Battling back his own rising anger, Dimitri bunched his fists deep in the bowels of his pockets, allowing his blunt nails to cut into the heels of hands, redirecting his desire to punch the other man in the mouth.
“I will remember,” he bit out. “I have yet to forget your other … requests.”
A hint of color bled into John Paul’s face, but his gaze remained unwavering. “What do you want, Dimitri?”
“Your support,” he stated, deciding to simply put it out there. “I want the fifth chair.”
He could have announced he became a unicorn at night for the slack jawed expression his father gave him.
“You want the north?” he said at last, in a tone that suggested Dimitri was out of his mind.
“I want the north,” he confirmed. “The absence of power has left a vacuum in the city and the longer it goes without being filled, the harder it will be to hold back the crime spree—”
“Says the man who has been robbing people blind the last eight months!”
Dimitri paused. His initial reaction was to ask how the hell he knew that. No one did. He’d been careful to leave no tracks. But if he’d missed something, no matter how small, and his mother ever found out, or the other criminal organizations in the city, he’d be a dead man before nightfall.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
John Paul’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t lie to me. I know you’re the Devil.”
Dimitri shook his head, careful to keep his features neutral. “That would make no sense. Why would I—?”
A hand was lifted, silencing him. “I don’t care. The fact is that if you’re here to ask for my support, you don’t have it. I will not allow the organization I helped build to be used as a pawn game for your mother’s bullshit.”
Dimitri willed himself to remain calm, to keep his voice even. “Elena has nothing to do with this.”
“I’m assuming she’s backing you.” It wasn’t a question, nor did he give Dimitri the chance to answer. “She’s using you to get her hands on more territory to peddle her garbage. The person who takes that seat, needs to recognize the importance of balance. He needs to only concern himself with the wellbeing of those in his territory. The north is the most powerful seat in the Syndicate. It is the pillar, the crown of the entire city and I will not allow you to sit there.”
That should have been enough. He should have accepted the man’s decision. But the moment Dimitri returned to his car, he knew he couldn’t. John Paul was wrong. Elena had nothing to do with Dimitri’s decision to take the seat, nor would he allow his mother to take what he’d fought for. That was what John Paul didn’t understand. This wasn’t about helping his mother. It was about stopping people like her.
He contemplated going to Theresa. She was a stone cold bitch, but he knew he could sway her. Then he’d have three votes and John Paul would lose even if he disagreed. But that wasn’t enough. It was no longer enough to prove him wrong. He had insulted Dimitri for the last time.
Head hot with his brewing rage, he picked up his phone and dialed.
“Yeah?” Stephen’s drowsy slur indicated he’d been sleeping, despite it being nearly three in the afternoon.
“I need a location.”
He heard bedsprings jingling, sheets rustling, a female’s complaints, then a grunt and the squeak of a computer chair.
“‘k, hit me.”
Dimitri hesitated. The little voice in his head took that split second to warn him what a bad idea this was, but the name was already pouring off his tongue into the phone before he could stop it.
“Ava Emerson.”
Chapter Four
“Just keep them coming,” Ava mumbled, motioning for the bartender to pour her another mixture of Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, and Johnny Walker.
“Rough day?” the chiseled jaw supermodel teased with a flash of his irresistible dimples.
Ava exhaled. “The roughest. Now I just need to drown myself in alcohol to wash it all away.”
The bartender—Chad, she noted, eyeing his blurry nametag—chuckled. He prepared her drink and slid it over to her.
“Want to talk about it?”
“Christ, no!” She threw back most of her drink, hissed through the pain and set her glass down. “I am not subjecting you to my suffering. Go be pretty to someone not moping into her Three Wise Men.”
Chad’s laughter deepened. “I don’t know. I kind of like your mopey face.”
Ava looked up, fighting hard to focus and read his expression. Half drunk, it was nearly impossible to tell if he was just flirting for a bigger tip or if he was flirting to get into her pants, which—judging from the size of those arms straining the sleeves of his body fitting top—she might just allow.
“Tell me, Chad.” She paused, wrinkled her nose. “What kind of name is Chad? I didn’t even know they still existed.”
“We’re underground, bidding our time,” he replied seamlessly.
Cute and funny. Definitely a worthy candidate.
“All right, Chad, tell me something—”
“I thought I just did.”
Ava narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be cute. You’re already winning.”
One dark eyebrow lifted. “I didn’t realize we were playing anything.”
Ava tossed back the rest of her drink, shook the now empty glass at him before responding. “Are you this charming with all the ladies or am I just lucky because I’m intoxicated?”
“It’s my job to be charming, but it doesn’t hurt that you’re…”
“What?” she prompted when he trailed off.
“Really hot,” he finished with a shrug.
Ava laughed and nearly tipped out of her chair. “You think I’m hot?” She picked up her refreshed drink and took a sip. “I’m running on zero sleep, eighty percent alcohol, and a handful of really gross chips. Hot is not what I would call it.”
“Tell me.”
Why not? She thought, cradling her drink.
“I broke up with my boyfriend this morning during a four-hour drive here, which probably makes me horrible for doing it over the phone, but he hung up on me so I figure we’re even. Then I get a call from my best friend who tells me I owe him an explanation for last night, which was supposed to be a secret.” She reached to scratch her nose and stabbed herself in the eye. Blinking through the pain and stinging, she squinted at Chad. “Do you know what a secret is, Chad?”
He was clearly masking a grin she did not appreciate. “I’ve heard about it.”
“You don’t tell people secrets, especially dangerous secrets. I’m not even sure I’m allowed to talk to you about it.”
He shook his head. “I heard nothing.”
“Good.” She made to grab at her glass and wound up backhanding it instead. The contents spilled across the table as the tiny bit of glass cluttered onto its side and rolled away. Chad caught it. He righted it, but didn’t refill it, much to her annoyance. “Hey! I’m not paying you to stand there.”
“You haven’t paid me at all.” But he refilled her glass.
Ignoring his comment, she took her shot and tried to toss it back all suave like. Most of it spilled down her top. She didn’t notice.
“Then,” she went on as though she hadn’t been interrupted, “I just spent the last eight hours of my life making connections. Three hours of that was spent on my butt, listening to grown women drone on about … fuck if I know what. Then my one-hour break, I spent it searching for food, real food, which, by the way, I never found so I went back to the convention and tried to force down these gross little tortilla things that tasted like feet. Why invite hundreds of women to a meet and greet and not serve actual food? Do they think women don’t eat?” Her eyes widened as realization seeped through her alcohol fuzzy brain. “Do you think they think we’re fat?”
Chad had the decency not to laugh, but it was shining in his blue eyes when she squinted up at him. “No one would think you were fat.”
“They were, w
eren’t they?” she shouted, slapping the counter. “That’s why there was no food. Those fuckers!”
Chad did laugh this time.
“Don’t laugh!” she warned him. “I’m going to be writing a letter about this, just as soon as I figure out who to send it to. Where’s my purse?”
“You didn’t have one,” Chad said.
Ava frowned. “Of course I had one. It’s where I keep my money and my phone, and my … feminine things.”
“Look, why don’t I pour you some coffee?”
“You are clearly not hearing me,” Ava muttered. “I lost my purse and it has my money. I can’t afford your twelve-dollar cup of coffee right now.” She dropped her face into her palm and groaned. “Christ, my head hurts already.”
“Why don’t I help you up to your room? Maybe you left it there,” Chad suggested, already untying his apron from around a tapered waist.
Ava shook her head. “I don’t trust you.”
Chad snorted. “Lady, you have about eighty dollars in booze in your stomach and you’re telling me you can’t pay. I think it’s more like I shouldn’t trust you.”
“Hey!” Whatever argument she was about to make to that was immediately derailed. “I can’t go to my room. I don’t have my room key.” She made a sound between a whine and a whimper. “My purse has my room key. I’m locked out.”
“All right, come on.” Chad circled around the counter. He reached her stool and nimbly helped ease her to her feet, keeping one arm securely around her middle. “Let’s go to the front desk and maybe they can help you. What’s your name?”
“Ava!”
That wasn’t her voice, unless something in the shots had altered her DNA so she was now a man. But she couldn’t be sure her brain wasn’t failing either until she saw the hulking shadow stomping towards them, moving with an authority that had others scurrying to get out of his path. Tawny eyes bore into hers, a sharp, focused glow amongst the smudged edges of his silhouette.
“Dimitri?”
She would have recognized his build anywhere. If that wasn’t enough, his scent had pooled through the room like an infectious fume, soaking up everything but his potent musk. His wide strides carried him the twenty steps from the door in less time than it took for her breath to regulate properly. His furious glower came into focus a split second before the rest of him did. His dark eyes jumped from her to Chad and then settled on the hold Chad had on her, and his scowl deepened. His shoulders straightened. There was a hard knot in his jaw that could have cut steel.
“What are you doing?”
Chad appeared momentarily baffled by the question. He glanced at Dimitri looming over him like some dark, avenging angel, then peeked down at Ava, relying on him for support. It would have been comical if Ava wasn’t suddenly terrified he’d drop her just to save his pretty face from the meaty fists Dimitri had clenched at his sides.
“It’s not what it looks like,” Chad began.
“We are getting a room key then Chad is taking me upstairs,” Ava supplied, slurring so horribly that she couldn’t help wonder if her tongue had taken off with her purse, and her numb hands and feet. “I am a grown up,” she declared for absolutely no reason. “And he thinks I’m hot.”
“No!” Chad blurted quickly when Dimitri’s nostrils actually flared and his eyes narrowed into thin slits that promised a slow and painful death. “She lost her purse with her room key. I was taking her to the front desk. I’m just the bartender. I’m not even allowed to think the customers are hot. Not that she’s not. She’s very beautiful. You’re a lucky man.”
Ava started giggling. It was definitely not the time for it, but once it started, she couldn’t stop and soon, Chad was sweating from the efforts of keeping her upright.
“That’s it. I swear,” Chad insisted, voice tinged with panic.
Dimitri looked no less pacified by the frantic explanation. Instead, he turned his anger on Ava.
“What are you doing leaving with a stranger when you can barely walk?”
Ava frowned at him, sobering. “This is Chad. He’s not strange. That’s racist.”
“He could have killed you,” Dimitri argued.
Ava snorted. “Have you ever heard of a killer named Chad? He’s like a turtle, a naked turtle without a shell.”
“I kind of resent that … But totally cool,” he corrected quickly when Dimitri shot him a warning glower. “I can be a naked turtle.”
“Come here.”
He reached for Ava and Chad immediately relinquished his hold. She swayed into the hard width of her ex-lover’s chest and stayed there, lulled by his familiar warmth and the steady patter of his heart beneath her cheek. Her eyes closed and she let him hold her.
“I’m not drunk,” she slurred into the soft material of his top. “I just can’t find my purse or my feet. I think they ran off together.”
“We’ll find them.” There was something taut in his voice she couldn’t bring herself to pinpoint. It vibrated in his chest, tickling her cheek. “Bring coffee.”
“No.” Her arms tightened around his waist when he began to move like he was going to pull away. “Don’t let go.” She squeezed her eyes shut tight. “I’ve missed you.”
There was a hard kick beneath her cheekbone and a sharp inhale that ruffled the hairs at the top of her head. His arms tightened, too tight. Several of her ribs cracked. He said something in Russian that was either terms of endearment or a vicious cussing spree. Any other day, sober, she might have understood some of it. Just then, she was barely able to stay awake.
“Don’t do this,” she thought she heard him growl into her crown.
“I left Patrick,” she whispered. “I had to. He wasn’t you. No one is you.” Her voice caught as her emotions took a nosedive from high to crippling low. “I’m going to die alone.”
“Ava…”
Her wails would have mortified her any other time. But eight years of pain and questions catapulted out of her. Their years together growing up, their first kiss, the first time he’d touched her, the first time he’d looked into her eyes and it dawned on her she loved him, all swirled in an array of smudged colors across her mind’s eye. Each one punctured a vital organ until she began to fear she’d just bleed out right there in his arms. Every memory ripped from her chest in undignified sobs of someone who just witnessed the death of the person they loved and there seemed to be no end to it. She just clutched his shirt and soaked the material through with her misery … and tears, snot, and drool.
Dimitri seemed unaffected by the damage she was causing to his clothes. He began to gather her up as though she were a child, but she stopped him.
“I can’t leave,” she hiccupped. “I owe Chad money. This stool is now my home. This is where I will die.”
“You’re not going to die,” Dimitri muttered, as he rifled around in his pockets with one hand, the other stayed firmly locked around her waist, holding her up, holding her close. He slapped down three crumpled bills on the counter that added to about twice as much as she owed.
“That’s too much.”
He ignored her as he bent down and scooped her up into his arms bridal style.
“But the money…”
“Don’t wiggle,” was all he said, already walking away from the bar and Chad.
Ava let him, too comfy with her face in the curve of his neck to care what happened next. She must have dozed because they were boarding an elevator when she pried her eyes open.
“Where are we?”
“Going to your room,” he said, gently setting her down, freeing his hand to push the twenty-eight.
“I don’t have my key.”
He held up a plastic tag. “Already covered.”
Ava blinked. “How did you…”
The doors began to slide shut, only to pop open as a group of tourists rushed in. Ava and Dimitri were forced into one mirrored corner. His arms went around her once more, pulling her close as the cramped space filled up.
Others packed in or left as the doors opened and closed on practically every level. Neither noticed. He was too fixated on her and she was too enthralled by the feel of his gaze washing along the contours of her face. It was so much like before that, for a moment, she had a hard time deciphering what was real and what was a dream.
But the pain was there, a steady reminder not to be an idiot. Again.
“Why are you here, Dimitri?”
She heard the question from a distance, like it was coming from someone else in a different time. Part of her wasn’t even sure she’d actually asked, especially when he took ages to answered.
“To see you.” His gruff murmur caressed the curves of her upturned cheeks, smelling of chocolate mint. It made her want to trace his tongue with hers and taste him.
Her gaze lowered to his full, generous mouth and the thick stubble that surrounded it. It wasn’t simply a five o’clock shadow, but a good two days’ worth of facial hair that had her skin prickling in memory of how they tickled traveling down her body. Her stomach muscles flipped. Her nipples tightened. She wondered if he could feel them through the thin material of her blouse.
Later, when she wasn’t floating on a sea of memories, lost in her own ocean of lust and hunger, she would kick herself for not being smarter, for allowing him to simply waltz back into her life after the pain he’d caused as though nothing had happened. What was worse, she knew, even then through the haze of alcohol, that if he kissed her, she’d let him. Hell, she’d let him do more than simply kiss her. And she hated herself for it, hated her body for being so weak. She wasn’t the sort of woman who allowed herself to be played by a man. She’d walked away from plenty of relationships without any emotional connections at all and hadn’t thought back on them at all. But his … that single year of being lost in his arms, captivated by his kisses, lulled by the sweet whispers of his promises, had broken her. She couldn’t butter toast without thinking of their mornings together. She couldn’t tie her shoes without remembering the nights he’d help her crawl out her window to watch the sun come up. She couldn’t brush her hair without feeling her scalp prickle as though his hands were still there, wrapped in the strands, tugging back her face. She should hate him.
The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2) Page 6