focus on staying healthy. For the baby. That’s all that matters right now.”
“Da, the baby matters.” Her eyes bore into me, shrewd and knowing. “Alexei’s baby. Your brother’s child. This is why you work yourself to death? Because you feel guilty?”
The accusation stings and it takes everything in me to not wince and keep my face impassive. “I’m trying to find who is trying to kill us. That’s not guilt, that’s—”
“Running.” She crosses her arms, and suddenly I’m eight years old again, being scolded for tracking mud through the house.
“You hide in this office like scared boy. You avoid your wife—” Again, that slight emphasis on the word, loaded with judgment.
“You punish yourself because you could not save Alexei. But this?” She gestures at the chaos around us. “This helps no one.”
I scowl. “I’m not running—”
“You are coward.” She says it bluntly, without malice, but they feel like a slap to my face. “I raised you better than this. Your father, bozhe upokoy, he would be ashamed.”
My face fucking burns at her comment. Of all the things to say to cut me down, she certainly knows them all. “Mrs. Kozlov—” I say angrily, but she holds up a hand to silence me.
“No! I speak truth, even if you do not want to hear it. That girl—” She won’t say Vera’s name, I notice.
“She is your wife now for better or worse. She carries Volkov blood in her belly. This makes her family, whether I like it or not.” The admission clearly costs her as she looks like she’s sucked on a sour lemon.
“And family does not abandon family. Even when it is—slozhno. Complicated.”
She moves toward the door, but pauses in the threshold, not looking back at me.
“Her family killed Alexei. This I do not forget. This I will never forget.” Her voice hardens. “But you married her. You made choice. So either you treat her as a wife, or you send her away. This half-measure, this avoiding—it is weakness. And Volkov men are not weak.”
She leaves before I can respond, pulling the door closed with a firmness that’s just short of a slam.
The silence she leaves behind is deafening.
I stand there, staring at the closed door, her words echoing in my head. Coward. Your father would be ashamed. Volkov men are not weak.
My hands curl into fists at my sides. Hot rage surges through me and it’s sharp and defensive. How dare she. How dare she call me a coward when I’m working myself to death trying to protect everyone. When I’m hunting for the person who’s trying to kill me and Vera.
But beneath the rage is something worse. Something I don’t want to acknowledge.
She’s right.
The realization sits like lead in my stomach.
I am running. I am hiding in this office, burying myself in investigation and files and dead ends because it’s easier than facing what’s happening between me and Vera.
It’s easier than admitting that I’m falling for my brother’s girlfriend.
It’s easier than confronting the guilt that eats at me every time I look at her and want—
I slam my fist down on the desk, making the coffee cups rattle and papers scatter. The soup Mrs. Kozlov brought sloshes dangerously close to the edge of the bowl.
My father would be ashamed. The words cut deeper than they should. My father fell apart so completely after my mother’s death that I had to raise Alexei myself. He was weak in every way that mattered.
And now Mrs. Kozlov—the woman who held this family together when he couldn’t—is telling me I’m just like him.
I drop into my chair, scrubbing both hands over my face. Exhaustion pulls at me, so heavy I can barely hold my head up. When was the last time I slept? Really slept, not just dozed at my desk for an hour before jerking awake again?
The soup sits there, still steaming slightly. My stomach growls again, reminding me that Mrs. Kozlov is right about that too. I haven’t eaten properly in days.
But eating means stopping. It means acknowledging that I’m human and I have limits. I can’t actually work myself to death no matter how much I want to.
Means thinking. And thinking means—
Mrs. Volkov asks about you. Every day she asks if you have eaten. If you have slept.
Vera. Asking about me. Worrying about me. Caring about me despite every reason she shouldn’t.
My chest tightens painfully.
I reach for the soup, then stop. My hand hovers over the bowl, trembling slightly from exhaustion or emotion or both.
I can’t do this. I can’t face what Mrs. Kozlov is demanding I face. I can’t admit that maybe I’m avoiding Vera not because it’s safer, but because I’m frightened of what I’m feeling.