Chapter Fifty-three
Inna Grace
A month had passed since my mother returned to whatever world she lived in back in Mexico.
A month of learning what it felt like to trust someone else to carry a burden I couldn’t carry myself.
I asked Dmitri for updates more than once.
Not because I doubted him. Asking kept me from being alone with my imagination, from building disasters out of silence and convincing myself they were real.
Akim spent that entire month in Mexico. According to Dmitri, it was part of a plan to keep my mother safe while they worked through everything that still needed to be investigated. So I waited. Waiting had never been difficult when I had a reason for it.
My father made it easier, too. We were seeing each other more often, slowly reclaiming the years that we had lost from each other. He told me he has been speaking to my mother, and that they have been staying in contact. She was safe. And that was enough for me.
My father also got a job at an architecture firm here in Florida.
It shouldn’t have surprised me. He has always been talented, but seeing him rebuild his life brought a relief I hadn’t realized I needed.
He was still staying at the hotel that technically belonged to me.
Dmitri suggested more than once that I should work there and run it myself, but I refused.
There were things I needed to accomplish first before I settled too comfortably into the life he was building around me.
I had a very specific list of things I wanted to do on my own.
Things I wanted to build, earn, and cross off without using a single resource that came from Dmitri.
Which was why I was currently seated in Dmitri’s chair inside his office at DK Holdings, writing that list on a piece of company paper with one of his expensive pens.
He called earlier today and asked me to come over. When I arrived, I found him in a meeting, so I waited in his office instead. After spending far too long staring at the ceiling and accomplishing absolutely nothing, I grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen and started writing.
The list grew faster than I expected. Each wish led to the thought of another.
I sat back and looked at what I had written with a small frown.
I sure had a lot to tick off. Looking at number thirteen, I wondered whether I was setting myself up for something unrealistic or whether I would actually get through it all.
But still, I continued. I wrote number fourteen, pressed the pen to the paper, ready to finish the thought, but the door opened.
I stood up too fast, grabbing the paper and whipping it behind my back. I straightened and stared at Dmitri standing in the doorway as he read the room.
“Oh, look who is finally here.” I pushed away from the chair and moved around the desk, keeping my voice at a carefully controlled pitch of warm sarcasm to distract him. “My lovely husband.”
I leaned against the front edge of the desk. My hand slid behind me and found the gap between two files. I slipped the paper into it without looking. Dmitri was still watching me. After hiding the paper, I moved my hand to my back instead, scratching between my shoulder blades.
“Do you ever get that itch on your back, on a spot you just can’t quite reach?” I asked, tilting slightly as if I was trying to find what wasn’t there. “It’s been bothering me for the last ten minutes.”
Dmitri moved in. I saw the look on his face and whatever sarcastic act I had slipped into. It was that expression he never hid, as if I were something worth studying and he had all the time in the world to do it. Those eyes. He knew exactly what they did when he used them like that.
“What?” I leaned back against the desk as he came closer. He placed both hands on either side of me and lowered his face until we were level. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“It’s the first time,” he said.
I blinked. “First time, what? Seeing me? I’m beautiful. I know that.”
“Call me that again.”
I stayed quiet for a moment, studying him. “Call you what, exactly?”
“Say it.” He moved his face closer.
I let my thoughts run back through what I had called him.
He was right. It was the first time I called him my husband.
I had said it earlier as sarcasm, but now, standing in front of him, I turned it over in my mind.
Dmitri has been calling me his wife since before we even knew each other well enough to have opinions about each other.
He said it as if I had always belonged to him.
He was my man now. He proposed, and I agreed. So I could call him whatever I wanted.
“My husband,” I murmured. My hands found his shoulders and slid up to his neck. “That?”
“Again.” His eyes dropped to my lips and then returned to mine.
“My husband.” I pecked his lips. “My man.”
“Yeah?” He cut off the rest of my words with a slow, deep kiss. “Say it again.”
I giggled as he lifted me off the floor and sat me on the table. “My lovely husband.”
He took my lips again and kissed me as if the words had broken something loose in him. His tongue met mine, and I moaned against his mouth. He bit my lower lip, tugged it gently, then sucked it as if he were testing how much I would let him take.
“You brought me here just to kiss me?” I managed between breaths. He kissed me again before pulling back and just looking at me.
“We can forget about the date,” he said, his hands sliding to my thighs. He spread them and stepped between them.
“Wait.” I straightened. “A date?” His hands moved along my fishnet stockings, sliding under the hem of my minidress. I caught his wrist and pushed him back just enough to stop him. “I’m not letting you ruin our first date. Wait, you actually planned a date?”
“Yes.” His arm came around my waist and pulled me closer again. His other hand settled against my back, and he smiled at me, but his eyes shifted past my shoulder. “Hm. Interesting.”
I turned my head and found him holding a piece of paper. It took me a second to understand what it was.
My list.
“Hey!” I reached for it. Dmitri lifted it above my head with no effort, his arm extended as if I wasn’t even trying. “Dmitri, give me that.”
“Skydiving.” He read it aloud while keeping it out of my reach. “You should forget about getting drunk, darling. That would never happen, and you know—” he stopped, his smile flattening. “Start therapy?”
I dropped my hands and leaned back, giving up for the moment. “Some things are private. You should know that.”
“A therapist?” He lowered the paper. “Am I stressing you out?”
I scoffed. “We don’t only see therapists when we’re stressed.”
“Then why else would someone want to see one?” He set the paper on the table and looked at me more closely with concern. “Is it something I did?”
“Seriously?” I looked at him for a moment and exhaled. He was serious. “If you must know, I want to see if I can work through the fear I have.”
“What fear?” His hand came to my face. “Inna.”
I looked down, still deciding how much of this he needed to hear.
“Of leaving my children if I ever have them.” My gaze stayed on my lap.
“I know I’m not my mother and I wouldn’t disappear the way she did.
But what if she used to tell herself the same thing?
What if I leave just when I have them and leave them to suffer alone? ”
Dmitri hooked a finger under my chin and lifted my face to look at him. “You said you don’t want children, so we won’t have any. And I want you to know there will never be a reason for you to leave the people you love.” His thumb brushed against my cheek. “And I won’t force you to have children.”
I looked up at him. “It’s the only thing I can give you, though. You’ve given me everything. You brought my life back, you—”
“Do you know how much you mean to me? Having you is enough.”
I blinked. “Don’t you like kids?”
“I do,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll push you past what you’re comfortable with. This is a new life I’m starting with you. You come first. Whatever you decide is final.”
“Really?”
He pushed my hair back from my face. “We will make your wishes come true together.” He picked the list back up and scanned it.
“We’re eliminating the therapist part. This one about Grandma,” he tilted the paper slightly.
“You want everyone in the family there for her birthday? That would never happen.”
“Why not? I spoke to Alessia, and she said she’d talk to Rodion. Give me Roman’s number. I’m sure he’d agree.”
“I’m not giving you anything.” He lifted me off the table and set me back on my feet. “Roman is already in Russia. Now, can we go on our date?”
I followed him toward the door. “He moved to Russia?”
“Enough about Roman.”
“Well, we have a month to plan it. We could have the birthday in Russia.” I kept pace with him. “Think about it. It’s your home country. Grandma would love it for her eighty-fifth birthday. That’s a milestone, Dmitri. You don’t understand what that means.”
We stepped into the elevator without Dmitri saying anything else.
“You said whatever I decide, you’d do it. So that’s what I’m deciding,” I declared.
He exhaled and turned to face me. He looked at me as if he were watching himself lose an argument and resented every second. “God, you are good at this.” He paused, then relented. “Fine. I’ll arrange it.”
“That’s my husband.” I leaned into his side, found his hand, and held it. “So where are we going?”
“The casino.”
My smile faded. “That’s where our first date is going to be?”
“Where else do dates happen? Besides, you wanted to see one of my casinos.”
I laughed, shaking my head as the elevator opened. “Who exactly did I agree to marry?”
We took his motorcycle there. It was less than a five-minute ride.
But I still felt a shift in atmosphere the moment we left the main road.
I would have chosen a longer ride with him around the city for a first date.
But it was also the first time Dmitri was showing me this side of his world. The mafia world.