32. Dimitri
32
Dimitri
A s I expect, when the weight of my words settles in, the air grows heavy with the number of guns aimed directly at me. What I didn’t expect, though, is Gabriella jumping in front of me, extending her arms out like a protective shield from her brothers.
“Move,” Michael orders his sister.
“No.”
Gabriella standing in front of me gives me an eerie sense of déjà vu, instantly transporting me back to when she did the same thing in the hospital after I saved her from the Irish.
“Gabriella,” Raphael warns her next.
“I said no.”
“Move or I will make you move,” Michael continues.
“You can try,” she says.
I reach for Gabriella and Michael cocks his gun back. “Don’t you fucking touch her.”
“Don’t tell him what to do,” Gabriella snaps at him.
“Gabriella,” I cautiously utter her name, my gaze fixed on the guns trained on us. “Please.”
“No, if I move, they could shoot you.”
“Not could,” Michael cuts in. “Will.”
“Dante, do something.” I hear Alice beg her husband.
The Italian boss stares in our direction, his face devoid of any emotion. His gun is drawn, and though it’s not pointed at me, anything can change in the blink of an eye.
Gabriella looks at her father. “Dad, please. Just let him explain.”
I’ve been trained to read facial expressions, the subtle clues a person’s face can make without even realizing it, giving away their true intentions. But Dante DiAngelo has always been a tough face to understand. Even now, even before he knew the truth about me. Now, he’s downright impossible to read.
“What? No! Did you not just hear him?” Michael exclaims. “He’s a fucking FBI agent! What else is there to explain?”
“He’s also your brother-in-law,” Gabriella reminds him, which nearly makes the irate man pull the trigger if she wasn’t standing in front of him.
“What the hell were you thinking, Gabriella?” Raphael asks in an imploring voice. I watch his hand lower a fraction, suggesting once again to me that he might be the more level-headed of the twins.
“I was thinking that it didn’t matter,” she answers, her voice shaking a hair. “Because I love him. For who he is now, not who he was.”
My head snaps to her. It’s the first time she’s spoken those words out loud. I knew she loved me, but to hear the words is something else entirely. Like it’s a validation of my love for her to know she feels the same.
“Who he was?” Enzo repeats. He’s the only other man not wielding his weapon in the room. “What does that mean? Is he an FBI agent or not?”
“I still am, but not for long.”
“You don’t just leave the FBI,” Enzo snorts at my vague answer.
I ignore his valid point because there’s no use arguing when he’s right. Leaving the FBI will not be as simple as giving in my two weeks’ notice and saying see ya, nor will it be as easy as that.
“So, do you have an exit plan?” Enzo continues when I stay quiet.
I frown. “I’m working on it.”
“Un-fucking-believable,” Michael curses, brandishing his gun in too erratic of a manner for me.
I reach for Gabriella at the same time as Dante barks, “Put your guns away, you idiot boys, before you kill your sister or someone else.”
Michael turns to his dad. “Are you serious?”
“Put them away. Now.”
It’s a comedic sight, watching two grown men listen to their father and sheepishly tuck away their guns, like a pair of scolded children. But if I laugh, they’ll surely fire and Gabriella is still too close for comfort.
Only when her brothers sit back down does she slowly do the same with a nervousness I feel seep deep into my bones when I take her hand once again.
“I’m going to go check on the children,” Alice announces before she gestures to Rose and Lily. “Would you two like to join me?”
“Do you think that’s wise, Alice?” Rose questions, shooting her fiancé a wary look, like she can’t trust him to behave. And she’s right not to. The guy has an anger problem with an itchy trigger finger. When combined, they don’t make for a very clear head. He’d sooner shoot and then ask questions while you die choking on your own blood.
“The boys will play nice,” she answers before turning to give her sons a fiery look. “Right?”
“Yes,” Raphael agrees.
“I guess so,” Michael mumbles, earning a swift elbow to the side from Rose. She leans in close and whispers something in his ear, causing a small blush to spread across his cheekbones as he clears his throat. “Yes, Mom.”
Lily kisses Gabriella on the cheek, giving her a quick hug as she says, “Congratulations.”
Rose mimics the gesture and says, “I’m so glad you two worked it out.”
Alice approaches next and lightly cups her daughter’s face. There’s a question on her face that I can’t make out, but Gabriella must, because she nods. Her mother smiles softly before leaning in to kiss her forehead. “We’ll talk later.”
I look at Gabriella quizzically as they leave. “What was that about?”
“Tell you later.”
“Does she know?”
“She does now.”
I want to ask how the hell that’s possible. There’s no way a woman can just look at another and know they’re pregnant. Right? Maybe there’s some sort of connection between a parent and their child that explains it, but I wouldn’t know. Not yet, anyhow.
“Talk, Volkov,” Michael snaps, his sour mood extra sour-y now that Rose is gone. “Or is that even your real name?”
“It's not. My name is Dimitri Clark.”
“How long have you been undercover?” Dante asks. He's the only one with his gun still out, but he holds it down and pointed away. Doesn't make it less of a threat though.
“A couple of years now.”
“Were you always an FBI agent or were you an informant who switched sides?”
“I was sent undercover.”
“For what purpose?”
“To investigate Sergei Mikailhov and his connections to the High Table,” I explain, not really seeing the point in keeping anything back at this point. “That changed when we uncovered a human trafficking ring in Miami.”
“Fuck me,” Michael growls.
I’d rather not.
“What do your superiors know?”
“They know that the High Table consists of the Italians, the Irish, and the Russians, with Dante DiAngelo leading it.”
“So they know everything, then?” Raphael concludes with a curse.
“Yes, but—”
Michael lashes out and kicks at the coffee table in front of him. The force cracks the wood border and shatters the glass in the center, scattering shards on the floor.
“What the hell was that?” I hear Rose shout from somewhere in the house.
“Nothing,” Gabriella shouts back. “Just an accident.”
Dante levels his eldest with a stern and irritated look. “You will apologize to your mother and replace her coffee table.”
“Yes, Dad,” Michael agrees shamefully.
“Go on,” Dante orders in my direction.
“As I was saying,” I continue, purposely tossing Michael a sarcastic smirk that has Gabriella hissing, “Stop,” in my ear. “They know only that and what I’ve been able to give them about the Bratva’s business dealings with the other two families. As far as the FBI knows, the DiAngelos and O’Learys are dirty, but are very good about cleaning up their tracks.”
“I will take that as a compliment,” Enzo voices proudly, peering around the room with a beaming smile.
I figured it had to be Enzo or someone skilled like him responsible for stonewalling me every time I tried to get evidence enough for the agency. It was a simpler time back when “books” were actually paper ledgers and easy enough to be stolen. That’s not the case now with advanced technology today. It’s hard to stay one step ahead without having to break through some bureaucratic red tape rules.
“And the human trafficking?” Raphael asks, his focus latching on to the topic most close to him. “Do they know about Xiao?”
“They do and they also know that there is someone higher than him making the orders.”
“Do they have any idea who?”
From what Gabriella told me, Lily was sold to the Triads at a human auction, where she caught the eye of Xiao working in his sex dungeons that make the Playground look like kid bounce houses. For years after that, Lily was nothing more than his sex slave, who eventually had Xiao's daughter. Last month, the DiAngelos raided Xiao’s home, intending to kill the man but found Lily and her daughter, Mei. He offered them a chance at freedom in exchange for her help to lure Xiao out. It worked in the end, I’ll give them that, but it would have been nice to bring Xiao in and flip him on his boss. Instead, his body rots on the bottom of the ocean floor, useless and without purpose, leaving me once again clueless to the identity of the one really behind the auctions.
“I have my suspicions, but nothing concrete.”
“Care to share with the class?” Michael asks with dripping sarcasm.
Ignoring him, I turn my attention to Dante. “Last year, you came to Sergei when it was revealed that Michael was not sterile and accused him of being behind the lie. He told you he had nothing to do with it."
"That's right."
"He lied.”
Dante’s brows narrow. “How do you know this?”
“Because he told me the night of Gabriella’s accident,” I reveal, needing to gain their trust and share in my suspicions. “I went to him after visiting Gabriella in the hospital and tried to suggest I marry Gabriella instead of Sophia. That’s when he told me he wanted nothing to do with your family and that he was behind the fertility lie.”
“That mother fucking bastard!” Michael hollers as he shoots to his feet and kicks the rest of the coffee table into pieces. Debris flies everywhere, some of which lands on Gabriella and I’s laps. “He lied to my face! He made me think I couldn’t have kids! He nearly destroyed my life!”
“Michael, calm down,” Raphael urges his brother, slowly rising to his feet like he’s about to approach a feral animal. “Think about it. Yes, he lied and we’ll deal with it, but you never would have met Rose if he hadn’t.”
Speak of the devil. Rose rushes in, her eyes wide and her mouth dropping open when she takes in the room’s sight. “What the hell is going on in here?”
Michael spins around, his anger slightly diffusing when he sees Liam in her arms. “Sergei was the one who bribed the fertility doctor to lie.”
“Are you serious?”
“He told Dimitri the night of Gabriella’s accident.”
Rose raises both brows at the news. “Wow. That’s…but why?”
“I don’t fucking know,” Michael growls, his anger rising again.
“Calm down,” Raphael suggests to his brother.
“Yes,” Rose says, her tone as sharp as the steel straightening her back. “Calm down, Michael.”
Hearing her tone, Michael stops abruptly and looks at her with regret and sorrow. “I’m sorry, mi rosa . I’m just so angry about it all.”
Rose sighs at the sound of her nickname and the tension in her spine slips away as she steps forward. She cups his face with a hand, and he melts into her touch, his eyes closing briefly. “And I’m angry for you, but I’m also thankful. Without him, we wouldn’t be here right now, and we wouldn’t have Liam,” she repeats Raphael’s words and this time they break through the red cloud of lingering anger.
“You’re right,” Michael concedes, “but he will still answer for it.”
“Of course he will,” Rose assures him and joins him back on the couch this time with Liam nestled between them.
As much as the eldest DiAngelo annoys me, he did make a cute baby, which is promising for Gabriella and I’s twins.
“What does Sergei lying about my son’s fertility have to do with your suspicions?” Dante asks.
The weird feeling I got when I spoke with Sergei returns. “I don’t know. It’s hard to explain, but if he could lie so easily to you, to me, what else is he lying about?”
“Seems to run in the family.” Michael grunts. “Lying.”
And now we’re back to hating me, it seems. “Sergei is not my family.”
“Oh, that’s right. Gabriella is now,” Michael says, tilting his head to look at me with a curious and judgmental expression. “Tell me, Clark , why should we trust you? Why should we believe a single word you say? For all we know, you could be lying about everything, and this is all some elaborate set up. Just because you’re married to my sister doesn’t mean shit.”
Having heard enough, Gabriella leans forward and levels her brother with an equally sarcastic look, proving just how hot that Italian blood runs in her veins. “Then how about because I’m pregnant too, you idiot?”