Chapter Thirty-one
Inna Grace
The uneasiness didn’t leave me as we pulled into a hotel. It simply changed shape.
I followed Dmitri through the reception area without slowing down. The staff noticed him and looked away. They didn’t question where we were going. I stayed close, trying to pin my thoughts into something linear, and I failed.
The elevator opened onto a quiet hallway, and we walked to a brown door at the far end. My heartbeat found a new gear when we stopped.
Dmitri rang the bell. I stepped back half a step, holding myself together by sheer physical force.
The man who opened the door was older, straight-backed. His posture carried a deference that arrived before he spoke. “Sir.”
Dmitri walked past him without acknowledgment, and I followed slowly, scanning the suite as I entered. It had the particular texture of expensive things maintained without sentiment, the room that cost more per night than I used to earn in a month.
We stopped in the living area, and Dmitri turned. “Where is he?”
“In the room, sir.” The man led us down a short corridor, opened a door, and stepped aside.
Something in me resisted, a pull that I recognized as fear before I named it. I stood at the threshold and didn’t move.
“I’ll be in the living room,” the man said, already retreating. He left the door open and the silence to fill the space he left.
Nobody moved. I looked at Dmitri, and he looked back at me. “Aren’t you going to greet him?”
I stepped forward.
The room carried the faint, sterile smell of antiseptic, and I registered the figure on the bed.
He lay with white sheets pulled to his chest, and an oxygen mask covered the lower half of his face.
A drip line ran from his arm to the stand beside the bed.
His chest moved in slow, the rise and fall of someone being breathed for rather than breathing.
I didn’t understand what I was looking at. I moved closer because understanding required proximity, and the closer I got, the more his face assembled itself into someone I knew. He became familiar with each step until I reached the edge of the bed. The world around me shrank to just him.
My breath stopped.
“Dad?” The word left me before I chose it.
My hands trembled at my sides. I reached toward him and pulled back, the fear of touching him stopping me, as if he would vanish if I touched him, and I would stand in an empty room.
“Dad.”
I turned to Dmitri, who leaned against the doorframe, watching me. I searched his face for anything that would tell me this was true, that I was awake and standing beside my father.
“It’s my father,” I whispered, and the words felt breakable in my mouth.
A tear ran down before I could catch it.
I faced my father again, and this time my hand moved to his shoulder with gentleness.
Up close, the damage was undeniable. Bruises spread across his face in deep, mottled patches.
A bandage wrapped his head, stained at the edges.
The shape of his face, which I carried in memory through every year he was gone, confirmed it.
It was my father. And he was alive.
This was the man I waited for. The one I searched for in strangers’ faces on crowded streets, in the backs of buses, and across restaurant floors. He was the father I promised Cole would come back. I almost let go of it and convinced myself that letting go was the practical thing to do.
And here he was, breathing. He was warm when I closed my fingers around his hand.
My knees gave out, and I dropped beside the bed.
“He’s alive,” I sobbed, and the words broke open what I had been holding for so long.
The nights I held myself together for Cole when I was coming apart at the seams. Every dark thought I never said out loud because saying it made it real.
Every morning, I woke up and kept going because someone had to, and it had to be me.
“I missed you.” My voice fractured against the edge of the mattress where I pressed my forehead. “What happened to you?” My fingers moved over his face, tracing the bruised skin with gentleness. “I thought we lost you. I thought I would never—”
The rest of it dissolved into tears. I didn’t know when it shifted from crying to laughing. At some point, they felt the same, both of them true.
I pulled back and turned to Dmitri. A powerful push moved me before my mind caught up. I crossed the room and walked into him. My arms wrapped around him and held on, my face against his chest.
He brought me here, and he had no idea what this meant. He didn’t know what it felt like to see my father again after all those years.
“Is this a hug?” he asked. I tightened my arms and nodded against his chest. “While you are crying?”
A sound left me that was half a sob and half a laugh. “Happy tears,” I managed, my voice still breaking between words. “My father is alive. I am so happy.”
Dmitri went quiet for a while before his hands moved to my back and settled there.
He held me, one hand moving in a slow touch on my back.
He embraced me with a certainty that leaves no room for the thing you’re afraid of.
I stayed in it and didn’t think about what it meant. I let it be exactly what it was.
When I finally pulled back and looked at him, reality began reassembling itself. We came here to prove I knew Luigi, yet it was my father here.
“I don’t understand,” I said, still catching my breath. “Who is Luigi?” I searched his face. “Wait.” My heart skipped a beat. “Is my father Luigi?”
Dmitri scoffed, the sound landing somewhere between amusement and disbelief. “You’re clueless.” His hand moved to my shoulder, rubbing me slowly. “You eavesdropped. You should have pieced it together.”
“I heard you were keeping me because I knew Luigi, and that the old man said Luigi took someone important from him.” I shook my head. “That’s all.”
Dmitri tilted his head, studying me. “And who do you think the important person was?”
“I don’t know.” I turned back to my father, taking in the state he was in again. “What happened to him?”
“He was shot.”
I faced Dmitri. “A gunshot?” My eyes dropped to his shoulder, where he also had a gunshot wound. The pieces arranged themselves immediately. “Were you shot while rescuing him?”
Dmitri moved further into the room, and I followed.
“You shouldn’t have seen him like this.” His eyes stayed on my father rather than me. “And you won’t visit again until I say so. Iker wants him, and he’s watching you closely.”
I barely heard the second half. I was watching Dmitri as everything settled into place.
He rescued my father. My father was the important person the old man spoke about.
Which meant Dmitri was Luigi, and Luigi wasn’t a person I knew from my own life, but it was Dmitri.
The old man believed Dmitri needed me because I knew Luigi, and Dmitri was Luigi.
This entire time, he was the one connecting it all.
He turned to me. “He is safe here, for now.” We stared for a moment before he asked. “What’s with that look?”
“You’re Luigi,” I said. It wasn’t a question by the time it left my mouth. “And the important person Luigi took from that old man is my father.”
He smirked. “Now you agree that you know who Luigi is.”
I stared at him. The smirk confirmed everything my mind tried to argue with.
“You lied to him.” My voice shook. “You told him you wanted someone I knew, and that person was you. You knew it was you the whole time.” The tears came back. “You lied to him. You did, right?”
I needed the word. One word, and I would know whether everything I was feeling had any ground to stand on.
He lifted his hand and wiped the tears from my cheek. His touch was more of a confirmation. I leaned into his palm, the tears not stopping. The tightness in my chest loosened. He had no idea how happy I was.
“You must be having a lot of happy tears,” he said while searching my eyes.
“You actually found my father.” My voice came out shaky and soft.
His thumb brushed the skin beneath my eye. “You asked.”
“You said no,” I reminded him.
The smirk returned. “Guilty.”
A short, wet laugh left me, and I shook my head. The version of Dmitri I arrived with tonight shifted into what I didn’t have a clean word for yet.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “How do I even pay you back?”
Dmitri’s thumb moved, this time brushing across my lower lip. His eyes dropped to it for a moment before returning to mine. “His name is Roman. I don’t care what you fucking call him. And don’t let any man put his hands on you like that again.”
I blinked. Did he just bring Romeo into this? Right now, in this room? But I nodded because the look on his face left no room for argument.
His hand moved to my lower back, and he drew me into his chest. I let myself stay there while everything from the last hour settled into its place. The relief. The tears. My father. And Dmitri’s words.
Caitlin called it jealousy. Standing in his arms, I began to think she was right, and it was a problem. I couldn’t deny that my feelings were responding to everything he was doing to me. And that had nothing to do with fake marriages or debt.
When I agreed to be his wife, nobody mentioned it would come with this. Was I allowed to fall for him?
“Thank you, Dmitri,” I whispered again.
His hand tightened on my back. He said nothing, but held me there like he intended to stay.