22. Demi
DEMI
A shudder travels down my spine when I’m standing outside the house that Enzo set fire to. The facade is still intact, patchy with soot, and many of the windows have blown wide to allow the elements in, but it still appears to be structurally sound.
Inside is different.
The stench of smoke and rotten wood is overwhelming; it makes my eyes sting and scratches the back of my throat, causing me to take dry, wheezy breaths.
The walls are blackened, paper hanging from them in curling strips.
The furniture that remains is reduced to charred frames and crumbling upholstery.
It’s as if a storm of black ash blew past and left everything behind in perpetual shadow.
But the ceilings are high, and there’s a grand staircase leading from the central foyer to a sweeping mezzanine level that serves both sides of the property. It must’ve looked spectacular when it was a home that was lived in, loved, and cherished.
A family home.
“Fitting that it ends here where it all started, huh?” Malevsky grips my upper arm tightly as if frightened I might test the rotting floorboards and leave the house in an even worse condition than it already is.
My wrists are bound behind my back, and I’ve no doubt that I’ll be surrounded by armed guards while they wait for Enzo to be my hero and ride up on a gray horse like Prince Philip in Sleeping Beauty.
But on the positive side, I’m wearing running tights and a hoodie, and I feel more like myself than I have since I walked into DI Goss’s office and accepted the role within his new team, even with my swollen jaw and black eye.
I’ve no idea if Enzo knows where I am or that I agreed to the Bratva’s deal to deliver Gio into their hands. He’ll hate me forever. But this was the only way, and the best I can hope for is that the Sabatellis beat the ruthless Russian bastards and understand why I did it.
Forewarned is forearmed. That’s how the saying goes.
If the Sabatellis lose…
I can’t think about that now. If I let that thought in and allow it to grow legs, I’ll be tempting fate, and Enzo is going to need all the help he can get.
“Why did you not rebuild the house?” I ask. It seems such a waste to leave it like this, abandoned and unloved.
“Why do you think?”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to snap, “If I knew the answer, I wouldn’t have asked, asshole.” But I can serve Enzo and Gio better by keeping Malevsky sweet instead of rattling his cage. So, I stay silent.
“We rebuild it, we lose the memory of what your lover did to our family.”
He’d make a great case study for revenge theory; I can almost see him salivating at the thought of killing Enzo here.
Then a nauseating image of him setting Enzo alight like a scarecrow on top of a bonfire fills my mind, and the imaginary stench of burning flesh is making it difficult to breathe.
I bend double, gasping air as bile rises up from my throat and splashes the sneakers I’m wearing. I cough and splutter, tears streaming down my face while I wait for it to pass. Malevsky doesn’t release my arm.
He waits for me to get a grip and says, “Keep moving.”
I have no choice but to follow him through the house, our footsteps producing clouds of sooty dust around our legs as we walk.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see soon enough.”
The doors are charred but mostly solid. I don’t know if Malevsky once lived here with his extended family, or if this has become his macabre haunting ground since the devastating fire that ravaged the house, but he seems to know his way around.
I peer through open doorways, trying to focus on items, like landmarks, to remember the way back, but it’s impossible to distinguish individual objects when they’re all covered in ash, and he’s moving too fast.
Then, we stop in a room where the remains of a grand piano stand in one corner, and floor-to-ceiling bookcases hold onto the piles of ash that were once stories of endless possibilities and imaginary worlds.
“You will wait here.” Malevsky releases his grip, and I rub my arm to erase the feel of his fingers on me.
“Why?”
It’s a genuine question, and anger simmers inside my chest when he rolls his eyes.
“This is where the fire began.” He sweeps an arm around the room, and I follow it with my eyes.
The stench of smoke is the same here as in the rest of the house, but the floorboards are gaping in some places, revealing glimpses of the darkness from below.
I shiver with the cold air blowing through the holes and scan the rest of the room trying to delay the inevitable for as long as possible.
Parts of the ceiling in this room have also collapsed, and I’m surprised it’s still supporting the rooms above. The walls are almost completely black.
The fire was remorseless, and I try not to think about the family sleeping upstairs while these rooms were being destroyed by flames.
But I can’t erase from my mind the video footage of Enzo walking away from the destruction he set in motion. I can think more clearly now though, and something about it doesn’t sit right with me.
“How did you get the video footage of Enzo leaving the house?” I ask.
“So, what are you now, a firefighter?”
I’ve touched a nerve. “I’m a cop.”
His lip curl into the familiar snarl that still makes my stomach knot. “What does it matter how I got it?” He comes closer, penning me in with the rotten carcass of a couch behind my legs. “Answer me this: what lengths would you go to if it were your family?”
I don’t even need to think about it; I would hunt the fuckers down and set fire to them myself. The idea scares me because it’s exactly what Dmitri Malevsky is doing.
“Why didn’t they kill Enzo when they had the chance? Or stop the fire? Or call nine-one-one?”
His eyes become slits. “It would have made no difference. The fire spread so quickly, they were already dead from smoke inhalation.”
“But that shouldn’t have happened.” I’m thinking out loud.
He grips the back of my neck and turns me around in a full circle so that I can appreciate my surroundings. “It did happen. You have the proof right here in front of your eyes.”
I struggle to get free and he shoves me away from him as if disgusted at me for asking questions. I stumble into the couch, and my arms go straight through it, a cloud of ash puffing up around my face. Standing, I cough up soot, eyes streaming.
I face him again with my soot-blackened face and lock eyes with him.
We didn’t come here alone. This isn’t a duel between Malevsky and Enzo, a meeting at dawn with pistols where both parties are gentlemen and abide by the rules.
This is war, and even now the rumble of vehicles arriving outside is pulling those knots in my stomach tighter.
I can’t let this drop, not only because it’s eating away at me, but because it might be my last chance to save Enzo and Gio.
“What if someone else followed Enzo into the house and set another fire?”
I hear the growl building up inside his chest like a feral animal facing the hunter.
His hand reaches into his pocket and panic clamps around my chest like a metal band, squeezing the oxygen from my lungs.
He would have no qualms killing me now. I’ve served my purpose. But I’m not done with him yet.
“Hear me out, please.” I don’t look away. I force myself to hold his gaze and not look at the hand in his pocket. “I’m not trying to stop you from going through with this.” Liar. “I only want you to listen.”
“Better talk quickly then, Ms. Payne. You have thirty seconds.”
Shit. “Which room is this?”
“Twenty-eight seconds.”
“Stop the clock!” I snap. “You haven’t answered the question. That’s what they do in a game of chess, isn’t it? They stop the clock after each move.”
His expression doesn’t flicker. “Okay, so we’re playing a game of chess now. I am a master, so you won’t win.”
Of course he fucking is. “Answer the question.”
“The piano room.” He waits a beat, amusement glinting in his eyes, before adding, “Your move.”
“This isn’t the den?” I know as soon as the words leave my mouth that I wasted my move.
“Are we done here? I already answered the question.”
“Where is the den?”
“Why do you want to know? What relevance does it have on—”
“Answer the fucking question!” I’m pushing my luck, but at this point, I have nothing to lose.
“It is at the back of the house.”
Now we’re getting somewhere. “Is it contained?”
“Why do you—”
“Yes or no.”
He smiles for the first time, a real smile, not his customary grimace, and I can’t even begin to imagine a life where smiles are not a part of my daily routine.
I wonder if there will be a day, when he’s old and withered and lonely, when he realizes all the little things he has missed out on while he was too busy being a pakhan.
“It is built into an extension,” he says.
That’s good enough for me. “Enzo said that he set the fire in the den so that it wouldn’t spread. He had a layout of the property; he believed that the family were in Russia. The fire was meant to be a warning only. Nothing more.”
His smile fades, and the room grows cold. “He lied.”
“I believe him. Do you honestly think he would’ve walked out of that front door knowing a family was sleeping upstairs? You saw it. He—”
“Enough!” He slides his hand out of his pocket, and I almost cry out with relief when he’s holding a cell phone instead of a gun. “Time’s up.”
“I want to see the den.” I’m not giving up now.
“You are not the one calling the shots.”
“I know.” I nod, tiny movements, enough for him to know that I understand my predicament, just like he said before. “But I need to see it, and then I’ll shut up.”
“I doubt that will happen,” he concedes, “but I will take you, for the sake of getting some peace.”
I follow him through the ravaged house, past what was once the kitchen, a grimy Aga still dominating the room, the cabinets all blackened but holding their shape, and along the corridor to another huge room where the furnishings are in tatters.
Like the piano room, the den looks like a volcano spewed molten lava on it from above and left it to fester.
I’ve attended a couple of arson scenes, and I’m no expert, but this room is unsalvageable.
“He set the fire here,” I say, tilting my chin to the ceiling.
“We’re done here, Ms. Payne.” His voice is cold.
“So, what, that’s it? You’re not even going to hear his version of events?
What are you afraid of? Are you scared that you might get it wrong and lose the respect of those thugs out there?
Because, you know what, I’d have a lot more respect for you, if you held your hands up and admitted that you’re not infallible. ”
“You said you would shut up. We had a deal.”
This is too important to let it go though. “Why did he walk through the house and out of the front door?” My eyes quickly scan the room and settle on the external door, and I point to it. “Why not leave that way?”
He isn’t listening. Instead, he unlocks his phone, his mouth set into a grim line, and taps the screen. Then he turns it around to face me.
He’s calling someone. I see my face on the screen, and then the call is answered, and I’m looking at Enzo for the first time in twelve months.
My heart stutters, and my breaths come in short shallow bursts that leave me feeling lightheaded.
Enzo’s beautiful face moves closer to the screen, his eyes flickering as he tries to place me into context, and all I can think is that nothing has changed.
If he was here now, I would wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist like a scene from every good romcom, and I would kiss him until we both needed to come up for air.
“Demi?” Enzo speaks first. “What happened? Did they hurt you?”
I’m shaking my head and swiping tears from my eyes with my fingertips and smiling because it’s a miracle he even recognized me with my streaked face.
“No, I’m all right.” There’s so much that I want to say, but I don’t know where to start. Or maybe I do. “I’m sorry—”
“Spare me the fucking romance,” Malevsky says, voice low. “Tell the hero to come and save you.”
Enzo’s eyes slide to my right. He heard. “I’m coming for you, Demi, and the fuckers better be scared.”
Fear, cold and heavy, settles in my core. Enzo is walking so fast I can’t guess his location, but it looks as if he’s marching all the way here, trampling anyone or anything that gets in his path.
“Enzo, they want Gio—”
Something cold and sharp digs into my neck just below where it meets my jawline, and Malevsky’s thick arm wraps around my chest, pulling me back against him. I feel the trickle of warm blood from the sliced skin, and the sting of the knifepoint in my flesh.
“Time is ticking,” Malevsky takes over the call. “Do I look scared to you?”
Enzo’s eyes harden. “You’re mine,” he says to my captor before turning his gaze back to me and visibly softening. “I love you, Demi. I should’ve—”
Malevsky ends the call.