Chapter Forty
Inna Grace
I researched DK Holdings thoroughly, and the company itself was spotless.
Every record was documented, every achievement polished enough to earn awards and flattering magazine profiles.
It was the kind of company governors attended dinners for and journalists described with words like visionary and elite.
But corporations alone didn’t give men the power Dmitri carried into a room.
That sort of authority came from somewhere else entirely.
The situation with Akim killing Ivan confirmed it.
When Dmitri told me Akim handled Ivan, I went to Caitlin afterward and asked her about it.
I expected grief, maybe a woman demanding justice.
Instead, Caitlin reacted as if Ivan’s death were the ending she had long since prepared herself for.
Part of me understood it because of what he put her through.
But the calmness she carried unsettled me.
It told me she understood the world she was living in, and, by extension, the world I had stepped into myself.
I sat with that realization for days and never pushed Caitlin to explain it further.
She was coming out of the pain, and I refused to ruin that progress.
Instead, I took her to the beach and watched her smile at the water.
The next day, we occupied the kitchen for an entire afternoon and cooked enough food to feed a small village.
Most of which turned out surprisingly edible.
After that, she showed me her designs, and I spent hours encouraging her to build something from them.
We were supposed to continue researching that today.
But Dmitri dragged me onto a plane. He informed me about the trip exactly forty minutes before we needed to leave for the airport.
To him, that counted as reasonable notice.
It only made sense if you were a psychopath, which Dmitri absolutely was.
I glanced across the cabin at Dmitri. He’d been looking at me since we boarded the plane. He stared as if he had nowhere else to put his attention and no intention of pretending otherwise. Did I call him a psychopath out loud? I don’t think I did.
“What?” I asked.
He said nothing. His fingers moved slowly along his jaw while his eyes stayed on me.
Akim sat farther back with two other men. They were all dressed as if they were attending a business meeting or planning an assassination after landing. With this group, both were equally possible.
I turned toward the window and let the view pull my attention away from Dmitri’s stare. Cole would lose his mind over this view. Smiling to myself, I pulled out my phone and held it up to the window to take photos.
I scrolled back through the photos, impressed with the camera quality. My old phone never captured pictures this clearly.
Then the camera opened again and caught Dmitri instead.
He filled the frame without even trying.
One arm rested against the seat while his gaze stayed fixed on the lens.
He wasn’t posing, yet somehow he looked like the kind of man luxury magazines built entire covers around.
The picture caught every sharp line of his jaw, the grey of his eyes, and the top buttons of his shirt left open as always.
Professionalism lost a fight somewhere halfway down his chest.
I lifted my eyes from the screen and looked at him.
My stomach did that thing it kept doing lately, the reaction that started somewhere normal and ended somewhere dangerous. He had ridiculous eyes. And that mouth. God. How was one person this attractive?
I was staring, and I knew I was.
Looking back at the screen, I took a picture. It came out perfect. I leaned back against the seat and admired it for a second. Dmitri knew I had taken the photo, but he looked completely unbothered by it, as if being observed were just another ordinary part of his existence.
“Do you know how to take pictures?” I asked. He didn’t answer. I held my phone toward him, anyway. “Take one of me.”
Dmitri took the phone from my hand and lowered his gaze to the screen.
I fixed my hair and leaned back into the seat because this was a private jet, and not everyone looked expensive inside one. Dmitri still wasn’t taking the picture.
“You angle it up toward me,” I said, but he didn’t move the phone at all. I exhaled and took the phone back from him. “Why did I even ask?”
Turning across the aisle, I looked toward Akim, who sat focused on his laptop. “Akim, would you mind taking a picture of me?”
He looked up, and his expression suggested I’d asked him to perform minor surgery.
“What is wrong with you people?” I gestured between the two of them. “You drag me onto a private jet filled with nothing but men, and not one of you can take a simple picture? This is actually a human rights issue.”
Dmitri reached over and took the phone from my hand again.
I straightened immediately and smiled, adjusting myself into a pose because if he was finally cooperating, I intended to make the most of it.
I posed.
Adjusted.
Shifted my hair.
Meanwhile, Dmitri sat there, holding the phone up. Part of me suspected he wasn’t taking any pictures at all, but I trusted the process.
“Two is fine,” I said, trying another angle near the window. “I think that’s enough now.” I leaned over and took the phone back from him.
I looked down at the screen, and my smile faded instantly. He didn’t take a single picture.
The phone displayed an old photo of me sitting on the hammock back at the mansion.
I was biting my finger while staring at the camera, eyes wide, with the neckline of my top doing exactly what deep V-necks were invented to do.
It was a picture I should have deleted after taking it, and somehow never did.
Heat crawled up my neck. I looked at Dmitri, then back at the phone in my hand, aware of every inch of skin visible in that photo. Of course, that was the one he ended up staring at.
I cleared my throat and leaned back into the seat. “You were supposed to take a picture.” I locked the screen quickly. “Forget it.”
The rest of the flight passed with nothing dramatic happening. At some point, I fell asleep while Dmitri and Akim discussed something in Russian across the cabin.
By the time we landed in New York, excitement sat under my skin. Part of it came from finally meeting Dmitri’s family, and the other part came from simply being back here. My teenage years weren’t spent in this exact part of New York, but it still counted.
The drive from the airport took us through a gated community that stretched on so long that it started feeling like a showoff.
Mansion after mansion appeared beyond trees and iron gates, each one more aggressive about wealth than the last. We passed through a second gate and entered a property that made the earlier houses look desperate for attention.
The mansion stood beyond a wide curved driveway, its exterior built from dark wood and stone that looked expensive without trying to announce itself.
Nothing about it felt decorative for its own sake.
Every beam, frame, and line belonged exactly where it stood.
Detailed hand-carved woodwork framed the entrance, giving the entire place a presence rooted in the land itself rather than sitting on top of it like a performance.
I stepped out of the car and paused for a moment, taking in the property properly. The place deserved appreciation. Money built it, but someone with actual taste shaped it afterward.
I followed Dmitri toward the entrance, where a guard opened the door before we even reached it. He bowed as we walked past. If this was another family property, then this had to be where Roman lived.
The inside carried the same language as the exterior. It appeared the art pieces along the walls had been curated. The entire house carried a calm that reminded me of nature more than of luxury. I liked it a lot.
We stepped into the sitting area, and I noticed two people already there. A woman sat on the couch holding a remote while a man stood near the window with a phone pressed to his ear. It wasn’t Roman.
The woman stood the second she saw us, her smile brightening her entire face, mostly her hazel eyes. Honestly, what was she using on that hair? It looked healthy. Seeing it made me miss my long hair for a second.
“Look who finally showed up,” she said to Dmitri after shaking his hand. “You really hate California, don’t you?”
Dmitri tilted his head slightly. “I don’t think you actually wish me to visit.”
She rolled her eyes and turned toward me with a warm smile. “Hi.” She reached out to shake my hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too. You must be Alessia?” I asked because Grandma had described her before with enough detail for me to recognize her almost immediately.
Her face brightened. “Dmitri told you about me? I hope it was something good.” She glanced toward Dmitri with clear curiosity.
Dmitri had never mentioned her to me even once. But I turned to him anyway and gave him a smile of a supportive wife who believed in the stability of her husband’s social life.
“He mentioned you love dogs,” I said.
Dmitri’s jaw tightened.
Alessia laughed, clearly pleased. “That’s very specific of him.” She shifted her attention toward the man who had been standing by the window and was now walking toward us.
I didn’t need an introduction to know who he was. The resemblance made it obvious. I briefly considered the genetics responsible for this family. Expensive genes. Dangerous ones, too.
He moved like he found the existence of other people an inconvenience. Tall, controlled posture, shoulders set. Existence itself required constant negotiation with him. He stopped beside Alessia and looked directly at me as though I was an unexpected problem dropped into his space.
“Who is she?” he asked, not bothering to hide his displeasure.
Alessia opened her mouth, but Dmitri spoke first.
“You talk to me,” Dmitri said. “Let’s get this done. I’m a busy person.”
Rodion didn’t move his eyes off me. That alone told me everything I needed to know about him.
I decided I liked him. Not in a friendly way, but in the same way you like a difficult equation, you intend to solve just to prove you can. I extended my hand toward him with my best controlled smile.
“Well, I hate you too. I’m Inna. You must be Rodion, the firstborn.”
Nothing on his face shifted. Not even a flicker.
“Trust me,” I continued, keeping my hand extended, “I’m a firstborn too. I wear that exact expression regularly. It’s a very specific burden. A handshake for the eldest children in the room, perhaps?”
Alessia cleared her throat. She reached for Rodion’s hand, trying to guide it toward mine, but Dmitri got there first. He stepped directly into Rodion’s space and took his hand instead. Their grips locked, chest to chest.
Alessia exhaled. “This. Again?”
I turned to her. “They hate each other, don’t they?”
She took my arm. “Come. Let’s get water and let them sort out whatever this is. If they want to kill each other, it won’t be the first attempt.” She guided me toward the kitchen.
I followed her gaze around the space. She knew the layout without thinking: cabinets, drawers, and where the glasses were kept.
“I thought Dmitri was difficult,” I said as I accepted the glass she handed me, “but that man. Who offended him and when?”
She laughed. “He’s angry because Roman isn’t here. He knew about this meeting and left.”
“Oh.”
“Roman does this a lot.” She filled her own glass and leaned against the counter. “I’ve been in this family for a long time, but I’ve only seen him like four times in person. If you ever meet a mysterious person, it’s Roman. Just prepare yourself. He’s very distant.”
“Roman is distant?” I laughed under my breath. “I don’t think so. He’s been my friend since I was a teenager. Yes, he can be mysterious, but he’s one of the nicest people I know.”
Alessia stared at me for a second. “You know him?”
“Well enough, yes.”
Her mouth opened slightly. “How? That man prefers solitude. Nobody really knows him.”
“When we met, he was a complete nerd,” I said.
The sentence had barely left my mouth before a voice came from behind us.
“A nerd?”
Alessia and I turned.
Roman stood in the back doorway of the kitchen wearing muddy boots, a bunch of freshly pulled carrots in one hand and a shovel in the other. Soil clung to his forearms as if he had been arguing with the earth itself and won.
“Roman?” I laughed, looking him over. “Alessia said you weren’t here? Were you farming?”