CHAPTER SIX
DMITRY
I wake and smile to myself knowing my girl is safe beside me, only when I reach over, she’s not there. I scan the room and panic sets in. My heart thrums in my chest. My hands grip the bed covers.
“Natalia. Natalia,” I call out, making my way to the bathroom in case she’s inside—she isn’t.
Where the fuck is she?
I grab my phone from the bedside table and see a notification. It’s a text message from Natalia.
Natalia: I’ve gone out to get breakfast for us. I won’t be long. I love you x
Heat floods my chest. My girl’s gone to fetch breakfast for me. I’ve never had this before. I’ve never had anyone bring breakfast to me. Well, other than my grandpa.
I text her back.
Dima: Look at you, my sweet girl. Don’t take too long. Please be safe. I love you.
I look at the nightstand and see she’s taken my pistol with her.
What a smart girl you really are, Sparrow.
I sit back down on my bed, prop myself up with my pillows and reach down grabbing hold of the backpack I’d brought back with me from the farmhouse.
I unzip the side pocket and pull out my grandpa’s journal.
I scan over the pages and spend time reading small passages until I find her name. Anna. My real mother.
A knot forms in my stomach and I feel sick.
Do I really want to know the truth?
January 3rd, 1998.
I buried my sweet daughter, Anna today.
She was so young. Too young. Fifteen years of life isn’t enough. My daughter, my blood, my heartbeat. Her mother held her hand as life drained from her body, her final breath carrying with it the tiny wail of the child she gave to this world.
Dmitry. My grandson. My curse and my blessing all at once.
His birth and her death eternalized by the same date, December 31st, 1997.
A date etched into my soul. The irony isn’t lost on me.
The end of one year and the beginning of another and with it the morose death of my flesh and blood and the birth of the new life I’d already vowed to protect before he ever took his first breath.
She’d told us the name she’d chosen for her sweet son, it was the one thing other than life she gifted him—Dmitry.
I’ll never forget her initial fear, but I told her it was okay and that we’d get through it together and reassured her I’d support my darling daughter however I could, and that’s when the excitement in her eyes was momentous.
Her heart was full of pure joy. She talked endlessly and enthusiastically about being his mother.
It wasn’t to be.
I don’t know whether to thank God for my grandson or curse him for taking his mother.
Maybe I should do both.
I don’t know who his father is. I don’t know if I’ll ever find out.
Anna was secretive and ashamed to be pregnant so young.
She wrote things in her diary that she was too scared to speak to me about.
I know because I found the diary in her room, stuffed underneath her mattress beneath her homework books.
I forced myself to read it. I was desperate to understand.
And in those pages I saw the truth she kept hidden.
She called him only by his nickname—Volk-Knyaz.
Who the fuck is the Wolf Prince?
She never detailed more, but the way she wrote about him chilled my bones. She wrote as though he was older, as though it was never love. It was fear. Repulsion. Regret.
She wrote of how he was part of a group of men who used women like cattle, who bought and sold flesh as if it were a trade. A trafficking ring. A sickness that spreads like a plague.
She wrote that she wished she had never looked at him, never let him close, never believed a single word he said. She wrote of pain, of shame, of how he took from her what she never wanted to give freely.
And from that night came Dmitry.
I’ve always wanted to destroy every man like him even before I met my wife because of the woman I truly loved, but that’s already detailed.
I want to burn them all until the world is cleansed of their filth.
I swear to protect my grandson, no matter the cost, because Anna’s last words in her diary were clear—'keep my baby safe. Do not let him fall into their hands.’ It’s as though she already knew her fate; she knew she wouldn’t survive his birth.
I wonder if he had her killed. Paid the doctors to murder her to keep his filthy secret.
They never did a post-mortem, which is unusual for a childbirth death, but in my grief, I didn’t question it, I won’t question it.
She’s at rest now. I don’t want my child to be disturbed in her grave.
I’ll forever protect my Grandson.
My little lion, my sweet boy, Dima.
I failed her once—I failed her in life. I will not fail her again—I will not fail her in death.
She’s the reason my work with the Ropes was so important.
The reason I want to return to them.
As I read my grandpa’s journal, and his fierce words of protection, my gut tells me to call my girl, she’s taking way longer to get breakfast than she should be. I stand up with the journal still in my hands and pace back and forth across the room.
The café is only a block away from my apartment, maybe they’re busy.
But it’s still freezing outside. This is Moscow. Winter doesn’t leave so soon.
It doesn’t make sense for her to take this fucking long—it’s the quiet season.
Shut up, stop overthinking.
The laborers need food ... there’s a building site nearby. There’s a long line, a wait.
That’s what it is.
I try to convince myself.
Now, Now, don’t be so na?ve Dima. She’s left you.
You’re unhinged, mentally unstable, a fucking murderous, cold-blooded psychopath, any sane girl would take the same chance and run. If they’re smart, they’d run and never look back.
The paranoia in me rages and I grab my phone to check her location. I’m met by the loading screen on the loco app, and my mind goes into panic mode.
She’s fucking left me—no she wouldn’t ... not after everything.
Dima, stay calm. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
She’s nowhere near the café, nowhere near the apartment. She’s already miles away, heading down a country road littered with warehouses. I know that area of Moscow. It’s bursting with gangs.
The bratva.
I can’t even comprehend these thoughts.
Sparrow, please, fuck, no, my sweet girl.
She’s either been taken or she’s heading straight into a cave of bears—she’s heading straight into a trap.
My heart hammers in my chest and I fall to my knees, dropping the journal to the ground. I place my hands together and pray to a god I don’t fucking believe in.
“Keep her safe. I beg you. Protect my girl. God. Anna ... Mama ... if you can hear me right now, please keep her safe.” I beg as I stare at my real mother’s name in my grandpa’s journal as it lays sprawled open on the floor.
I pick the book up and slam it closed then toss it onto my bed.
Natalia consumes me. I need her safe. I need her here with me.
This is fucking war!