Dimitri

by April Zyon

  When we arrived at the chapel, I took a deep breath and looked at Mom. I smiled when she asked me if I was sure again. “I couldn’t be more certain of anything, Mom. He’s my everything.” And he was. It was weird how love worked, at least for me and Dimitri, it seemed. It had walked up to us and smacked both of us upside of the head and we hadn’t even spoken to each other, only exchanged glances across the room. When Mom nodded, my brothers were all lined up there to give me a hug before they walked Mom into the chapel and left me with my father, bridesmaids, and the force that Dimitri assigned to protect me.

  Daddy cupped my cheek and smiled when he spoke. “He’s not who I would have picked for you.”

  “I know, Daddy, but he loves me and I love him.”

  “Oh, I know that, darling girl. If I even doubted for a second his love for you, this wouldn’t be happening. I would put a stop to it. I would end Dimitri Dudikov.”

  Wow, I had never heard my father say anything like that before, and I was sure that my eyes were huge. They felt huge, at least. “Don’t look so shocked, honey. You are my baby girl, my only daughter, and as a father I would do anything to protect you, even if that meant getting into the long-distance family business.”

  “The huh?” Okay, I was so lost. My family didn’t have a business. We were old money, the generations invested and invested wisely so that we never ran out of money. We owned multiple businesses, land tracts, and so on, but the way he said that made me think of the way Dimitri had been speaking to a man around my age, Sean O’Casey. I think he was about to overthrow his brother and take over their business, which happened to be the Irish mob.

  “Don’t worry about it, darling,” Daddy said, then kissed me on the forehead. “Vinny and Dimitri have peace and will always have peace because we are tied together with blood. Maybe one day I will tell you. For now, I’m being told that your groom is very impatient to see you and is cussing me a mile wide. Are you ready to get married, baby girl?”

  Vinny and Dimitri have peace? What? Wait, married, hell yes, I was ready! “Yes, I’m ready. Let Al and Edi walk with their guys, and then take me and let me get married so that your first grandchild is born on the right side of marriage?”

  That had my daddy laughing and he nodded. I heard the Wedding March start, and without another moment, I was walking down the aisle to the most amazing, dangerous, overprotective man in the world. I was marrying the man of my dreams. I was about to become Mrs. Dimitri Dudikov, and I had never been happier in my life.

  The End

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  BONUS SAMPLE CHAPTER

  STONE

  Silver Devils MC, 1

  April Zyon

  Copyright © 2017

  Chapter One

  Ava Charleston

  I didn’t think that I would ever feel terror the likes of what I was feeling right now. I had seen some crazy stuff in my time as a wedding planner, but never before had I seen anything like I had walked in on at Bethany and Evan’s place. With my keys in my hands I was running toward my car. I had to get out of there. I had to find safety, but I had no idea where that was. I didn’t even know if there was such a place now. I still couldn’t believe what I had walked in on. I had thought that I was going over to soothe a skittish bride, and I never believed that by going over to soothe Bethany I would have walked in on one of the singularly most heinous acts I’d ever seen in my life.

  “Not now, Ava. Hold your shit together,” I told myself while I ran toward the relative safety that my Kia SUV offered me. I got into the SUV and hit the phone button on the wheel of my car. Police, yes, I had to call the cops. That was the best solution, right? Why the fuck did Bethany and Evan live so far away from the city? It was going to take the cops forever to get here.

  Wait, no.

  I immediately killed the call before I finished dialing the last 1 in 911. Fortunately, I had remembered at the last moment that the fiancé of the bride I was going to placate was a freaking cop. He was a damn homicide detective of all things. If that wasn’t enough, I knew for damn certain that the entire force was so corrupt that they were all in someone’s pocket. It was a total boys’ club, and I knew that no one would ever listen to me about anything I said about Evan. I also knew that Evan had several of the Feds in the area as his best friends. Hell, they had been part of the bridal party, but then Evan had replaced them at the last minute.

  “Oh, God,” I whispered in the nearing darkness of the afternoon and then saw a sign on the side of the road that read, You can always go home.

  “Home.” No one knew anything about me in this city, not really. Home. Back to my place of birth, that was where I could go and be safe, sort of.

  With that thought in mind I drove the twenty minutes to the first bank and pulled out as much cash as I was allowed on my debit card and then drove to another one of my bank branches to do the same thing. I then maxed out my credit card’s cash advance limits, and filled up my SUV hybrid and took off for the beaches and bright lights of Eden Isle, and home. It was a place I hadn’t been in more than fifteen years, not since graduating high school there. The honest truth was, however, that I don’t know if the family that I have there would hide me, but I hoped that I could count on a few of them.

  Rubbing my temples and chewing my lower lip, I hesitated on what to do. I had already driven outside of town and was parked in a grove of trees while I tried to think of what to do next. I watched the sun drown in the horizon, the warming rays of its light starting to wink out and allowing the darkness to win. The oranges and yellows soon turned to greys and blacks. That was when I realized I had been sitting there still for some time. I wished that I could call my mom to talk to her, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t talk to Mom because she had died two years ago, and none of my family had come to the funeral. The only thing I had gotten were phone calls, one from a cousin of mine telling me that if I ever needed anything he would be there for me.

  Maybe I could turn to him? After all, Charles and I had always been close as kids. His mom had taken care of me while Mom worked, and Charles and I were within a few years of each other’s age so maybe he would help me? I debated my decision for a short time. I didn’t want to endanger him, but what choice did I have? I’d spent a couple of hours just clearing out my bank, packing a bag, driving out of the city, and freaking out, so now it was time for me to man-up, so to speak.

  “Shit, is it wrong of me to possibly put them in a murdering duo’s crosshairs?” I mused aloud as I looked up at the skies and then shook my head. No, the bride and groom might be killers, but I was pretty sure that my family could take care of themselves, even if I couldn’t.

  I walked into the gas station after filling up my car and purchased a cheap burner phone. I then pulled the battery out of my phone and tossed it into my purse. Taking a deep breath, I dialed my cousin’s phone number that I had found scribbled in my phone book in what looked like my mother’s handwriting. I had kept moving, well, except for when I was trying to decide if I wanted to call Charlie or not, and now that I was sitting at a gas station I started to feel nervous. I prayed he would answer quickly.

  When he answered, it sounded like Charles was at a party of some kind. I heard him shout a gruff, “Yeah, who the fuck is this?”

  Yep, that was my cousin all right.

  “Charlie, hey, it’s Ava,” I said and slid into the car. “Hey, I hate to do this, but I need help.” There was a tremor in my voice when I spoke, a real fear that wasn’t there ever before when I talked to him, something I was sure he would pick up on since he knew me as well as he did.

  “Ava?” I heard hi
m yelling, and then he spoke to someone else. “Get the fuck off of me. This is fucking family, bitch.”

  “Wow, Charlie. Seriously, you don’t have to talk to people like that,” I told my cousin as I started the long drive toward my hometown.

  “Yeah, I do when people don’t take the hint.”

  I noticed it was quieter now. I had heard several men call out to him and call him “Sarge,” but that didn’t make sense. I knew he never served in the military. He’d done some time in jail, but not the military.

  “Talk to me, cuz. You wouldn’t be calling me from an unknown number if there wasn’t something wrong, and you wouldn’t be calling me in the middle of the night either. I know we were tight and we still are, but you would never call me in the middle of the night.”

  I offered a lot of services, and stupidly I gave my cell number as well as my home number to the brides that I assumed would get cold feet before the wedding. I had learned quickly how to spot those runners. Now I was hating myself for doing those things because it now had me running.

  “Yeah.” Trust him to get straight to the point and understand the situation. “I’m in trouble, Charlie,” I whispered to him while pulling onto the interstate. “Like serious trouble. I need a place to hide while I figure out what to do next because I’m at a total loss.”

  I heard him snicker and ask, “How much trouble can a wedding planner get into?”

  “The kind where she walks in a serial killing couple and was supposed to be next on the menu and the male side of the duo is a cop?” I asked with more than a little snark to my tone, shrugging in the darkness even though he couldn’t see the action.

  “Wait, what?” Once more he shouted. I could hear him shout for “pledge,” which I thought was weird that he wanted to clean furniture at this time of night but whatever floated his boat. “Back up and tell me everything, cuz.”

  I did just that. I began to tell Charlie about the night I had.

  “It all started when I got the call from Bethany in tears. She had been ready to call off the wedding, even though everyone could see how perfect she and Evan were together. The two of them seemed to complement each other like salt and pepper, but when Bethany called in a complete panic, two days before their wedding, I reacted and did what I do for all brides. I went to her in order to figure out what was happening.” I began to speak slowly because I didn’t want to leave anything out. “When I arrived at the woman’s home I had to park a block away because of a street cleaner, which was fine with me. I mean I desperately needed the exercise anyway since I was starting to gain back more of the weight I had lost.” I hesitated and then continued my conversation with Charlie.

  “Thankfully, I had only taken my keys and had locked my purse in the glovebox. Yes, I still carry a very small purse.” I had to pause and smile because Charlie had always teased me when we were kids about me carrying such a small purse. “I of course had my phone with me, too. I approached the house, one that was well off the road and on one of those triple lots.” I knew that Charlie would know what kind of house and property I was talking about. “Anyway, the woman lived far off the road. I looked in the window first because I heard Evan—he’s the groom. Anyway, I thought I wouldn’t be needed if he was there. If they were talking I was going to leave them at it, but what I saw shocked me to my core. Evan was covered in blood and was hacking away at a woman; one of the bridesmaids, actually. I nearly shit myself but froze for a moment.”

  I hesitated before talking again. “Evan heard me when I gasped aloud and turned to the door. Bethany opened it. For several seconds, I just stood there and didn’t move until she reached out with a gun in one bloody hand and a knife in the other. I was fucking terrified, Charlie. I swear I think I saw fucking Jesus in that second because of how afraid I was.

  “Then Bethany spoke. It was chilling to hear what she had to say. She said, ‘Oh, look, honey, goody-two-shoes number six is here. I think we should try the bleach with this one.’” I paused for a moment, taking a deep breath, and then continued speaking. “I didn’t think, Charlie. I just reacted. I slammed my fist, which held my keys in it, into Bethany’s temple while she was looking at her bloody fiancé, Evan. I then took off running for my SUV while trying to figure out what to do next. She called me number six, Charlie. I had seen five heads. Two of them had been bridesmaids, one was the mother of the groom, one was the priest, and the other was the father of the bride. The only thing that ties all of us together is the fact that we were all big parts of the wedding. The other five had made suggestions to change the wedding, and I had agreed with several of the suggestions. I don’t understand why I would be in their crosshairs, however.”

  I finished my story with a slight sob. I couldn’t help it. “So that’s what happened, but the biggest issue is the fact that Evan is a homicide detective back there. I maxed out my bank and credit cards so that I could have cash, and my SUV is a hybrid so I should be able to make most of the trip without stopping, thankfully, but I’m bringing trouble with me, Charlie. Tell me now if you think I should go somewhere else. I just didn’t know where to go or what to do.”

  “Fuck that, cuz. You come here, and these assholes will be very fucking sorry that they messed with you.” I heard him talking to someone. “My cousin is on the road to here from New York. I need a meet along the road with her. She’s got trouble following her, and I need to be there for her.”

  “She’s your family, Sarge, she’s our family,” I heard a sexy-as-sin voice saying.

  Holy shit, if a voice could make a woman orgasm it was whoever was talking to Charlie right now. I had no idea who he was talking to, but the man’s voice was incredible and made me want to get to talk to him directly, but I didn’t dare ask Charlie to ask to talk to him.

  “She is. She’s the only good one of the whole fucking bunch. You’ve met all of them except for my cousin Ava. She moved away years ago when her momma finally wised up and left her old man. Thanks, Prez,” I heard my cousin telling the man. “Okay, listen to me, Ava. I’m on my way with friends. We’ll meet you on the road. I will have someone take your car and drive it to another state. The last thing we want is a cop to track you because knowing you it has GPS and all the gadgets.”

  “Oh, shit.” I felt my stomach rolling at the thought of someone tracking me through my car, and ditching it, but he was right. “How do you know how to do something like this?”

  “Oh, Ava, sweet cuz, there is a hell of a lot that you don’t know about me,” he said and then added, “I’ll call you back soon. Right now, just stay on the interstate. Are you taking I-85 or I-81?”

  “I’m taking 81 and then 59 because of the construction on 85. I know that there are tolls, but I have cash for them.” I felt a bit of relief. The drive was what I was dreading, more than 1300 miles of road, and he was coming out to meet me with friends? Who does that? “Thank you, Charlie. So much. I don’t know how to repay you.”

  “You’re family, cuz. I will do whatever I have to in order to protect you, and so will my friends. Just don’t be afraid of them. You are family of mine, and that means something to these men.”

  “You’re talking about them as if they are some kind of gang,” I said with a laugh. It was that nervous laugh I had when I was stressed.

  “It’s because they are—we are. There is a lot you’ll have to learn fast about my way of life down here, cuz, but I’ll protect you from as much of it as I can. Just know that you are safe, no matter what.”

  Oh, shit, I thought to myself. What have I gotten myself into? “I trust you,” I said finally and realized that I did. Charlie was there, and just like when they were kids he was going to make it all better.

  “Good, keep trusting me, Ava. Do what I say and we’re good.” Charlie then ended the call, but not before I heard the start of engines, a lot of engines. How weird because they sounded like motorcycles, the big kind that scary bikers rode.

  End of sample chapter

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