Chapter 20 Dimitri
DIMITRI
Vera’s frozen in the middle of the mall corridor, her face drained of all color. Not pale but white. Like every drop of blood has fled from her skin. Her eyes are wide and fixed on something across the crowd, unseeing, unblinking.
“Vera?” I grip her shoulders. Nothing. No response. “Vera, what’s wrong?”
She doesn’t even look at me. She keeps staring at some point in the distance with an expression that makes my stomach drop.
This isn’t fear. This is something worse and it looks like shock bordering on horror.
“Vera, you need to breathe.” I turn her toward me, shaking her slightly. Her body moves but her eyes don’t follow. She's still looking past me, through me, at something I can't see. “You’re having a panic attack. What did you see, Vera??"
Her breathing is coming in short, sharp gasps and her chest rises and falls too quickly. I immediately recognize what this is—the beginning of hyperventilation.
Fuck.
“Sergei.” I don’t take my eyes off Vera. “Perimeter. Now. Viktor, check our six. Everyone else, eyes up.”
My men move instantly, fanning out to create a wider barrier around us, but Vera doesn’t react to any of it. She doesn’t seem to hear me at all.
Her nails suddenly dig into my arm through my jacket and it’s hard enough to hurt, even through the leather. Her fingers are trembling—no, her whole body is trembling.
“Vera, you need to breathe with me.” I force my voice to stay calm even though my heart is hammering. “In through your nose, out through your mouth. Come on, just—”
“Look.” The word comes out strangled, barely above a whisper.
“Look at what?” I ask her urgently.
“There.” She’s still gripping my arm, still staring past me. “Right there. By the boutique window.”
I follow her gaze across the mall corridor. Shoppers milling around. A woman with shopping bags. Two teenage boys shoving each other playfully. An elderly man examining watches at a kiosk.
Nothing unusual. Nothing threatening.
I furrow my brow and look back at her in confusion. “Vera, there’s no one there.”
“He was just there.” Her voice breaks. “Dimitri, I swear to God, he was right there.”
The panic in her tone makes my whole body feel cold. I’ve never heard her sound like this, not during the car bombing, the pregnancy scare, or even the shooting at the meeting place.
This is different. This is primal terror mixed with disbelief.
“Who was there?” I ask carefully. “What did you see?”
She finally looks at me. Her brown eyes are wild, pupils dilated with fear or shock or both. When she speaks, her voice is shaking so badly I almost can’t understand her.
“Dimitri, it was—” she seems to struggle getting out the last word, “it was Alexei.”
The words don’t register at first. My brain refuses to process them into anything that makes sense. I blink at her. “What did you say?”
“I saw Alexei.” She’s crying now. “I swear to God it was Alexei. He was standing right there, looking at me, and then he—he smiled and he—”
“Vera.” I cut her off as gently as I can, seriously wondering if Vera is having a break from reality. “Alexei is dead.”
“I know that!” She’s sobbing now, her whole body shaking. People walking around us stare at Vera in bewilderment but cower as my men glare at them. “I know he’s dead, I know that, but I saw him, Dimitri. I saw him.”
My first instinct is disbelief. Alexei is dead. I saw his body. I threw dirt on top of his casket as it was lowered into the ground. He’s been dead for two and a half months.
This is impossible.
But when I look at Vera—at the absolute conviction in her eyes, the terror mixed with confusion—I know she believes what she’s saying. She’s not lying. She’s not making this up to get attention or create drama.
She genuinely believes she saw my dead brother.
The question is, did she?
“Describe him,” I order, intending to poke holes in whatever person’s description. I know I would think I saw Alexei when out and about after he died, but it obviously wasn’t him. “The person you saw. Describe everything.”
“Tall.” She’s still gripping my arm, her nails digging crescents into the leather. “Lean. Blond hair under a baseball cap. Blue eyes—that exact shade of blue, you know the one. He was wearing dark jeans and a gray jacket and he was just—he was standing there looking at me.”
My heart stops.
Every detail matches Alexei. Height, build, coloring. Even the way she describes him standing—casual, relaxed, like he had all the time in the world—that’s Alexei too.
But it can’t be. She must have just seen his doppelganger.
“The baseball hat,” I say, still trying to get more information out of a shell-shocked Vera. “What color?”
“Dark,” she immediately says. “Navy or black, I couldn’t tell.” She swipes at her tears with shaking hands. “He had it pulled low over his face, but I could still see… I could see his jaw and his mouth, and when the light hit just right, I saw his eyes and—”
“Which direction did he go?”
She points toward the west wing, where the corridor branches off toward the parking garage exits. “He just turned and walked away. It’s like he wanted me to see him and then—”
“Sergei!” I’m already moving, already pulling out my phone. “West wing, male, six-one, blond, baseball cap, gray jacket. Find him.”
“On it.” Sergei and Viktor take off at a run, speaking rapidly into their radios, pushing past startled shoppers. The other guards close in tighter around us.
I pull up my security team’s app and access the mall’s camera network. It takes precious seconds—seconds where whoever Vera saw is getting farther away—but then I’m in. Multiple camera feeds flood my screen.
I scan through them rapidly. West wing entrance. Parking garage. Exit corridors.
Goddammit. Nothing. But I don’t have access yet to all the footage and I won’t until we get back to the estate. Which means it’s time to go.
“We’re leaving.” I grab Vera’s hand. “Now.”
She looks confused. “But—”
I’m beyond reasoning. “Now, Vera.”
I don’t give her time to argue. I pull her toward the nearest exit with my remaining guards forming a tight perimeter around us. Mikhail and Pavel take point while Anton brings up the rear, walking backward to watch us.
The SUV is waiting where we left it and I practically shove Vera into the back seat and slide in beside her, slamming the door before she’s even fully inside.
“Drive,” I bark at the driver. “Back to the estate. Don’t stop for anything.”
The engine roars to life and we’re moving before my seatbelt is even fastened.
The drive home is tense and silent except for the hum of the engine and the occasional crackle of the guards’ radios checking in.
Vera sits pressed against the far door, her arms wrapped around herself as she stares out the window but not really seeing anything. Her face is still pale.
“I’m not crazy.” Her voice is small and defensive.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You’re thinking it.” She finally looks at me, and her eyes are red-rimmed from crying. “I can see it on your face. You think I imagined it.”
Did I? My mind is racing through possibilities, trying to find explanations that don’t involve the impossible.
Pregnancy can cause all sorts of symptoms. Hormones. Stress. Vera’s been through trauma—the forced marriage, the lockdown, the pregnancy scare. Maybe her mind is creating patterns and seeing things that aren’t there.
But Vera isn’t hysterical and she isn’t the type to fall apart or see things that don’t exist. She’s a practical woman. If she says she saw something, then she saw something.
I just don’t know if what she saw was real.
“I believe that you saw someone,” I say carefully, not wanting to anger her. “I believe they looked like Alexei. But Vera—”
“It was him.” She turns to face me fully now, and there’s steel in her voice despite the fear. “I know how it sounds. I know it’s impossible, but I’m telling you, Dimitri, that was Alexei. I would know those eyes anywhere. That smile. The way he moved. It was him.”
I want to argue and tell her that grief and trauma can play tricks on the mind. Sometimes we see what we want to see—or what we fear to see.
But looking at her face, at the absolute conviction there, I can’t bring myself to dismiss her. Not entirely.
“Okay,” I say quietly.
She blinks, startled. “Okay?”
“Okay. You saw something. Someone. And we’re going to figure out what happened.” I pull out my phone. “I’m going to get the mall footage and we’ll review it together. Then we’ll know for sure.”
Relief floods her expression, like she was braced for me to call her crazy and to dismiss her entirely.
I reach over and take her hand. Her fingers are ice cold.
“I believe you,” I tell her sincerely, squeezing her hand as I see her release a shaky breath. And I do. I believe her. I’m just not sure yet if I believe what she saw was real.
But I’m going to find out.
The footage arrives an hour after we get home.
Every screen on my desk in my office displays different camera angles from the mall. Vera sits beside me, her hand wrapped around a cup of tea that’s long gone cold.
“There.” She points at one of the screens. “That’s where I was standing when I saw him. The boutique is—”
“I see it.” I’m already pulling up the camera that would have had the best angle on that location. Time stamp—11:23 a.m. Right when Vera said she saw him.
I hit play.
The footage shows the mall corridor from a high angle. Shoppers moving in and out of frame. And there—
There’s Vera. Standing completely still, staring at something off-screen. I can see myself beside her, trying to get her attention.
I pan the camera angle to follow her line of sight.
And my heart stops.
Because there, standing in front of the boutique window exactly where Vera said, is a man in a baseball cap and gray jacket.
I zoom in.
The image pixelates slightly, but the features are clear enough. Tall. Lean. The right build. Blond hair visible beneath the hat. He’s standing with his weight on one leg, hands in his pockets.
Just like Alexei used to stand.