48. Arsen
48
ARSEN
“I just came from the distillery.” Dominik walks into my office without knocking. “Everything’s looking really good.”
I don’t look up from the mountain of paperwork on my desk. “Good. Everything’s going according to plan, then?”
“Like a Swiss train schedule.”
A few weeks ago, I might’ve smiled. Or offered Dom a drink. Now, all I feel is irritation that he’s still here. “If that’s all?—”
“What’s that?” Dominik nods to the tangle of pillows and sheets lying on the sofa in the corner.
I stare at the work in front of me until the text blurs. Work is the only thing I’ve always been able to make sense of, but it’s felt as hazy as everything else lately.
“Are you sleeping in here?” he presses.
I made it through a week without him or Gedeon catching on. I suppose they had to find out eventually.
I open the finance file on Adamov Liquor despite the fact I’ve already gone through it. “I’ve had a lot to sort through with the opening. It’s more convenient to sleep down here.”
“As opposed to what?” Dominik asks. “Taking two minutes to walk upstairs to your bedroom?”
“Dom—”
“Actually, for security reasons, I know it takes ninety-four seconds to walk upstairs.”
I exhale. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“Probably. Devil knows you’ve kept Ged and me busy with all kinds of bullshit little tasks this week. Even still, we’ve noticed.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The launch is coming up and?—”
“Cut the bullshit, Arsen,” Dominik snaps. “This isn’t about the launch. This is about Laila.”
My jaw locks into place. I slam the file closed and meet Dominik’s gaze for the first time since he walked in.
What I see surprises me.
His hands are white-knuckled around the edge of my desk as he leans close, all slitted eyes and flared nostrils. “Laila—you remember her, right? Your wife .”
“Careful now, Dominik.”
“She needs you!” he grits out anyway. “And so does that baby. Or have you forgotten your daughter already? She’s eight days old today, and you haven’t picked her up once since she was born.”
“This is your last warning. I’m not about to pull my punches just because you’re my second.”
“You’ve never pulled your punches.” Dominik crosses his arms over his chest. “And I am your second, which means it’s my job to tell you when you’re being a fucking asshole.”
“Laila has everything she needs.”
That’s the truth. I told Polina to be right by her side day in and day out. Laila’s physical therapist is making house calls. They are safe and protected under my roof. They want for nothing. Except for?—
“Except for her husband,” Dominik lobs at me, finishing the thought I’d already begun in my head. “Except for her partner. It doesn’t matter who you order to be there for her—Polina, Brynn, me, Gedeon, even Marie—she wants you.”
Now, my hands are the ones white-knuckled around the table’s edge. That’s the problem with Dominik—when he gets going, he’s like a dog with a bone.
“You’re doing the same thing with Laila that you did with Natascha.”
The words cut exactly as deep as he meant them to. “Laila is not Natascha.”
“That’s what makes this so much worse,” he insists. “You never cared about Natascha, but you do care about Laila. And you’re still treating her like shit.” Dominik’s eyes are trained on the fist balled at my side, but he doesn’t back down. “Go on, get mad. You can beat the shit out of me if you want. That still won’t make anything I just said a lie.” He stands tall with righteous outrage. “The irony is that you’re so damn afraid to lose her that you’re holding her at arm’s length—and now, you’re gonna lose her, anyway.”
“You need to stop talking now.” It’s the final warning I can offer him. My hands are shaking at my sides, days of pent-up anger looking for some direction.
“You don’t want to talk about Laila?” He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “Fine. Let’s talk about Jasper instead.”
Blyat’. I have no interest in going there either, but I can’t run from all of life’s problems.
“What about Jasper?”
“Last night, I caught him at Bruce’s.”
The biker bar is notorious—for good reason. Nothing pleasant happens there. But I square my jaw. “He probably just went in for a drink.”
“No one goes into Bruce’s for a fucking drink,” Dominik sneers. “I have reason to believe he’s back in touch with some of his old cronies from max.”
If Jasper is talking to other inmates, it would be a violation of his parole, and, more importantly, a breach of my trust. If he’s serious about being in the Bratva, he wouldn’t dare.
“Do you have proof?”
Dominik stalls. That’s answer enough.
“Fuck off then,” I snarl. “Don’t waste my time with your suspicions. You don’t have to like Jasper, but you do need proof.”
“I couldn’t back up my claims last time, either, but it didn’t stop him from betraying you!”
“We’ve been over this before?—”
“We have,” he agrees. “And each time, I wonder how you can be so damn ignorant.”
My fists are itching for a punching bag right now, and Dominik’s face is looking more and more appealing. I round the desk, barely coming to a stop before he and I are chest to chest. “I check in on Jasper every fucking day. I’m not putting blind faith in him.”
Dominik lets out a bitter laugh. “Wow. You check on your jailbird friend more than your postpartum wife? Wild.”
And there goes the last fucking straw.
My fist connects solidly with Dominik’s jaw, but he must’ve been expecting it because he rolls with the blow and counters with a jab to my stomach.
It’s been a while since we had an all-out brawl, but judging from the way Dominik throws himself at me, it’s long overdue.
Dominik tackles me around the waist, and we crash into my desk. The work I was pretending to be busy with scatters across the room. What I think is a pen stabs me between the ribs, but I barely feel it.
I roll us over so I can pin him to my desk. His head snaps to the side as I land one strike and another.
I grimace as he digs a shot into my ribs, throwing me off-balance enough to get back to his feet.
We go back and forth, sweat and spit flying, neither one of us willing to admit to even a tiny grunt of pain. It’s a mess of elbows and fists careening in every direction. Shit breaks—some of it inanimate, some it very much flesh and blood.
In the end, I power through with an uppercut that sends Dom’s teeth clacking together and his eyes rolling in their sockets. He staggers backwards, but it takes him next to no time before he’s dropping into a fighting crouch once again. Woozy on his feet, though it doesn’t matter—the look on his face says he’ll keep going until one of us can’t anymore.
I sigh and let my hands drop to my sides. That just makes Dominik’s lip curl.
“This isn’t you, Arsen,” he pants. “You don’t run from a fight.”
“Who the fuck is running?”
“You. Again and again and again. Running from me, from Laila, from your fucking responsibilities as a man.”
I spit blood on the carpet. “What part of punching you in the face qualifies as ‘running’?”
He laughs, a nasty, grinding sound. “Oh, you think trading punches is the same thing as stepping up? That’s why you’re so deluded, man. You’re missing the forest for the trees. Focusing on the shit right in front of your face so you can pretend to ignore the big picture. Yeah, punching me counts as ‘running.’ Because I’m honest with you even when you don’t want to hear it. Even when you kick my ass to try to shut me up.”
“I guess it didn’t work. Should I try again?” I look down at him, but I hardly recognize what I see.
Insubordination simmers in his eyes. I may have claimed a victory in the fight, but I know I haven’t changed his mind. That needle hasn’t moved one iota.
“You’ve always been a better fighter than me. You practiced your ass off. You’re quick and you’re strong, and you know it. It makes you confident, which makes you one of the best damn fighters I’ve ever seen.”
I spit another mouthful of blood on my hardwood floors. “If you think flattery will make me apologize, I must’ve hit you harder than I thought.”
With a sigh of pain, Dominik collapses against the couch. He plants his hands on his hips as blood drips down his chin. “You could be a good father, too, Arsen. If you wanted. If you stopped burying your hand in the sand and fought— for them. ”
A chill works down my spine. It might be blood from the pen that stabbed me in the back, but I doubt it. “You don’t know what you’re?—”
“Laila believes in you. I do, too, for whatever the fuck that’s worth,” he continues. “But none of that means shit if you’re too scared to come out of this room and take a shot.”
With another weary sigh, he walks out.
But his last words linger long after he’s left.