Chapter Thirty-four
Dmitri Konstantinov
I arrived at the office, convinced work would distract me.
I committed to it as if it actually mattered.
Files covered the table, papers spread everywhere as I forced myself into numbers, shipments, accounts, and contracts.
None of it worked. The numbers kept blurring together, and every line I read somehow circled back to things unrelated to business.
I pressed the intercom while staring at the papers, flipping through them with growing irritation.
Akim knocked once before stepping inside. I grabbed the nearest file and threw it at his feet. “Does that look like what I asked for?” He stayed quiet, the same way he has been since I arrived. I leaned back in my chair. “Get me the right file and get out of my face.”
He picked it up and left without a word.
I reached for the Singapore file next and skimmed through the figures. Halfway through, I threw it across the room and pressed my fingers against my forehead.
Everyone in this building apparently decided to become incompetent today.
I needed a drink.
I pushed away from the desk and crossed to the liquor table near the window.
After pouring myself a glass, I took a slow sip and stared out at the city while the sun sank lower across the skyline.
I arrived here hours ago and accomplished nothing except fixing mistakes made by people I paid specifically to avoid making mistakes.
The quality of talent left in this world was genuinely appalling.
The door opened without a knock, and I turned. Roman walked in as if he owned part of the building. His gaze swept across the office before settling on me. That smirk was still sitting on his face, irritatingly comfortable.
“What are you doing here?” I asked because there was no logical reason for Roman to be inside DK Holdings looking so pleased with himself.
“Looks like you’re having a tough day.” He dropped into the chair. “Anyway, I was leaving.”
“And you came here to announce it?”
“No,” he leaned forward slightly. “I came to ask what your plan is with Grace. Iker gives you Zachary, and then what? You hand the kids over?”
The grip around my glass tightened. Apparently, everyone within a thirty-mile radius decided to test the limits of my patience today. Roman was leading that effort by a very wide margin.
“Get out,” I said, using what little restraint I still had left.
He raised both hands lazily. “Shouldn’t someone worry about their friend?”
Friend?
The woman he made laugh all morning in my house. The same woman whose face lit up whenever she said his name. That was his friend.
I gave him three seconds before the glass met his forehead, and I actually started counting.
Roman read the room, which made him the first intelligent person I’d dealt with all day, and pushed himself to his feet.
“Alright,” He adjusted his jacket. “You know where to find me if you need to reach her mother.” He reached the door before glancing back. “Stop pretending I’m not closer to her than you are.”
The glass left my hand before the sentence settled. Roman moved aside just in time. The glass slammed against the wall beside the door and shattered across the floor.
He scoffed under his breath and walked out.
Closer to her?
He knew her. So what?
I fucked her against my desk this morning, and she said my name, not Roman’s.
Whatever he thought closeness meant, I was already ahead of it.
I could give her anything she wanted. She saw her father after years because of me.
She was more comfortable at the mansion than she would ever be. And she was….scared.
That was the word that landed and stayed. Inna wasn’t comfortable the way she was with Roman. She was scared the way people are when they face things that could hurt them, which I showed. The only things I gave her consistently were reasons to cry.
I fucked her and left because that was how I always did things. I always take what I want and leave before anything can settle into something.
That was the truth sitting in the middle of my office.
I didn’t want to go back to the mansion because she would notice the shift. She would see the part of me changing into what I neither understood nor knew how to stop. She would see it immediately, and once she saw it, there would be no taking it back.
When things got this messy, a club usually worked better. I needed somewhere loud enough to drown out my own head, somewhere filled with movement and strangers who didn’t know my name.
I grabbed my bike key and phone before leaving the office.
Akim caught up with me in the hallway, matching my pace as we headed toward the elevator. I pressed the button and watched the numbers move across the panel while he held out a file toward me. “I have the file.”
“Take it back to the office.”
“Yes, boss. Also, Anton called.” I stared at the panel. Anton. The name sat at the edge of recognition. Who the hell was he supposed to be? The elevator arrived. “He wanted you to be aware that your wife asked to be taken out.”
I stopped before stepping in. Anton was Inna’s driver. “What do you mean?”
“He reported because it’s late, for safety purposes—”
“Where did she ask to go?” The words came out rough.
“The pharmacy, sir.”
The elevator doors began to close, and I put my hand out to hold them back. The pharmacy? Why the fuck was she at a pharmacy? Was she sick or hurt?
“Which pharmacy?” I stepped in and was already dialing her number.
“I’ll get the address from Anton, “ Akim said as the doors slid shut between us.
I held the phone to my ear, but the call went straight to voicemail. I pulled the phone away and stared at the screen for a second before dialing again. Why was her phone turned off?
Once the elevator opened, I stepped out and headed toward the exit.
Did she get hurt during sex? She walked out of my office without even looking at me afterward, and at the time, I told myself that was exactly what I wanted.
Now she was at the pharmacy with her phone turned off, and my head kept circling back to it.
I tried to remember if she flinched while I was inside her, if there was any sign I hurt her. But I was too carried away fucking her to notice anything beyond the sound of my breathing and the way she said my name.
Akim’s message came through with the address as I got on the bike. I rode out into the evening, the wind cutting hard enough to clear nothing except the fact that mattered most. I hurt her.
In less than ten minutes, I was outside the pharmacy. I killed the engine, stepped off the bike, and walked straight to the entrance, pushing the doors open.
The shift in the room was immediate. Every head turned at once, customers pausing mid-step, a pharmacist freezing behind the counter. Every eye tracked my intrusion.
I scanned faces, and Inna wasn’t there.
“Where is my wife?” I asked, already moving toward the back door because she had to be somewhere in here.
“Sir, excuse me—” A pharmacist followed me, but I was already inside the room. A man in a white coat straightened from where he had been leaning over an elderly patient with a syringe. They both stared at me.
“Sir, you can’t be in here.” The pharmacist said.
“And you cannot breathe if I don’t find my wife.” I turned and looked for another door.
“Dmitri?” Inna’s voice came from the entrance behind me, and I turned.
She stood in the doorway, eyes wide on mine as if she was still deciding whether I was real or something worse.
I closed the distance between us before she finished processing what she was looking at, and I took her hands first. I turned them over, checking her wrists where I had gripped her against the shelf this morning.
No marks. No redness. I shifted my attention to her face, my hand moving along her jaw, watching for anything I might have missed.
She looked fine. Was it her pussy?
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Are you hurt?” I looked straight into her eyes.
She shook her head once. “I’m not hurt.”
I held her gaze a moment longer, letting that settle. Believing it. “Then why are you here?”
Her eyes dropped, and she stepped back. “I needed medicine,” she said and walked out as if the conversation ended there.
I followed her. “What medicine? We have a doctor at home. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m not sick,” she said, already moving toward the car with that deliberate pace that shut people out before they could argue.
“Inna.” I caught her arm and turned her back to me. “What medicine?”
She looked at me for a moment, then sighed. “Emergency pills.”
“What emergency exactly?”
She scoffed, pulling her arm free. “Maybe use protection next time,” she declared before continuing to the car. She got in and shut the door behind her.
I stood there as the information arranged itself in my head with clarity. I should have thought of it eight hours ago. Yes, I didn’t use protection, and I finished inside her. She came here because she needed emergency contraception.
The relief that moved through me was disproportionate, and I didn’t examine why. I pushed a hand through my hair and looked at Anton. He stood a few feet away from the car, waiting. I moved to the back door and opened it.
Inna was busy picking at her fingers in her lap, a nervous habit of hers. “Why is your phone off?” I asked.
She looked at me. “You threw it at a wall. Remember? The night you decided my phone was the problem.” She turned back to the window.
“And for the record, replacing it is your responsibility entirely, not mine. And even if I could afford to replace it myself, I wouldn’t, because I wasn’t the one who threw it. ”
The relief of knowing she wasn’t hurt settled deeper in a place where anger had sat the whole day.
I spent the entire day coming up with reasons to stay away from the mansion.
But the whole time, the real problem was that I didn’t know how Inna was doing.
Now I did, and this quieted the noises in my head.
“Also, I lied to Anton that I forgot my handbag so I could borrow money from him for the pills,” she added. “You are responsible for that, too. Pay him back because I genuinely don’t have money to do it myself.”
I bent closer and moved my hand to hers on her lap, and she flinched.
She looked down at our hands and then up at me.
One look at her and I understood she wasn’t just another girl, she was the girl.
I left this morning because I thought looking at her after that sex meant admitting that we were done.
But we weren’t, because I couldn’t have worried about her if we were.
I wouldn’t want to kiss her and just hold her if we were done.
I wouldn’t want to just hold her and keep her still long enough to make sense of what I did.
“Your phone is ringing,” she said. I didn’t hear it, and I didn’t care. “Dmitri?”
“Inna.” The name left my lips before I leaned in and kissed her. The kiss didn’t feel like it felt this morning or any other kiss we ever shared. It felt better than all of them. I wanted her more than I did at the start.
I pulled back and looked at her for a moment before reaching for my wallet. I took out the black card and handed it to her. “Buy a new phone.”
She looked at it without taking it. “What’s this?”
I pushed it to her fingers. “I should never call and find you unreachable again.”
Her gaze dropped to the card before lifting back to me. “You’re going to regret giving me this because I’m buying the latest model.”
“Okay.”
“It’s expensive. And you can’t add it to the old debt. I’m serious.” She pressed the card against her chest as if she already expected a fight.
I leaned forward and pressed my lips to her forehead. “Buy whatever you want and go straight home.”
“Whatever I want?” She narrowed her eyes. “You should take that back.” We stared at each other for a second before she sighed and held out her hand. “Give me your phone.”
It took me a moment, but I pulled it from my pocket and handed it over. She unlocked it, opened my messages, then paused. “How did you save my number?”
I reached over and tapped the contact’s name.
Wife.
She stared at the word for a second, but said nothing. Instead, she opened the voice recorder and held the phone toward me. “I’m recording this so you can’t take it back. Say it. Say I can use your card to buy a new phone, and you won’t add it to the debt because this was your fault.”
I looked at the phone, then at her. She couldn’t be serious.
“I make money,” I said. “One of us should spend it.”
She groaned in frustration. “That is not what I asked. Don’t try to sound clever on a recording. I’m not stupid.”
“Inna.” That stopped her. She looked at me immediately. “Use the card however you want. I don’t care.”
For a second, she just stared at me, lips parted slightly, as if she hadn’t expected that answer. After a few seconds, she nodded, saved the recording, and sent it to herself.
“I have evidence now.” She sat back and glanced toward where Anton stood. “I’ll ask Anton to stop at the store.”
“And then go home,” I said, and she nodded.
Without another word, I stepped out and shut the door behind me. I walked around the car and stopped beside her driver.
“If anything happens to her,” I said, “make sure you die before I get to you.”
I walked to the bike without waiting for his response. Instead of heading to the club as I’d planned, I rode back to the office.
One thing was evident now. I was in the same mess Rodion buried himself in. The kind a man like me wasn’t supposed to fall into.