“You need a car and driver,” Penny interrupted his thoughts, head still bent over her list. “You’re an important man. You can’t be taking cabs all over the city.”
Her efficient prioritization of his life made it clear that he’d made the right choice stealing her from Theresa. He’d known she would be; Theresa had zero tolerance for slacking and even less patience with people who displeased her. The fact that Penny had kept her position for the better part of two years had said a lot about her competence.
He pondered for a moment if he felt bad. Not about getting Penny fired, but for lying to Theresa. They were essentially partners now. Their territories were allies. He should at least feel semi-guilty.
He realized he really didn’t. Freeing Penny from that woman was worth the fight it would start when Theresa found out. Sure, he could have found someone else. There were agencies for that kind of thing, women far more qualified. But for Theresa’s bullshit during the elections, it only seemed fitting he take something equally significant, but not too significant. He didn’t want to start a war, just piss her off a little.
“Where do you live?”
His question interrupted Penny’s lengthy ramble about color scheming and playing to his strengths. He partially wondered if she thought he was an idiot, but pushed it aside.
“Do you mean actual address or territory?”
“Territory.”
“The south, but that won’t interfere with my job.”
“You need to move.” He slanted her a sidelong glance from the corner of his eye. “I can’t protect you if you’re in someone else’s territory. You work for me. You’re a member of the north now.”
She considered that a moment, pen making that irritating tapping sound she seemed very fond of. Finally, she moistened her lips and cleared her throat.
“Yes, I understand that, but I have to respectfully decline.” She shifted a little higher in her seat. “Daniel’s school is there and his friends. My mom lives in our apartment building so there’s someone I can call if I need him watched. I know all my neighbors and the people of my community and…” She wet her lips again, nervously. “Daniel has autism. His clinic and doctor are there. I can’t just leave.”
He wanted to push, but stopped himself. He gave a reluctant nod.
“We’ll find another way,” he decided.
Her shoulders drooped visibly and she offered him a small smile in thanks.
The matter was dropped. She went back to her notes and he watched the insane way their driver kept taking short cuts. At one point, he turned into a one-way, going the wrong way, just to twist the wheel and bounce them into the flow of traffic on the other side. The transition had been so fluid, Dimitri hadn’t even felt the jostle.
Saeed Parvez, read the photo ID above the rearview. Dimitri judged him to be in his early twenties, clean cut, and an incredible driver. They hadn’t shared more than a single word between them, but he’d understood English.
“Where are you from, Saeed?”
Brown eyes lifted to meet his in the mirror. They were parked at a red light or Dimitri may have wet himself.
“Here, born and raised. Eight generations.”
No accent. Perfect English.
“Do you always drive like you’ve robbed a bank?”
A mischievous smirk twisted up one side of his face. “Maybe I have.”
Dimitri immediately liked the kid.
“Get a lot of speeding tickets?”
Saeed shook his head. “Never had one a day in my life.” He knocked on the dashboard. “Knock on wood.”
“That’s plastic,” Penny cut in before Dimitri could. “Fiberglass most likely. Here. Use this.”
While she was busy wedging the corner of Daniel’s frame through the money slot for Saeed to knock on, Dimitri’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and checked the screen. Surprised to see Robby’s name, he put it to his ear.
“Yeah?”
“Dimitri? It’s Robby. Ava’s in the hospital.”
He didn’t listen to the rest.
He cracked the glass with a knuckle sharply, startling Saeed and Penny. He barked the orders and directions to the hospital.
“Get us there in ten minutes and I’ll give you five hundred bucks on top of what’s on the meter right now.”
Saeed popped his neck, rolled his shoulders, and narrowed his eyes on the road. “Hang on. I’ll get you there in five.”
They got there in four. It was absolutely beyond him how the boy did it, but the cab squealed to a stop right in front of the hospital doors with a ferocity that soaked the air with the stink of burnt tires. The windows rattled with the jerking stop and everyone pitched forward.
“Jesus Christ!” Penny shrieked, glowering at Saeed through the glass. “Does your mother know you drive like that?”
Saeed smirked. “Who do you think taught me?”
Penny’s nostrils flared, but she said nothing as she kicked her door open and threw herself out.
Dimitri wedged everything he had in his wallet through the money slot. It was more than five hundred, but the boy had kept his promise.
“Stay here,” he told him.
“Sure thing, boss,” was his reply.
Dimitri climbed out, slammed the door closed behind him and turned to Penny, who was slightly green under the pallor of her complexion.
“Hire him.”
Leaving her to sort it all out, he stalked through the doors, strides long and commanding. The painfully familiar stench greeted him like an old friend. It draped around his shoulder, a heavy weight as he maneuvered the corridors. His duster flapped around his legs, snapping like raven wings. He could feel the air climbing beneath him and the fabric, lifting it off his back.
“Ava Emerson,” he snapped at the woman behind the counter.
“Dimitri!” Robby waved at him from the other side of the desk before the woman could open her mouth.
Dimitri abandoned the spot and hurried to the other man and the beast of a man looming just over his shoulder. He ignored the latter.
“Where is she? What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Robby blurted, white all the way to his lips. “We were having lunch and the next second we were being shot at—”
“Where is she?”
Robby jabbed a thumb in the direction of the door just over his shoulder.
Dimitri stomped forward, heart a wild tangle of dread and determination. He paused in the doorway, mostly to prepare himself before closing the steps to the bed he could see peeking around the corner.
Ava was on the bed, fully dressed, and awake. John Paul stood next to her, arms crossed and a very agitated twist around his mouth. But Dimitri focused on Ava, taking her in from head to toe over and over again, trying to pinpoint the location of her injuries and finding nothing.
“What happened?”
Her head shot up from the clipboard she held. Her green eyes brightened at the sight of him a split second before she grinned.
“Hey!”
Ignoring that, he moved to her other side, mostly to get a better view of her. “Where are you hurt?”
Her smile melted into one of annoyance that could have rivaled John Paul’s. “I’m not!” She shot the other man a severe sidelong glower. “There is nothing wrong with me.”
It made no sense.
“Then … what the hell are you doing here?”
“She needs to be checked,” John Paul retorted hotly. “Even despite this, you’ve had a traumatic two weeks. You need doctors to see you.”
“I’m fine!”
“Are you a doctor?” John Paul argued. “You can’t possibly know what type of things you could have contracted over there or how this stress will toll on your body. Just sit there and let the doctors have a look.”
Dimitri was trying to keep up with the flow of argument, but he still couldn’t understand what the fuck was happening.
“Robby said you were shot,” he said, breaking i
nto the conversation before the two started again.
“I was not,” Ava muttered, the clipboard falling into her lap. “They missed.”
“Christ!” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Who?”
He asked the question of John Paul, who merely shook his head in response.
“Had to be Elena,” he decided. “No one else is this determined.” He sucked in a breath and peered at Ava, so small against the mound of pillows. “I thought for sure she would keep her head down.”
“The question is why she wants Ava dead as badly as she does,” John Paul corrected. “It’s with a single minded determination that boarders on obsessed.”
“She mentioned a tree,” Ava piped in. “That night she had me taken. She said something about bringing down a tree.”
“A tree?” Dimitri frowned.
“Me.” Hands clasped at his back, John Paul met his gaze. “She’s referring to me.”
“But why?” Ava asked.
“Elena seldom requires a reason to do anything,” John Paul muttered. “There is obviously more to this, but we can deduce that Ava is not safe until I have Elena.”
“She’s not safe anywhere if Elena has her eyes set on her,” Dimitri said. “Elena won’t stop. She’s like a dog with a bone.”
John Paul nodded. “Agreed.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Ava looked from one to the other. “Witness relocation? CIA? Homeland? And for how long? I mean, I need to go back to work and my apartment—”
“I’ve already taken care of your apartment and any bills you may have had,” John Paul assured her. “That isn’t important.”
“And you’ll get another job,” Dimitri added. “The only important thing is keeping you alive.”
Ava sighed. “And I appreciate that, but I…” She scrubbed a hand over her face. “This is all just too much.”
John Paul smoothed a hand over the top of her head. “We will fix this, ma petite chou.”
“Sir?” Penny clicked into the room on her pale, pink pumps, phone in hand. “I apologize for interrupting, but there is a matter I believe requires your immediate attention.”
An awkward sort of silence followed her into the space as all heads turned in her direction. She must have felt it as well as she came to an abrupt halt two feet over the threshold.
“Who’s this?” Ava asked casually, but there was just a hint of something underneath that made the skin between Dimitri’s shoulder blades prickle.
“I’m sorry.” Penny hurried forward, hand extended. “I’m Penelope Beauchamp.”
“I know you,” John Paul said slowly, accepting the woman’s tiny fingers.
“Yes sir.” Penny paused to shake Ava’s hand before taking a hurried step back. “We’ve met … when I worked for Ms. Maynard.”
Realization flickered across John Paul’s face. “Yes, that’s right.”
“I hired Penny to be my assistant,” Dimitri offered carefully.
“Assistant?” Ava prompted.
“I was going to tell you tonight,” he told her, careful not to make any unexpected movement and even more careful to keep his gaze unwavering. “I got the chair. I’m head of the north.”
Ava didn’t move for a full second. Her green eyes bore into his, reflective and painfully vivid. It seemed like hours before her expression changed, before the softness of her mouth turned up into a smile.
“Dimitri!”
She was off the bed, clipboard abandoned, and leaping into his arms. Hers twisted around his shoulders, forcing him to stoop slightly at the knees to meet her. Even then, she was pulled to her tiptoes. Her weight settled perfectly against his. Their fronts were in perfect alignment in all the places that made his blood stir and his fingers tighten against her back. Her sweet fragrance dripped through the foul stench that occupied hospitals and spread until it was all that he could smell.
“I’m so proud of you,” she whispered into his ear. “You’re going to do so much for this city.”
A lump had begun to form in his throat, a golf ball sized knob that made it nearly impossible to speak.
“Only if you’re with me,” he breathed into the side of her throat. “I need you with me, Ava.”
She said nothing for so long he began to think he’d made a mistake. He honestly hadn’t meant to say anything. The words had come out of him before he even knew he’d been thinking them.
“Don’t hurt me again.”
Four little words and she’d stuck a rusted dagger into his chest and torn him open. They bled through him in crystalized shards of ember that burned and cut all the way up to enclose around his heart. He started to tell her he swore it on his life when a discreet cough reminded them where they were and just how long they’d been standing there, tangled together.
He expected her to jerk back, but she held on a second longer before her arms loosened and her feet went flat on the floor, detaching her from him. She peered up at him once more, eyes pleading before she turned to Penny with a whole new sort of smile, this one void of the steely edges.
“It’s really nice to meet you.”
Penny inclined her head. “Likewise.” She faced Dimitri. “Sir, that matter…”
“I’ll be right back,” he told Ava, who nodded and stepped aside to allow him to pass.
He followed Penny just outside the door to the nurse’s counter.
“It’s Syndicate business,” she told him quietly. “There’s been a shooting in a market place.”
“Was anyone hurt?” Another thought struck him then. “How did you know?” She’d only been his assistant for all of an hour.
Penny nodded grimly. “Eight dead. Six injured. Two of them were children. And I have connections in the north … and, well, everywhere. It’s my job.”
A muscle tightened in his chest. “Who was it?”
She shook her head. “My informant doesn’t have that information, but it was the north against an outside attack.” She raised her chin. “Would you like me to deal with this, sir? I will gather further information and select the appropriate group to contain the situation.”
Dimitri thought about it. He knew he couldn’t deal with the matter himself. He wouldn’t leave Ava alone, not after this and she was his main priority until his mother was found. But this was a matter he would need to deal with on some level. If someone hadn’t heard of the new switch in power and was trying to creep their way into a takeover, he needed to stop it now before it got out of hand and more innocent people suffered.
“Call a meeting with all the clans in my territory,” he told Penny. “I want every head present and I want a full report on the people responsible, even those who retaliated.”
“Yes sir, and where would you like that meeting to take place?”
Fuck.
“Find me a building, Penny.”
Penny inclined her head once and then hurried away with her face bent over her phone.
Dimitri returned to the room to find Robby had taken his side of the bed. His giant friend had lodged himself in the chair across the room, far away from the others. John Paul was on his phone by the window and Ava was on the bed, looking over the clipboard once more.
“Everything okay?” Ava lifted her face when Dimitri approached.
He nodded. “Territory stuff.”
Robby shifted. His eyes narrowed contemplatively. “So, if I wanted someone killed, would you be my guy?”
“Robby!” Ava swatted him in the gut.
“What?” Robby laughed. “It’s a legit question. There’s a guy in my residency class—”
“He’s not killing anyone for you!” Ava hissed.
Dimitri only shook his head. While amused, he was too exhausted. It had been a nightmare of a month and there didn’t seem to be a fucking end.
“Hey.” He hadn’t heard Ava get off the bed and move towards him until her cool fingers had curled around his. “It’s going to be okay.”
Without realizing it, he drew her to him, needing her ca
lm like an addict needed a hit. He tucked her against his chest. His finger slipped beneath her chin. He tipped her face to his. His own face reflected across the soft pools of green peering up at him with question, with trust, and a longing he couldn’t ignore.
He kissed her. He let his lips linger for a full stroke of breath over hers, allowing them that heartbeat to re-remember the other’s taste. It had been so long he could have wept with every long, slow drags of her that he claimed. Her infinite sweetness, its healing abilities coursed through him, pooling in all the broken pieces inside him like soothing resin.
“Dimitri…”
Her hesitance, the waver in her voice even as she opened for him tightened his grip.
“Let him see it.” He nipped lightly on her bottom lip. “I’m not hiding anymore.” He drew back to frame her flushed cheeks between his palms. “I’m not hiding you.”
The glimmer in her eyes was more than just tears. They shone with the light and laughter he’d stupidly banished from his life. They glowed with a radiance that washed over him in a warm, loving caress that made him feel more like a man than anything ever had. She smiled and every evil in the world simultaneously vanished. There was nothing but the absolute love and happiness that seemed to pour from that single gesture.
“You still owe me dinner,” she teased him. “And, if you play your cards right, breakfast.”
She wiggled her eyebrow suggestively and Dimitri burst out laughing. It just broke out of him in a flood of sound that could no longer be contained. The deep rumble of it swamped the room, overshadowing everything else.
Ava giggled.
He kissed her again, harder before pulling back.
Penny took that moment to step back into the room. She met Dimitri’s gaze and gave a nod.
John Paul was off his phone and was staring a bit too hard at the stretch of fading sun in the distance. He turned at the sound of Penny’s heels. He glanced from her to Dimitri and narrowed his eyes.
The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2) Page 32