Chapter Twenty - Dimitri
The estate is quieter than I ever imagined it could be. No arguments bleeding through the halls, no sharp footsteps where they don’t belong, no reckless tongue daring me to snap at the wrong moment. I told myself this is what I wanted—control restored, order maintained.
I fill my days with routine. Shipments to oversee. Security briefings. Meetings with Bratva captains where the same clipped words are exchanged, the same hands shaken, the same numbers pushed across the table.
Business carries on as it always has. My men speak to me with respect, their eyes steady, their voices precise. Nothing is out of place.
It doesn’t matter. The edges of every task feel dulled. The victory of control doesn’t taste as sharp as it should.
Silence follows me everywhere. It seeps into my skin, an unwelcome companion I can’t shake.
At dinner, I notice how large the dining room feels when it’s only me at the table.
My plate clatters too loudly against porcelain.
My glass echoes against the wood. I eat quickly, without appetite, and return to work before the emptiness can press closer.
At night, I work longer than I need to. Files spread across my desk until the clock ticks into hours I used to reserve for rest. Anything to avoid walking to my private quarters, where the silence is heavier, more accusing.
When I finally give in, I pour vodka as always. Tonight, though, without thinking, I pour two. I set one in front of me, the other across the table, where the chair sits empty. The gesture is instinct, thoughtless, as if my body remembers a presence I swore I erased.
I stare at the glass, fury twisting in my chest, and curse under my breath. I down the first in one swallow, then the second, punishing myself with the burn.
The hollow ache gnaws, sharp and constant, but I refuse to name it. She’s gone. That was my choice. She crossed me, and I acted as I always do—with finality. Anything else would have been weakness.
I remind myself of this every time my mind drifts to her voice, her eyes, her hand clutching at my sleeve as though I was worth pleading to. I crush the memory like ash between my teeth, bury it under discipline.
She’s gone. Still, the silence lingers, filling every corner of this house until it feels less like an empire and more like a tomb.
The silence claws at me until I can’t stand it anymore. The walls feel closer than they should, the air too thick, my own thoughts circling like vultures. I sit at my desk, phone in hand, thumb hovering over a number I shouldn’t call. Hers.
For a breath, I let myself imagine it—the sound of her voice, sharp and wary, maybe even trembling. The way her silence might stretch before she dared to speak.
I shut the thought down and press another number instead.
Vika.
She has always been easy. Beautiful, sharp, loyal in her own way. Once, she was my favorite, the woman I returned to when the world grew too loud. She never asked questions she didn’t want answers to. She knew her place. Reliable. Uncomplicated.
She answers on the second ring, her voice sultry, laced with memory. “Dimitri.”
Within the hour, she’s at the estate.
She enters my room in a sweep of perfume and confidence, her smile promising familiarity before she even speaks. She doesn’t need an invitation, doesn’t pause to measure the weight of the air. Vika knows what I called her for, and she gives it freely.
I let her in without hesitation, stripping away the distance of weeks with the bluntness of physical proximity. No words, no pretense. Her hands find me quickly, practiced, eager to please. She knows my rhythms, my preferences, the ways to draw sound and reaction.
I respond. My body moves as it should, trained by habit and memory. Every kiss lands where it’s supposed to, every touch triggers the right muscle, the right breath.
My mind drifts.
The comparison strikes before I can stop it.
Annie never moved like this.
She wasn’t predictable, wasn’t measured. She was chaos, sharp edges and fire. She made me forget control, not fall deeper into it. With her, nothing felt rehearsed. Nothing was done out of routine. Every moment burned raw, unscripted.
The thought unsettles me, a splinter I can’t shake.
Vika kisses me harder, mistaking my distraction for resistance. I let her. I let her mouth slide against mine, let her body press close, let her drag me through the motions.
There’s no spark. No satisfaction.
Only the gnawing absence where something vital should be.
I close my eyes, forcing my body to keep moving, to finish what I started. The hollow grows deeper, reminding me with every practiced touch that this—Vika, the perfume, the precision—isn’t enough. It will never be enough.
When it’s over, she curls beside me, whispering soft Russian phrases meant to soothe, to claim intimacy. I don’t answer. I stare at the ceiling, jaw tight, and the only face I see is Annie’s.
The silence feels heavier than before.
Vika curls against me, warm and satisfied, her perfume clinging thick in the air like smoke after gunfire.
She moves with practiced ease, as though we’ve never been apart, as though slipping back into my bed is as natural as breathing.
Her arm drapes across my chest, nails grazing lightly over my skin.
She whispers something soft in Russian, her voice lilting, familiar words she’s spoken before.
A phrase meant to soothe. A phrase that once would have worked.
Now, the sound barely registers.
I don’t answer. My gaze stays locked on the ceiling, the chandelier above me nothing but shadow in the dark.
My jaw aches from how tight it’s set. My body doesn’t ease under her touch—it never has tonight, not once.
I let her move over me, let her lips and hands perform the ritual we both knew so well, but I didn’t feel it. Not the way I should have.
I think of Annie. I can’t stop myself.
I think of how she would have ruined this silence.
She would have scoffed, rolled her eyes, said something sharp and cutting just to watch the reaction flicker across my face.
She thrived on chaos, on friction, on breaking through my control.
She would never have let this kind of quiet linger between us—not unless she wanted me to squirm under the weight of her gaze.
That’s worse. Remembering how she’d sometimes say nothing at all. How she’d pin me with those dark, unyielding eyes, her silence sharper than any blade. I used to hate it—how much power she wielded with nothing but a look. Hate it, and crave it. Because it meant she saw me. Really saw me.
The silence with Vika is different. Heavier. Empty.
Annie filled every room she stepped into.
She was the noise, the spark, the disruption I couldn’t ignore.
She unsettled me in ways that made me feel alive, ways that forced me to see just how brittle my routines had become.
With her, nothing was rehearsed. Nothing was clean.
She burned through my carefully laid order like a match to dry paper.
Without her, even company feels like absence.
Vika shifts against me, pressing a kiss to my shoulder. Her lips are soft, practiced, meant to please. “Dimitri,” she murmurs, coaxing. Her voice carries the familiarity of years past, of nights where she was enough to silence the noise in my head.
The sound grates now.
I peel her arms from me, her perfume smearing across my skin like a mark I don’t want. Rising from the bed, I don’t look back. The sheets rustle behind me, and she makes a small sound of confusion, a question threaded through the syllable of my name. I give her nothing.
The sideboard waits across the room, the crystal decanters lined in precise order.
I pour myself another drink, the vodka hitting the glass with a clean note.
The liquid is cold in my palm, sharp and clear.
I throw back the first swallow, welcoming the burn that tears down my throat, grounding me in its sting.
I fix my eyes on the window, on the black stretch of estate grounds washed pale under the moon. The gates are closed. The city is a faint glow at the horizon, its noise too far away to reach me here. This is my world—silent, ordered, secure.
Still, it feels like a cage.
Behind me, Vika shifts again. “Dimitri,” she calls softly, uncertainty lacing her tone now. She’s not used to doubt when it comes to me. I can feel her eyes on my back, can imagine the frown tugging at her lips, the confusion stirring in her chest.
I ignore her.
Every reminder of her presence grates. Her perfume suffocates, cloyingly sweet where Annie always smelled of something clean, sharp, unpredictable. Her voice scratches against my ears, too careful, too measured. Even the warmth of her body still lingering in the sheets feels intrusive.
I thought I wanted this. I thought calling her would be enough—familiarity, comfort, a return to old habits I could rely on. It isn’t enough. It was never going to be.
None of it is her.
Annie’s ghost lingers in this room louder than Vika’s whispers, more vivid than the woman still lying in my bed. I can almost see her, standing there with her arms crossed, fire in her eyes, daring me to admit what I won’t say aloud.
The vodka sits heavy in my hand. I pour another, slower this time, watching the liquid catch the faint glow of the lamp. My reflection stares back from the glass—hard eyes, clenched jaw, lines deeper than they should be. A man haunted.
Vika murmurs again, softer, trying to reel me back to her. I don’t answer. I don’t turn.
The silence grows thicker, pressing in until the room feels smaller, the air heavier. For the first time in years, I realize that even surrounded by walls I built, by people who fear me, by control I carved out with blood and fire… I feel alone.
Not because the bed is empty. Not because Vika’s presence isn’t enough.
Annie’s absence is louder than anything else.
Her ghost will haunt me in every shadow, in every glass of vodka, in every silence I once thought was safety.
I wanted control. I got emptiness.
Vika shifts on the bed again, propping herself up on one elbow. Her perfume drifts across the room, clinging to the sheets, to my skin.
“Dimitri,” she says, voice sharper now, “what is this? You call me here, and then you shut me out. You don’t even look at me.”
I swirl the vodka in my glass, eyes fixed on the pale glimmer of moonlight outside the window. “I looked.”
“Not at me.” She stands, silk clinging to her body as she crosses the room. “I know the difference.” Her hand comes to rest on my arm, warm and insistent. “You used to want me.”
I set the glass down with a sharp click and finally meet her eyes. “I still want someone, just not you.”
Her mouth parts, a flicker of surprise breaking through her confidence. “So this is what I am now? A distraction?”
“Yes.” My voice is flat, unyielding. “That’s all you were ever meant to be.”
Her jaw tightens. “Then you should have left me where I was. You don’t summon me here, use me, and then sit there brooding like a ghost in your own house. That’s not who you are.”
I turn back to the window. “You don’t know who I am.”
She laughs, bitter and low. “I know enough. Enough to see you’re chasing a shadow. Whoever she was, she’s under your skin. That’s why you can’t even touch me without thinking of her.”
The truth of it cuts sharper than I expect. My silence confirms it.
Vika sighs, softer this time, as if conceding the point. “She’s gone, Dimitri. Whatever she did to you, whatever you did to her—it doesn’t matter now. You should let it go.”
I grab the bottle, pour another drink with too much force. Vodka splashes over the rim. “I decide what matters.”
For a moment she just watches me, her sharpness dulled by something that almost looks like pity. Then she shakes her head, hair spilling over her shoulders. “You won’t find her in me. You never will.”
Her hand trails from my arm, lingering a second too long before it falls away. The warmth fades instantly, leaving only the cold.
“Get dressed,” I say, my tone clipped. “I want you gone before morning.”
Her lips part again, as though she might argue, but the look I give her leaves no room. She gathers her clothes in silence, pulling them on with quick, angry movements.
When she’s done, she pauses in the doorway, eyes narrowing. “She’s ruined you, you know.”
I take another swallow of vodka, letting it burn. “Leave.”
She does.
The door shuts behind her with a hollow sound. The silence rushes back, heavier than before. I stare into my glass, the liquid trembling faintly in my hand.
Alone again. Still, it isn’t enough to bury her ghost.