Chapter 16 Dimitri
Dimitri
SONG: DROWN BY brING ME THE HORIZON
Three weeks of domestic bliss made me soft. I should have seen it coming. The first sign was Yuri's comment at a Tuesday meeting. Something about increased Chechen activity near our ports. Nothing concrete, just rumors and sightings. The kind of noise that could mean everything or nothing.
I'd filed it away and gone back to thinking about Giulia. About whether I should move more of my things to Silverleaf or if that would spook her. Whether waking up next to her every morning was sustainable or if I was building something that would collapse under the weight of reality.
Distracted. I'd been distracted.
The second sign came Thursday. A shipment went missing between the warehouse and the buyer. Not stolen, just never arrived. The driver claimed engine trouble. The product was eventually recovered but the timing was suspicious. Too convenient. Too clean.
I'd assigned Maxim to investigate and promptly forgotten about it because Giulia had asked me to explain the difference between Russian and Italian organizational structure over dinner and watching her take notes on Bratva hierarchy while wearing my shirt was more interesting than supply chain problems.
Friday brought the third sign. Alexei reported unusual surveillance near the social club.
Cars that lingered too long. Faces that appeared and disappeared.
Nothing actionable. Nothing I could point to and say definitively that we had a problem.
But the pattern was there if I'd been paying attention.
I wasn't. I was too busy playing house in Silverleaf to notice someone was systematically dismantling my operations one carefully timed leak at a time.
The realization hit Saturday morning when Maxim called at 6:00 a.m.
"We have a situation."
I extracted myself from Giulia's warmth and took the call in the hallway. "Define situation."
"The Albanians hit our warehouse last night. Knew exactly when the guards rotated. Exactly where the cameras had blind spots. Walked in and out in under ten minutes with everything we had stored there."
My blood went cold. "How much?"
"Seven million. Give or take."
Seven million in product. Gone. Taken by people who shouldn't have known where to look or when to strike.
"Get everyone to the club. One hour."
I hung up and stood in the hallway of what had become my home wearing nothing but black boxer briefs and the crushing weight of my own stupidity.
I'd let myself get comfortable. Let myself believe the bubble Giulia and I had built could exist separate from the violence and paranoia of my actual life.
Reality had just kicked the door in.
"Dimitri?" Giulia appeared in the bedroom doorway wrapped in a sheet. Hair messed from sleep and my hands. "What's wrong?"
Everything. Nothing I could protect her from anymore.
"Work emergency. I have to go."
"Now? It's six in the morning."
"Yes now." I moved past her to find my clothes. "I'll be back tonight."
"Dimitri, talk to me. What happened?"
I considered lying. Telling her it was nothing. Maintaining the fiction that we could keep living in this separate peaceful world. But she'd asked me weeks ago to stop keeping her in the dark. And I'd promised to try.
"Someone hit our warehouse. Took everything. Knew exactly how to do it." I pulled on my shirt and buttoned it with hands that wanted to shake but wouldn't because I didn't allow that weakness. "Which means the leak is worse than I thought."
Her face paled. "How bad?"
"Seven million bad. And that's just last night." I sat on the bed to put on my shoes. "There have been other incidents. Smaller. I didn't connect them because I was..." I gestured between us. "Distracted."
"By me."
"By us. By thinking I could have this." The words came out harsher than intended. "I got soft. Started believing I deserved normal. And someone used that against me."
She moved to sit beside me. The sheet slipped slightly but she didn't fix it. "This isn't your fault."
"It's absolutely my fault. I'm Pakhan. Everything is my fault." I stood. I needed to move, to think. "I have to find who's leaking information before they destroy everything I've built."
"Let me help."
"No."
"Dimitri—"
"No." I turned to face her. "You stay here where it's safe. I’ll handle this. That's how this works."
"That's how it worked three weeks ago. Before we..." She gestured at the bed, at us. "Before this became real. You don't get to shut me out now."
"I'm not shutting you out. I'm protecting you."
"From what? Information? I've been reading your files for weeks. I probably know your organization better than half your captains at this point."
She wasn't wrong. But knowing organizational structure from the safety of a Silverleaf library was different from being anywhere near the kind of violence this investigation would require.
"When I find who's responsible I'm going to kill them. Slowly. Do you understand that?" I moved closer. Made sure she saw exactly what I was. "I'm going to make them bleed and scream and beg. That's who I am. That's what I do. And you don't need to see it."
She stood and let the sheet drop. Stood there naked and unafraid and looking at me like I was trying to solve the wrong problem.
"I know who you are. I've always known. And I married you anyway.
" She crossed to her closet and started pulling on clothes.
"So stop trying to protect me from reality and start treating me like a partner. "
"This isn't a partnership. This is the Bratva."
"And I'm the Pakhan's wife. Or did you forget that between all the sex and domestic bliss?" She turned to face me fully dressed now. Armored. "You promised you'd try. You promised we'd face things together."
I had promised that. During one of those late nights when she'd asked about the future, and I'd said things I'd meant in the moment but hadn't fully thought through.
"This is different."
"How?"
"Because if something happens to you because of my mistakes, I won't survive it." The admission came out raw. Honest. Exactly the kind of vulnerability I'd spent thirty-five years learning to avoid.
Giulia's expression softened. "Nothing is going to happen to me."
"You don't know that."
"Neither do you." She moved closer, and took my face in her hands. "But I know that shutting me out and going back to the way things were before isn't going to solve anything. You'll still be distracted. You'll be miserable too."
She had a point. A frustrating, accurate point.
"Stay here," I said. "Stay safe. Let me handle the crisis. Then we'll talk about what partnership looks like going forward."
She studied my face for a long moment, then she nodded. "Okay. But, Dimitri, if you find out it's Geraldo—"
"I'll tell you before I act."
"Promise?"
"I promise." I kissed her once. Hard and desperate and probably goodbye even though I didn't want to admit it. Then I left before she could see how scared I actually was.
Not of the Albanians or the leak or even death.
Of losing this. Of losing her. Of having three weeks of happiness and then watching it burn because I'd been stupid enough to think I deserved it.