And he had.
As the water filled the tub, she kicked off her shoes, pulled off her sweater, and climbed in. If she went in naked, Greyson would flip out.
“Okay, lower him in.”
Steele and Dante placed him in the water and against Emma’s body.
“Stitch him up fast before he comes out of this,” Emma stated. “He’s been through enough. He won’t want to feel this.”
Dante and Steele moved fast.
They cleaned the wound, they kept adding hot water to the tub, and then Dante stitched the wound shut as his husband told him how to make the knots.
It wasn’t pretty, but it was closed.
When they were done, Emma held him against her body, supporting him in the tub. His head rested against her shoulder as he was between her legs. He’d become looser, and his fingers didn’t feel cold.
“He needs fluids,” Steele said. “We’ll go make him some soup, get him some water, and get ready to force him to drink. If not, he’ll need blood. I don’t know his type.”
She didn’t either.
That would be a problem.
“I’ve got him. I’ll hold him.”
“Shout if you need us.”
Emma held him against her body, and with gentle hands offered him peace. She ran them over his abs, his arm, and his chest as she washed away the dried blood to clean him up.
“Come on, Dimitri. I’ve lost too many people this week. Come back to me,” she said, giving him a kiss on the curl of his ear.
He moaned.
“Dimitri, I need you. I need my brother. Come back to me,” she whispered, again and again, trying to coax him back.
He began moving.
Emma held him.
She knew when he opened his eyes. His good arm moved, and his hand covered hers.
“Hey! Welcome back,” she said.
He turned his head and saw Emma.
“This is a really good dream,” he said. “I’m in a tub naked with you. Greyson is going to kill me if this isn’t a dream.”
She laughed.
“Well, he might forgive you this once,” she teased. Emma was so damn glad he was back that she’d do anything to make him stay with them.
“Emma.”
She didn’t let him say anything else. She silenced him when she kissed him on the mouth.
It was sweet and gentle.
“I love this dream,” he admitted.
She held him and squeezed his body in a hug.
“You scared us. I’m so damn angry with you right now, Dimitri.”
He stayed against her.
“If this is how you and Greyson fight, taking a bath together, I’m really jealous. He’s the luckiest man in the world. Marry me.”
Emma kissed him on the cheek.
“You were shot, and now he really will kill you.”
He laughed, but his heart wasn’t into it. Dimitri was raw, inside and out.
“I recall the getting shot part. It didn’t feel all that awesome, so I’ll try not to let it happen again.”
“Detective Wayne found you.”
“I recall that part too. The middle is the fuzzy part. I remember her yelling at me to live, pulling me down a hill, and kissing her at some point to stay warm.”
“Well, you also told her you killed your father and Anastasia—which is news to me—since I don’t know about that one.”
His whole body went tense.
He tried to pull away from her, only, Emma held him. He was too weak to fight her, and that worked to her advantage.
This nonsense was over.
She wasn’t letting him go.
“You need to stay in the water,” she said, hitting the drain with her toes and then the tap to fill the tub with more warm water.
“I have to go. If I told her…”
She stopped him.
“She’s not arresting you. She’s a good cop. She’ll do it the right way, or I’ll kill her myself for you.”
“Emma.”
“If she tries to arrest you, then I’ll handle it, Dimitri. I won’t let her hurt you. I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again. Please stay with me. You’re my brother. I need you.”
Tears filled his eyes at her words. She was more than a sister to him. She was that secret wish that one day he’d find someone who could love him—broken, damaged, and destroyed.
“Shhhh, I have you, Dimitri. I have you. I love you, and you’re home now. We’ll do this together. You can’t go after him alone.”
“Where is Greyson?”
“He’s searching for the people behind the sex trafficking ring. He’s investigating. I can’t go out. The baby has been outed.”
He panicked.
“He’s alone?”
“We have bodyguards.”
He felt like an asshole for what he’d done to them. He’d been so mired in that pain, that he left them unprotected. Then again, his brother shot him. He was in no position to be protecting anyone.
Especially now.
“Who was she?” Emma asked, knowing he’d understand to who she was referring.
“Anastasia was my wife.”
Her heart skipped.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m sorry.”
He didn’t get that love. She didn’t even know what happened, and she was still on his side. It was a mother’s love—and it was foreign to him.
“Don’t be. She betrayed me. I came back from some missions, and she had been watching Katerina and Natasha while I was gone. I was paying her. I thought she would be a good wife, so I married her. I wasn’t in love at first. Honestly, I married her to give the girls a mother who would love them.”
“And?”
“She turned me into the KGB. They tortured me for a whole month. I was stripped, tortured, violated, and starved. I was treated like an animal.”
She held him, listening, and the whole time, her hands soothed him by gently rubbing up and down his chest and torso.
“When they buried me alive, thinking I was dead, I dug my way out. I went home to find her celebrating my death. She told the girls they were being sold. I’d just saved them, and she was betraying me. She was going to sell them to men for sex. I couldn’t let it happen.”
“So, you killed her.”
“I drove a knife through her heart. I killed her. As she was bleeding, and dying, she said, ‘I am carrying your child’, and I didn’t know what to do.”
Her heart broke for him.
“I love you.”
He wiped his eyes.
“I killed my own child, Emma. I killed a baby that wasn’t even born. I’ve had to carry that for so many years. It haunts me. She haunts me. I have no peace.”
She gave him soft kisses on the neck and ear to soothe him. It was working.
He relaxed against her.
“You didn’t know,” she said. “If you had, would you have killed her?”
“Not until after she had my child. Then I would have taken him or her, too, and then ended her.”
“She could have been lying.”
He was aware.
He’d never know. Sometimes, it was the not knowing that was the hardest to swallow.
“Do you hate me?” he asked. “Do you hate me for what I’ve done?”
Her heart broke more.
“I could never hate you, Dimitri. I love you. You’re mine. I will always love you.”
“Does Greyson hate me for leaving?” he asked.
“No, he misses you. He was going to come back when we heard you were found. We were worried. He will see you later when he’s done.”
“I don’t know if I can face him. I don’t know if I can face what I did to him.”
“You can always come home, Dimitri. I know I can’t stop you, but you tried ending Viktor your way. Why not try our way? We can get him, Dimitri. We can get Viktor.”
He thought about the detective. It was awkward to bring it up, but when wasn’t he feeling that? At that mome
nt, he was naked with Emma.
“I’m sexually aroused by her.”
“Poppy?”
“Yes. She took care of me. I don’t understand why. She knows what I am. Why did she help me, Emma? Explain it to me. I’m so confused,” he asked.
“She’s a good person. You can tell the measure of a person by their actions. She fought for you.”
“I wanted her. She reminds me of my dead wife. All the women I’ve slept with…”
“Yes?”
“They have never looked like Poppy or Anastasia. I’ve always asked Stephanie for anyone but that type for a reason. Now I’m face to face with my past.”
She understood.
Everyone had a type.
Emma kissed him on the shoulder as she held him in the warming water.
“I made a bet with her.”
“What was it?”
“That I wouldn’t survive the climb off the mountain. She bet me I would. Clearly, she was right. Unless this is Heaven, and I’m in a tub with a beautiful woman and her husband isn’t here.”
She laughed.
Dante walked in.
“Oh, our sexy patient is awake.”
“And there went that fantasy,” he stated. “This is not Heaven.”
Emma laughed.
“He saw you naked. He was checking out your junk. In fact, we all saw you naked. This is his best day ever.”
He closed his eyes and rested his head against her shoulder. It felt damn good to be home. He’d dreaded being there, but with his family there, Dimitri had what he had been missing.
Calm.
Strength.
Peace.
“Well, now I have to kill him.”
Dante handed Emma the mug of soup. She held it in her hands and brought it to his lips to make sure he got some fluids into his body.
“Here you go, sweetheart. In case this doesn’t work, what blood type are you?”
He sipped it as she held it.
“A positive,” he replied, as he sipped the hot soup. “I feel better.”
Emma was so glad.
This was the first step in healing him.
As if on cue, Steele came in with a thermometer that would read his temperature. He held it to his forehead and it beeped.
He showed Emma.
It was better.
They were winning this one.
“You were hypothermic, but you’re on your way back. We got your core temperature up a couple degrees. You still feel warm,” he said, touching the man’s face. “With some antibiotics, we might get lucky.”
“It was so cold on the mountain. Had Poppy not saved me and kept me warm, I’d be dead.”
That horrified Emma.
The men too.
Dimitri was more than just a security guy. He’d become part of them. He’d healed Steele when he was broken by being there for him with his silent strength. He’d helped Dante by making sure he kept an eye on Steele when he came back.
They loved and respected him.
“Did you see me naked too?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Dimitri wiggled his eyebrows to torment Dante.
“Funny. Water is see through. You look small now,” Dante busted right back.
Dimitri opened his eyes and began sobbing.
“I’m sorry!” Dante stated, dropping to his knees. “I was only kidding! Jesus! I didn’t mean it!”
Emma held him.
‘Natasha,’ she mouthed.
They got it.
Steele took the mug and pulled one of the black towels from the rack.
“Let’s get him into bed. He needs time to heal,” he said, as Dante pulled him up by his good arm and Steele dried him off.
Emma got up and she was soaked. Steele handed her a towel. “Get dried off. We’ll get him into bed.”
She did as he said, and watched a weeping Dimitri head toward his bed.
She was going to stay with him.
She was going to watch over him.
He wasn’t running again.
She lost Chris, but she’d save Dimitri.
Emma had to do it.
It was her job.
Chapter Seven
FBI Las Vegas
E than was up to his neck in work, and he didn’t think he would ever straighten that place up. In fact, he was beginning to think that he was going to be making a return trip after Elizabeth and Callen’s honeymoon.
How could he not?
This place was a travesty.
Miles Lane was next on the chopping block, and heads were definitely going to roll. He’d purposely let this bureau get taken down to defy him, and it was done.
He was done.
As he sat there, sorting through all the paperwork that Robert Lee was supposed to handle, he heard the knock at the door.
“Come in.”
“Sir, you need to turn on the news,” Linda said, peeking her head into the room. “It’s important.”
He hit the button and stood.
On the screen, he saw his wife being yanked violently from a police cruiser and dragged into the LVPD. He saw the commissioner standing there with a smile on his face, as she, and Ivan, were pulled into the building.
This was bad.
He called them both, and they didn’t answer.
“Get Wilcox. I need to go.”
He grabbed his gun from the desk and then saw the ear com sitting there. Ivan wore his religiously. It would pick up any other coms near his location.
He popped it into his ear and headed out. Ethan knew time was of the essence.
On the way there in the car, he ignored the calls coming in. Callen had seen the media report.
Hell!
Half the country likely had seen their wife being manhandled by the cops and called a murderer. This was three days past bad into a disaster.
What.
The.
Bloody.
Hell?
When he got to the station, the shit was going to hit the fan. Clearly, the commissioner didn’t know who he was messing with on this one. He may have run Greyson into the ground, but the commissioner was a special kind of crazy if he thought this would stop them.
Ethan lived for the shit storm.
He thrived on it.
If someone dragged his wife into it, all kinds of hell was going to come down on someone. He’d play this right, and he’d get this handled.
Commissioner Raye was a dead man.
All Ethan could hope was his wife didn’t kill anyone. That was likely the ONLY thing he couldn’t get her off for at this point. They called her and Ivan murderers, and he only hoped they were screwing with them.
As they pulled up to the station, he turned his com on and waited.
He could hear mayhem going on. He could hear Ivan struggling to get to Elizabeth.
“Get your fucking hands off her!” he shouted, as there were grunts, the sounds of someone being hit, and then laughter from voices he’d never heard. “If I get free, I’m going to kick your ass for beating on a woman!”
His heart pounded.
Jesus!
Were they beating on his wife?
“Ivan.”
There was a pause.
“Boss?” Ivan whispered. “If that’s you, they’ve illegally detained us. They’re kicking the shit out of Elizabeth. I can’t get to her. God! Hurry! She’s bloodied up!”
That was all he had to hear.
Ethan was out of the ride, and he headed toward the precinct. Inside, he headed straight for the commissioner. Once he saw him, the man’s face said it all.
He didn’t expect him to show up. The commissioner actually thought he’d have more time to hurt Elizabeth.
He was a dead man.
“Where is she?” Ethan raged.
He’d tear the whole place down to get to her, and he’d start with this bald weasel of a man.
“I’m sorry, what?” he asked, playing dumb.
That was the wo
rst thing to do when dealing with Ethan Blackhawk.
“I saw the news. You know she was brought in, and if you’ve touched her…”
He lifted his hands.
“Oh, I wasn’t aware.”
BULLSHIT!
Ethan saw him smiling like the fucking Cheshire Cat as she was brought in like a common criminal.
“I’ll go see what’s going on,” he said, signaling a cop.
Ethan paced.
Wilcox watched the cops around them. They looked twitchy.
The commissioner came rushing out.
He looked horrified.
Ethan didn’t buy it.
NOT AT ALL.
“Deputy Director, there’s been a mistake! Two rookies were answering a silent alarm, found your wife and her associate in there, and they thought they were killers. I’ll make sure they’re reprimanded for this horrible mistake.”
Ethan wanted to kill him.
Reprimanded?
If they bloodied his wife, there would be hell to pay. If they did serious damage, he’d kill them himself.
“If they hurt her, I’ll end you.”
The man smiled.
Apparently, he’d gotten a set of balls since he’d seen him last. Well, that meant a neutering.
“I can’t babysit every cop. Let’s go see if we can find her, shall we?”
Ethan wasn’t done.
“Wilcox, get fifty Feds here now. I want them here and I want a command post outside the police station for all of the media to see.”
“On it, sir. I’ll call your secretary.”
He walked away.
The commissioner’s eyes went wide. It was clear he wasn’t finding the whole situation amusing anymore.
“Pardon?”
Ethan wasn’t done.
“We had word that Thomas Christ was the person who killed Lester Lucas. We’re pulling that case, and there will be an internal investigation of every single cop who works here, including you.”
Two could play this game.
Commissioner Raye sputtered.
“We’ve been told you were the last one with him, and there was a recording. We’ll have our analysts make sure you didn’t use stop-start methods to alter the recording.”
His eyes went big.
“Yes, we have that capability.”
“I didn’t…”
“We’re also going to investigate how you offered a captaincy position to the woman who was working the murder of Thomas Christ. That seems…suspicious.”
True Justice Page 23