Chapter Thirty
Inna Grace
Danger didn’t need to cross the room to get to me. It sat beside me, clad in a black suit, scrolling through its phone. I kept my eyes on the car window while the conversation I’d overheard earlier played in my head on a loop.
I wasn’t supposed to hear any of it. But I did, and now I was sitting with its weight pressing against my chest.
Dmitri said loud and clear that I was a desperate woman.
He was keeping me until he found someone named Luigi.
A man I apparently knew. That last part was the one I couldn’t put down.
He said it like knowing Luigi was the premise the rest of the plan rested on.
I had turned that name over in my mind for the entire drive and came up with nothing.
The name circled, landing nowhere useful.
My fingers curled against my lap.
If Dmitri believed it with such certainty, it had to be true. It meant that somewhere in my life, I crossed paths with a person named Luigi, and I didn’t know it.
This was never about the money I stole. If it were about the money, it would have ended weeks ago. The fact that I was still sitting in the back of his car meant the money was never the point.
I leaned back into the seat and let my thoughts drift to Roman. He was there, and then he wasn’t. He didn’t find me again.
I couldn’t help wondering whether Cole and I were actually safe here or just comfortable.
Was I mistaking one for the other? Dmitri’s world moved with controlled speed, and I let it feel like shelter.
But control and safety weren’t the same thing.
The life he was giving us sat above anything I could have built for Cole on my own.
And I stopped asking what it was costing, which was a mistake.
Comfort was the oldest distraction, and I walked Cole straight into the center.
The car slowed, and the mansion came into view. The gates opened ahead of us as we pulled through. Once we stopped, I straightened and reached for the doorknob to step out, but I hesitated.
I needed answers more than I needed distance.
If Luigi was who Dmitri wanted from me, then the fastest way out was through the information. He just needed to tell me who it was, and I would try to remember.
I turned to him. “Can we talk?”
He lifted his face from the phone and looked at me, giving nothing away on his expression.
“Go inside first,” he said. I noticed the driver hadn’t moved. The engine was still running. Dmitri had no intention of getting out of this car.
He was going somewhere.
I nodded and stepped out. The car rolled away just as I finished closing the door, and I stood there for a moment before turning toward the house.
I needed to talk to him tonight, even if the conversation went badly. I could face his anger. What I couldn’t face was a night carrying the weight of a name I didn’t recognize.
The house was quiet when I walked in. I climbed the stairs and stopped at Cole’s door, pushing it open enough to see him.
He lay burrowed into his blankets with the complete trust of a child who believed he was safe.
He looked like a boy who had received something good and had no reason to question it yet.
My chest pulled tight.
Closing the door, I went to Dmitri’s floor.
I checked the clock, and it was a few minutes before eleven.
I was going to wait for him, so I settled on a couch in the sitting room.
My thoughts circled the same points without resolution, but at some point, my head rested on the armrest, and sleep caught up with me.
A weight woke me up not long after. I gasped and sat up, only to find Dmitri seated beside me.
“I’m sorry, I—” The words died when he leaned towards me and rested his head in my lap.
I went still.
He lay stretched out on the couch, one leg hanging over the edge, the other curled against the cushions. His eyes closed. He didn’t speak; he simply rested there, as though the world outside this room could wait, as though we didn’t argue earlier.
My hands hovered above him, with nowhere to go.
I watched his chest rise and fall as I tried to organize my thoughts into something sensible.
My eyes traced his sharp lines that softened in sleep, the slope of his forehead, and the straight line of his nose.
I lingered in his mouth which once dismantled my ability to think clearly. Those lips knew their work.
My hand moved, and I caught myself before it reached his hair.
I pressed my palm back down and reminded myself that this man described me as desperate to another person a few hours ago.
That the warmth spreading through my chest was a physiological response to proximity and nothing worth naming.
And that I waited for him because I needed answers.
“Who is Luigi?” The question left my mouth, and the silence that followed had a specific quality. He would know that I eavesdropped. No lie would explain how I knew that name without admitting I heard them.
He didn’t answer.
“Dmitri?”
His jaw ticked as his eyes opened and found mine from where his head rested on my lap. For a moment, neither of us moved.
“I just want to know who he is,” I said. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“You do.” He closed his eyes again.
“Then tell me. Maybe I know him by another name.” I kept my calm, which took more effort than it should have. His stillness was deliberate, and it made my fingers curl against the cushion. “Please,” I whispered. “Just tell me.”
There was a beat of silence. “How much did you hear?”
His tone carried no anger, which surprised me more than anger would have.
“Only that you’re keeping me until Luigi faces you.” I bit my lip. He opened his eyes again and looked up at me. “I know you think I’m desperate. But I have a brother, and he’s only nine years old. I—” My voice frayed at the edge, and I looked away before it went further.
He exhaled and lifted his head from my lap. “Let’s go.”
I blinked. “Where?”
“To prove you know Luigi.” He was already at the door.
I followed him downstairs until we stepped out of the house. A car sat outside. Dmitri opened the passenger door and stood beside it, watching me cross the driveway toward him.
I hesitated at the door, but he waited until I got in.
He came around, settled into the driver’s seat, and pulled away without a word. I watched the shapes moving past the window, and my fingers found each other in my lap and began their nervous work. I didn’t know where we were going or what I would find when we arrived.
I prayed to whoever was paying attention that just this once, nothing would go wrong.
Suddenly, Dmitri’s hand came down over mine without warning, and I nearly jumped.
His eyes stayed on the road, one hand easy on the wheel. His other hand turned mine over and laced his fingers through mine. He drew it across and rested it on his thigh. It wasn’t a grip. He simply held my hand there in a comforting way.
What was this?
I looked down at his hand over mine and then at him, trying to find a category for him that fit all this.
Every time I built one, he did something that didn’t fit.
Behind closed doors, he called me desperate, spoke about me like a variable in his plan.
And then he rested his head in my lap like I was somewhere safe to land.
He walked me into a bathroom at a formal event and took me apart with his hands.
Now he was holding me so well, as if I were someone worth steadying.
He was the most confusing person I had ever stood close to, and I was running out of wall space to pin the contradictions.