by Shandi Boyes
I’m talking from experience more than assumptions. My high school boyfriend’s strut was never the same when I caught him kissing Belinda McCotter in the bleachers during the homecoming week game.
I begin to wonder how many women Dimitri has slept with when he pauses to consider a response. I can’t see the women he’s mentally ticking off, but I can see the flicker of his eyes as he scrolls through his little black book of bed companions. It makes me insanely jealous.
“Most were aware, but some were not,” he answers a short time later.
“Do you think any of them would be capable of doing something like this?”
His lips furl at the corners. “I don’t know. I wasn’t with them to conduct a psych exam.” His eyes snap to Rocco’s so quickly, he misses my scoff. “I thought you said she was a double business major.”
Rocco’s scrub of his jaw to hide his grin is pointless when I mumble, “I can be anything you want for the right amount of coin.”
With his eyes back on me, Dimitri arches his brow. “You want me to pay for your help?” When I nod, he slouches low in his chair before shaking his head. “Why would I do that?” I’m about to sell myself in a way that would make Estelle proud, but he continues talking, foiling my attempt. “I don’t need to pay you to do anything. I can just force you to do it.”
“It wouldn’t be authentic.” I take a mental note to have my head examined after this. I just witnessed a murder, and I’m reasonably sure the timer above my head is minutes from expiring, yet here I am, negotiating with a mobster. I’ve been in such a rut I’d do anything for an adrenaline high, but still, this is ridiculous. “It would be more believable if I were there via my own choice.”
“Where of your own choice?” Dimitri asks, humoring me with fake interest.
He isn’t laughing on the outside, but I can see the chuckles he’s struggling to hold in his rising and falling chest. It’s heaving the same way it did when Eddie ‘milked my loins of their nectar.’
Usually, any type of laughter would have me backtracking on every decision I’ve ever made. I can’t do that this time around. We’re still heading toward the woods. My life is on the line, so I either sell my soul to the devil or relinquish it for nothing.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather go out fighting.
“On your arm. By your side.” I swallow the brick lodged in my throat before muttering, “In your bed.”
My lungs fail to follow the prompts of my brain when Dimitri scoots to the edge of his seat. He moves so close to me, even if I wanted to press my thighs together from his hot, heated stare, I wouldn’t be able to. His knee is wedged between them. “Once again, why would I pay you to do that when I could make you do it for free?”
My ability to reply is lost by the thick, accented voice of the heavily tattooed man sitting next to me. I haven’t caught his name yet, but he has a tattoo of a clover on his cheek. “It’s the curse of the golden pussy, boss. All girls think they have one.” As he sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, he drags his eyes down my body in a slow and dedicated sweep. “It’s rare to find one who does, but she might have one. Her smell is sweet enough.” He releases his lip with a pop before straying his eyes to Dimitri. “Maybe you should give her to the boys for a few rounds, see if they think her pussy is worth paying for.”
I don’t breathe while snapping my eyes back to Dimitri’s. He wouldn’t do that, would he? He wouldn’t risk his daughter’s safety because I insinuated I’d only sleep with him if he paid me. Only an insane man would let his pride get in the way of his daughter’s well-being. Dimitri isn’t one of them.
My eyes pop open when the truth smacks into me. He watched me come via the hand of another man before he murdered the security guard who interrupted his show, then he tortured my boyfriend for six hours straight. Those events could have seen him facing thirty years to life in a maximum-security prison. He’s far from sane.
“I’ll do it for free!” My eyes dance between Dimitri’s frozen ones when I join him in sitting on the edge of my seat. “On the agreement you let me go once your daughter is found.”
I doubt I’m getting through to him, but am denied the opportunity of hoping when our negotiation is interrupted for the second time. This time it isn’t from the large brute on my right. It comes from the front of the car, from the driver. “We’ve got a tail. They’re a few spots back, but they’ve been with us the last two miles.”
“Fuck,” Dimitri curses under his breath after cranking his neck back. The moon is barely a slither in the sky, meaning even someone with poor eyesight would have no trouble seeing the curved headlights of a sedan in an almost pitch-black night. “Pull over here.”
I watch nervously when our break is closely mimicked by the car tailing us. They’re close enough for their presence to be felt but far enough away, they won’t see the sweat that beads on my temples when Dimitri throws open the back passenger door and slides out. He doesn’t approach the vehicle three hundred yards back. He heads straight for the trunk where he removes two shovels and a tarp.
Oh my God. I’m about to be buried where I’ll never be found.
“Please,” I beg when Dimitri dips the lower half of his body into the cab so he can pull me out a few seconds later. “I can help get your daughter back. Rocco proved I’m worthwhile. You just need to give me a chance.”
Since my arms are bound behind my back, it takes Dimitri no effort at all to pluck me from my seat and drag me to the front of his sleek ride. Not even digging my heels into the rugged terrain slows him down. In a matter of seconds, I’m kneeling on the tarp he laid out, and his gun is aimed at the petrified crinkle between my brows.
“Please,” I plead to the man who stood in the rain to watch me climax instead of the maniac standing in front of me. “I’ll do anything you ask. I can cook,” I groan about my inability to lie, “Not very well, but it’s edible… for the most part. I’ll clean, wash your clothes. I’ll do anything you want as long as you don’t kill me. I don’t want to die.” The dusty conditions make the tears welling in my eyes feel like sawdust. They scratch my eyeballs as well as a sudden urge to live warms my veins. “I’ve barely lived. Please, Dimitri. I’ll do anything you ask.”
“You’re the reason my wife is dead.”
His words are barely heard over the drumming of my heart, but I cling to them as if they’re a life raft, and I’m in the middle of the Indian Ocean. “I know, and I’m sorry. I’d take it all back in an instant if I could.” When my words appear to break through Dimitri’s cold, hard exterior, I keep blubbering. “We’ll be good together. I saw the way you looked at me in the alleyway. You liked what you saw.” I pause to see if truth registers on his face before continuing, “If we had that much spark from a distance, imagine what we’ll have when we’re close together. Your enemies won’t doubt our connection. They’ll truly believe you’re moving on.”
I’m not one hundred percent sure what Rocco meant when he said Justine’s ruse worked, but I’m so desperate to live, I’m willing to give anything a shot. “If you want your daughter back, you need me. You can be angry at me, you can hate me, but you still need me.” I bounce my drenched eyes between his. “I’m no good to you dead, Dimitri. I’m worth more to you alive than dead. I can be what you want me to be. I can be anything you need.”
After running the back of his hands down my mascara-stained cheek, he smiles as if I flashed him my tits. I didn’t, but it was pretty damn close. I offered myself to him, wholly and without constraint. I’ll be his if he doesn’t kill me.
“Please, Dimitri. I’m begging you for mercy.”
His smirk shifts to a full teeth-bearing grin, full of angst and confusion. I understand things drastically changed for him from the last time we stood across from each other, and that he’s most likely only holding on by a very thin thread, but his anger shouldn’t be projected at me. It should be rained down on the people holding his daughter captive, and the ones responsible for his wife’s
death.
When I say that to Dimitri, the muscles in his neck bunch. “Why do you think you’re here, kneeling before me?”
With his lips arched at one side and his eyes locked on mine, he curls his finger around the trigger and takes his shot.
Chapter Sixteen
Dimitri
As the scent of my recently fired gun lingers in my nostrils, I stray my eyes to the black sedan idling a few spots back. The brightness of the Audi’s high beams ensures I’ll never see the occupants inside, however my gut has no issues identifying him.
My father doesn’t trust anyone. He is who I got my neurosis from. He’s so distrusting, I’m surprised he didn’t request to helm our trip to the woods.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand his concern. Roxanne saw him murder Old Man V for a measly ten-thousand-dollar dint in his profit margin. That’s an instant one-way ticket to a graveyard. I’m seeing things differently now, though.
Although Roxanne was a witness to one of my father’s many mistakes the past three months, unfortunately for him, she wasn’t his only witness. He’s made an incalculable number of costly blunders during his reign, but tonight’s was by far his most senseless. He showed his hand way too early, and now this wolf is primed with anticipation.
I’ve been seeking answers for months, and it came in a way I never predicted. Because my father was as distracted by Roxanne’s tear-stained face as I was on that night almost twenty months ago, he fucked up in a way he can never come back from. He ruined his legacy with one little word.
He said, ‘wife.’
Not plaything.
Not whore.
Not a cunt to keep me warm throughout the winter as he called Audrey many times the seven months of our marriage.
He said wife plain and clear for all to hear.
I failed to join the dots together until Roxanne peered up at me with mascara smeared down her cheeks mere seconds ago. She once again had me trapped, blinded to everything happening around me that didn’t include her. I was so caught up by her beauty and determination to live in spite of her horrid upbringing, I played her re-entrance into my life on repeat until the clog in my mind spilled away.
Roxanne is to blame for my wife’s disappearance. She is the reason I haven’t laid my eyes on Fien in over nine months. But she is also responsible for my father’s slip up. If it wasn’t for her, I’d still be trying to push a four-pronged puzzle piece into a three-pronged spot. She freed my mind from the torment, and she did it all the while offering herself to me.
I catch sight of my unforgiving smirk in the fender of my modified Range Rover when the headlights of my father’s chauffeur-driven Audi shift to the right. This is a one-way track, so his driver, Mario, either executes a three-point turn in atrocious conditions or squeezes by the minute snippet of space my Range Rover isn’t taking up.
My father would never allow the latter to happen. He’d rather risk being bogged than show weakness. It’s another unwanted trait I inherited from him. We’re more alike than I’ll ever admit, but there’s one difference between us—I’m willing to show weakness if it’s for the greater good.
This is for the greater good.
Roxanne’s eyes lift to mine when the taillights of my father’s car disappear into the black abyss of an almost moonless night. They’re wide and terrified and have my cock tapping at the zipper in my trousers like it did when she placed herself onto the table during our unrequired negotiations.
They were unrequired because if I wanted to fuck her, she’d be splayed across the hood of my Range Rover now, being thoroughly pounded as my cock has begged to do since I spotted her in the alley. However, that isn’t what this is about. For once in my life, my libido isn’t part of the equation. This is about placing my daughter before anyone—even me.
“You will do what I say precisely when I tell you to do it, or we’ll come back here and settle the score. Do you understand?”
She has nothing to fight with except her looks, which she uses to her advantage when she dips her chin. It isn’t the rake of her teeth over her plump bottom lip I’m paying attention to, it’s the fat, salty blob rolling down her cheek. It’s stained with blackness and has me recalling the color of the blood that runs through my veins.
It wasn’t always that way. Before my heart was scolded beyond repair, my blood used to run red. Now it’s stained with the murkiness of my dark, bleak existence—an existence Roxanne is now a part of.
Chapter Seventeen
Roxanne
Rocco’s hand falls from my face when the gravelly voice of Dimitri rolls across the cabin of his car. “Let it be. It’s just a graze.” He locks his eyes with mine. They’re as tormented and beautiful as they were when he took his shot. He fired at me as predicted, but instead of the bullet burrowing deep into my skull, it skimmed past my right cheek, leaving a slither of a burn. “The more you pick at it, the more it will scab. If you don’t want another scar, leave it alone.”
The heat from the graze on my cheek is barely noticeable until he returns his eyes to the scenery whizzing by his window. He’s been detached since our negotiations were finalized during the first forty minutes of our trip like his mind is far from here.
I discover that’s the case when he tugs his cell phone out of his pocket. Although he doesn’t dial a number, he speaks down the line as if he did. “I need my father’s schedule synced with mine as soon as possible.” The man he’s speaking to attempts to interrupt him, but Dimitri continues spraying out orders, faulting his effort. “His movements the past three months are to be on my desk before dawn, and any upcoming functions over the next two weeks should be forwarded with them.”
“On it,” says a man with a uniquely distinctive accent. It’s either British or Australian. It could even be a combination of both. “Anything else?”
“One last thing.” My pulse twangs in my neck when Dimitri shifts his eyes to me. They’re as hot as ever, even with them being the color of ice. “Call Alice. I want to see her tonight. Offer her double for the late hour.”
It’s deplorable to comment on the jealousy roaring through me, so I won’t. We’re not friends or lovers. I am his property until he says otherwise. His stipulations during our one-sided talk were as clear as glass. I’m to do what he says, when he says, for exactly how long he says. If I do that, I’ll come out of the exchange with my life intact. If I don’t, I won’t want to know the consequences of my stupidity.
His threat would frighten me if I had more family than I do. If it weren’t for Estelle, I may have let him kill me.
My eyes float up from my clenched fists when the man on the other end of the line says, “Consider it done.”
Dimitri’s eyes remain on me even with his focus being devoted to his caller. “Tell her I want the works.” When my eyes unwillingly roll, his lips do their favored half-smirk. “No holds barred.”
I imagine the gleam in Smith’s eyes matches Dimitri’s when he replies, “Alice knows what you like, so she won’t let you down.”
Their call ends just as the Range Rover pulls onto the curb across from my building. You’d think the embarrassment I felt begging for my life would keep my annoyance on the down-low. Regretfully, my hair isn’t red for no reason.
It matches my fiery personality.
I slip out the back of Dimitri’s car so fast, even if he wants to follow me, the brutal slam of his door in his face won’t allow it. I’m not running. I know the terms we agreed upon during the first half of our trip. My ass is Dimitri’s until his daughter is returned without a scratch. But that doesn’t mean I have to continue displaying the weak, pathetic woman I did in the woods an hour and a half ago.
I hate that I begged at Dimitri’s feet. I’ve only ever pleaded for one thing in my life, and that teary wish was never answered. I want a redo of my last conversation with my nanna. If I knew how things were going to end, I would have hugged her fiercely instead of storming off in a huff the way I did. I was angry s
he was still treating me like a child, having no clue she was only treating me that way because I was acting like a child.
My eyes snap to the door of the outdated elevator in my building when a tattooed hand shoots out to stop it from closing. I’m anticipating for Rocco to join me inside, although quiet, he seemed more on my side than Dimitri’s during our negotiations, so you can imagine my shock when Dimitri enters the confined space in his place.
After pulling across the rickety gate that’s meant to keep us safe in this death trap, he jabs his finger into the ‘close door’ button multiple times in a row, obviously impatient.
Once the elevator shudders into action, he shifts on his feet to face me. He looks set to remind me of our agreement, but instead, steers our conversation in a direction I never saw coming. “Stay away from Rocco.” His gruff tone gobbles up my scoff. “He has a soft spot for battered women, but that isn’t what this is about.” While saying ‘this,’ he shifts his hand between us. “If you want to fuck him after this is over, that’s your choice, but I won’t allow it to occur under my watch. I won’t be made to look like a fool.”
“Like your wife was?” I snap out before I can stop myself.
Mercifully, the elevator car arrives at my floor a nanosecond later, saving me from being scolded by the wrath of his anger in a tight confinement. I barely survived it in his car the past hour and a half, so I don’t see me faring well in a much tighter space.
Incapable of breathing through the sternness of his glare, I mutter out, “I understand your request. I’ll keep my mitts to myself.”
I break into the hallway before he can see my mouth’s arched response to the hesitation firing through his eyes. He was satisfied with my response until he realized that means my hands won’t go anywhere near him, either.
It’s as if he yanks out the electrical cord responsible for my snippy attitude when he says, “I wasn’t lying about Eduardo. He didn’t murmur your name once. You weren’t on his mind at all when I punished him for hurting you.”