Chapter 21 - Alexei #2
“Harmless?” Ilya peeked around my side, still using me as a human shield. “It’s looking at me. It wants my soul. I can feel it.”
I sighed. “It’s not going to eat your soul.”
“It might! You don’t know! Spiders are demons.”
I glanced down at the tiny creature. “It’s smaller than your pinky finger. You’ve skinned men alive but a spider makes you cry?”
“Different skill sets!” Ilya hissed, still hiding. “People are predictable. Spiders are unpredictable little freaks.”
I sighed and finally started digging a proper hole just to shut them up.
The spider moved an inch closer to Ilya’s foot.
He shrieked again and practically climbed up my back.
This was going to be a very long, very stupid morning.
A little while later, we went back inside the mansion because Dimitri had decided the garden could survive ten minutes without his supervision and because, according to him, Rei would be waking up “soon enough” and needed to be greeted with food.
Dimitri went straight to the stove.
I leaned against the island and watched him pull ingredients from the refrigerator with an efficiency I hadn’t expected from him.
“Does he know what you’re doing?” I asked.
Dimitri didn’t look up. “Nope.”
He set eggs on the counter, then opened another cabinet and took out rice, miso paste, soy sauce, and several things I couldn’t immediately identify.
“And you’d better not tell him.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Why.”
“Because I want him to see it when it’s done.” He finally glanced at me, offended I even had to ask. “That is the entire point.”
I looked past him toward the stretch of windows facing the rear grounds.
“Won’t he see it if he goes behind the mansion?”
Dimitri snorted softly as he rinsed rice in a bowl.
“He never goes behind the mansion.” Then, with a light laugh he added, “He thinks I’m killing people back there or something.”
I said nothing. Because that was, unfortunately, not an unreasonable assumption.
Dimitri noticed my silence and pointed at me with wet fingers. “Don’t make that face.”
“I’m not making a face.”
“You’re absolutely making a face.”
“I’m merely considering that your reputation may have contributed to this problem.”
“My reputation is excellent.”
“Your reputation,” I said, deadpan, “includes arson, aggravated assault, and at least two hundred incidents involving murders.”
“That could describe half the men in this family.”
“Yes, I guess it could.”
He grinned at that and went back to his task. I watched him for a moment longer.
It remained a mystery to me how fundamentally different he was when Rei was involved.
With everyone else, Dimitri moved through the world like he expected it to either kneel or bleed. He liked impact. Immediate reactions. If something displeased him, his instinct was to break it first and think later. He was vain, vicious, easily bored, and proud.
And yet with Rei, all that ugliness bent itself into strange new shapes.
Not better shapes, exactly. Dimitri wasn’t becoming kinder. That would have implied moral growth, and I had known him too long to entertain fantasy. But he became… earnest.
It was fascinating.
“What are you cooking?”
“Tamagoyaki,” he said, lifting the bowl slightly.
Then I asked, “Can you teach me?”
Dimitri turned his head in increments.
“My cooking skills aren’t exceptional,” I explained. “Can you help me improve them.”
He stared at me like I had announced plans to join a monastery.
“Are you concussed?”
“No.”
“Drugged?”
“No.”
“Blackmailed?”
I gave him a flat look.
Dimitri set the chopsticks down and leaned both palms on the counter.
“Why would you want to learn how to cook?”
I had no intention of explaining that Marco had once admitted that he often nicked or burned himself in the kitchen because he got distracted, or moved too fast without thinking.
Nor was I going to tell Dimitri that I had decided then and there that Marco was no longer to be trusted with open flame, sharp knives, or any domestic activity that involved risk to his hands.
Some thoughts weren’t for public use.
Especially not with Dimitri, who would make them unbearable within minutes.
So I shrugged once and said, “Maybe I’m developing a new interest.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then perhaps I’m bored.”
“No.” Dimitri pointed the whisk at me accusingly. “This is about someone.”
“Can you cook,” I asked evenly, “or can you only interrogate?”
His mouth curved. “I suppose I can teach you. Since you helped me with the garden, it’s only fair.”
I was about to answer when the bathroom door down the corridor opened and Ilya emerged, damp-haired and aggrieved.
He had apparently run off to wash himself after the spider incident.
He walked into the kitchen, took one look at the counters full of food, and brightened instantly. “Ohhh, food.”
He made for the tamagoyaki at once.
Dimitri smacked the back of his hand lightly before he could steal a piece.
Ilya recoiled in exaggerated outrage.
“Excuse you.”
“This is for Rei,” Dimitri said without looking at him. “Touch something else.”
“First you work me to death in a garden I didn’t consent to, then you deny me breakfast?”
“You weren’t working. You were screaming at insects.”
“The insect touched me.”
“It walked near you.”
“It brushed my soul.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
Dimitri pointed toward the refrigerator. “Grab something else.”
Ilya pouted so theatrically that if I hadn’t known him for years, I might have mistaken it for sincerity. “You’re both so mean.”
Ilya grabbed a random protein bar from the counter, muttered something and disappeared into the living room.
Dimitri set the plate he had been holding down on the counter with more care than necessary, then turned to face me fully.
“I wanted to talk to you about something.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, leaning back against the marble island.
“Did you hurt Ilya?”
My brow twitched slightly. “Hurt him?”
Dimitri’s blue eyes stayed locked on mine. “Someone saw you nearly broke his arm a while ago.”