by Shandi Boyes
I’d give anything to forget everything that has happened the past few days, but I can’t. If I do that, I not only break a pledge I made to Dimitri about not taking more time than he can give me, I’ll also break the promise I made to Fien in the wee hours of this morning.
Dimitri is all she has.
I can’t steal the focus away from her for even one second.
With my mind made up, I tug on Dimitri’s sweats as roughly as I did the blonde’s hair to guide them back up his thighs.
“Don’t put my cock away.” As he struggles to hold back his grin, he drags his teeth over his lower lip. The strong scent of whiskey exuding from his mouth shouldn’t make it seem sexy, but it does. “He’s been dying for this for months. Don’t leave him hanging.”
I’m unsure if it’s lust or anger deepening my voice when I reply, “We have company.”
I assume my confession will have him falling in line. I soon discover I have a lot to learn about this man.
With two clicks of his fingers, Rocco slips out the door, closing it behind him. “Now, we don’t. We have all the time and privacy we need.”
Dimitri’s growl when I step back doubles the damp slickness between my legs, but like many times in the past, I don’t put myself first. “If we don’t leave now, our flight will be rescheduled. I don’t know about you, but I have a heap of questions I need answered. Answers I can only get in Erkinsvale.”
That seems to sober him up a bit. “Erkinsvale?”
I nod before stepping back into the ring, gloved-up and hopeful the drugs running through his system will only last as long as our flight home. “I know you’re tired, and you are probably sick to death of playing with the hand you’ve been dealt, but we’re so close, Dimitri, the end is right there. It would be ludicrous for us to give up now.”
Once again, my voice is more possessive than it should be, but then again, I don’t care. So many of Dimitri’s actions make sense now. The shift of the blame. His inability to give himself a single moment of reprieve. The remorse in his eyes when I stepped into this room. He’s holding on by a thread, and my presence the past week made it the thinnest it’s ever been.
That has to stop. I’m already responsible for him losing his daughter. I refuse to be the reason he loses everything.
“Let me help you, Dimitri. Please.”
The crackling of energy that forever teems between us doubles its output when he runs his fingers across my mouth for the second time. His eyes are as bleak as my father’s when he went on a bender. I’m not even sure he’s entirely here, but it feels as if the world shifts beneath my feet when he dips his chin for the quickest second.
Stealing his chance to change his mind, I dart for the locked door to let Rocco back in. He has his back braced on the outer wall of the room Dimitri was found in, either disinterested in the theatrics of a strip club or more concerned about Dimitri than he’s letting on.
I realize it’s the latter when his eyes swing my way. He’s quick to shut down the concern in them, but not quick enough for this sly fox. “Done already? I’ll have to show the old guy some new tricks.”
He laughs when I roll my eyes before he joins me inside the room reeking of desperation for a second chance. The humor on his face vanishes when his eyes follow mine to Dimitri. He’s no longer balancing on the desk. He’s slumped on the floor, out cold.
I didn’t realize Dimitri’s team followed us to Frosty Kinks until Rocco says, “Send Clover in.” Past incidents advise me he’s talking to Smith. The knowledge our every move is being monitored doesn’t lessen the knot in my gut when Rocco checks Dimitri for a pulse, though. “It’s weak but there. Trace back footage so we can get a better idea of what he’s taken.” Rocco lifts his eyes to mine. “Did he mention anything to you?”
I shake my head, too stunned to talk.
Clover barrels into the room just as Rocco rips up the sleeves of Dimitri’s jacket. He’s checking for track marks. How do I know this? My mother did the same thing to my father anytime he returned home from an all-night bender. “There are no needle marks to indicate he shot up, so I’d say his drug of choice was coke.”
“Is this how he usually responds to drugs?” With fear clutching my throat, my words are as weak as the vein fluttering through the tattoos on Dimitri’s neck.
Air whizzes out of Rocco’s nose before he shakes his head. “But it’s been a while since he’s used.” He drifts his eyes to Clover. “Help me get him up. We’ll take him back to the compound so Ollie can take a look at him.”
“No.” Rocco responds to the snapped command in my tone. Clover acts as if I’m not in the room. “Take him to the airstrip as planned.”
The strain of holding up a man as large as Dimitri is heard in Rocco’s voice when he says, “If he’s ODing, we can’t help him thirty thousand feet in the air.”
“We can’t, but Ollie can. Make him come with us.”
Rocco takes a minute to consider my suggestion. It adds even more tension to his face. “I know you’re trying to help, Roxie—”
“This isn’t about helping. It’s about doing what Dimitri would want us to do. If you go back to the compound, we won’t be able to fly out until tomorrow at the earliest, and that’s only if forecasters are wrong. Take him to the airstrip, have Ollie meet us there. I’ll pay him with my maxed-out credit card if you’re worried about the fucking bill.” I grit my teeth when my last four words come out with a sob. I’m panicked out of my mind for Dimitri, but I also know this is the right thing to do. “Please, Rocco. You want me in the deep end, but you’re refusing to let me jump.” When his eyes stray to Clover, my panic is showcased in the worst light. “Don’t ask his opinion. He’s paid to be here. We’re not.”
Although Clover tsks me, my scorn rolls straight off his back. He knows I’m no better than him as only days ago he heard me offer myself to Dimitri for a little bit of coin.
I don’t have a tiny bead-like device in my ear like Rocco, but it’s clear Smith is on my side when the strain on Rocco’s face clears in an instant. “If this backfires—”
“It won’t,” I reply, issuing him a promise I have no right to issue. “I swear to God, everything will work out.”
With his brows hanging as low as Dimitri’s head, Rocco jerks up his chin before shifting half of Dimitri’s lifeless weight onto Clover’s shoulders. “Tell Ollie I’ll pay him double if he beats us to the jet.”
Seven
Dimitri
While swishing my tongue around my bone-dry mouth, I hesitantly open my eyes. The dream I was having was intoxicating until Roxanne was ripped from my grasp as cruelly as Fien was removed from her mother’s stomach. Being thrust out of a nightmare so brutally has me feeling like death warmed over, although I’m skeptical not all the thump of my pulse is compliments to my rude awakening. My head is thumping as if I drowned in a bath of whiskey. My skin is patchy and dry, and my cock is acting as if the first half of my dream is all that matters.
I shouldn’t be shocked. He doesn’t give a fuck if it will riddle me with guilt for eternity. If he wants it, he’s there with bells on—no matter the consequence. He’s the sole reason I sought solace outside of my compound last night. If I didn’t do something to calm the beast, he would have had me taking my anger out on Roxanne.
Although she’s deserving of the wrath, for some fucked-up reason, I can’t hurt her any more than she’s already been hurt. I couldn’t even pop a bullet between her mother’s brows, for fuck’s sake. Her eyes are too similar to Roxanne’s. They seared through me until my fried brain had me confusing her for Roxanne. It’s lucky in a way. If she hadn’t issued her mercy, I doubt anything I could have said would have brought Roxanne out of her panic attack last night. She was drowning in filth years in the making, being suffocated by the very people who should have kept her safe.
She was Fien twenty years from now.
Ignoring the begs of my throbbing head, I raise to a half-seated position. I’m stunned when my
awakening occurs without the grumbles of a needy redhead who accepts money for the privilege of occupying my bed, though it has nothing on my surprise when the familiarity of the room smacks into me. I’m not at a seedy strip club hidden away, so townies won’t get busted by their preacher attending a show, nor am I at my New York compound. I’m home, in my bed, and the faintest trickle of a shower is heard in the distance.
“Smith…” My voice is swallowed by a husky cough. I’m so fucking dry you wouldn’t think there’s an IV line inserted in my arm.
What the fuck?
“Smith.”
My eyes shoot to the side when Smith’s grumbly tone booms through my ears. “I heard you the first time. There’s no need to shout.” Instead of his voice projecting from the speakers implanted throughout every room of my house, it comes from the reading nook in the corner of the large space. From his setup, anyone would swear he works out of the office in my room instead of his computerized hub.
After shutting his laptop screen, he paces around his desk. Worry is seen all over his face when he whispers, “I’ll tell him.”
Confident his words aren’t for me, I wait for him to join me at my beside before asking the obvious. “What happened?”
“You—”
“If you’re about to say I overdosed, you need to go back to the fucking drawing board and start again. I snorted a few lines of coke and drunk a little too much whiskey, but that’s nowhere near enough to make me pass out for hours on end.”
“Days.” He angles his watch so I can see the date stamped on the top. If he isn’t messing with my head, which would be very unlike him, I’ve been out cold for three days—three whole motherfucking days. “Although Ollie believes part of your condition was from exhaustion, blood work-ups showed you had GHB in your system. The high reading indicated whoever slipped it in your drink didn’t do it to maim. They wanted you dead.”
With my blood hot and my wish to kill the highest it’s ever been, I rip out the IV tubing from my arm and stand from my bed. I’m mortified when I realize the tubing in my arm isn’t the only one attached to my body. There’s another one near my cock. Mercifully, it’s taped over my manhood instead of being shoved inside of it.
After ripping off the second tubing more gently than I did the IV, I snatch a pair of gray sweatpants from the floor next to my bed, then shove my feet inside of them. “I’m going to kill the fucker who messed with me, and I’m going to do it slowly.”
I stop considering the many ways I can kill a man when Smith says, “You’re too late. Most of the culprits are already dead.” He tosses a manilla folder onto my bed. When it bounces off the springy mattress, several glossy photographs fall out. They show Frosty Kinks was burned to the ground. Not even its trademark red Louboutin billboard remains. It’s as black as ash.
My eyes float up to Smith’s when he says, “When Rocco found you passed out, he asked me to trace your movements. Frosty’s surveillance was shit, but I worked it for all its worth.” He shuffles through the still images until he finds one of a man with a round stomach and a bald head. Although my head is still a little hazy, I think he’s the bartender who served me most of the night. “That’s Jake Warsaw, co-owner of Frosty’s. He has no priors and isn’t up to his ears in debt like most people in his field, leading us to believe this wasn’t the first time he’s done something like this.” His groan is as loud as mine. “Clover and Rocco worked him over good, but he didn’t give up any juice.”
His smirk tells me he would have unearthed his mark even without the force Rocco and Clover love to utilize. I do too, but that’s a story for when I’m not stunned like a mullet.
“Who paid him?”
The crunch of my teeth is heard over my growl when he tosses a second photograph onto the stack. Even with us only meeting once, I know this man very well. He wanted Roxanne so badly, he was willing to pay more than triple what his competitors were offering. He also called on the hour every hour for the twelve hours following her auction, demanding to be updated on when bids would be finalized.
“I went through reams of footage obtained since the auction. Dr. Bates spent more time in his car outside the compound than he did his hotel room the days following Roxie’s auction.” Smith locks his eyes with mine. For a guy who’s usually as cool as ice, he looks extremely worked up. “He only left when he followed you to Frosty’s.”
Although jealousy is a perfect motive, I feel there’s something more at play here than a man being pipped at the post. I’m just praying Rocco and Smith felt the same vibe as me, or I’ll be left with more questions than answers.
After working my throat through a stern swallow, I ask, “Is Bates dead?”
For the first time in a long time, I feel lucky when Smith shakes his head. It grows tenfold when he adds words to his confirmation. “Roxie asked us to hold back on his punishment. She wants to discuss an idea with you before bringing him before the courts.”
“Roxanne?” I could add to my query, but I don’t need to. Smith can see my shock. He doesn’t need it voiced.
“She’s been running things around here.” His smile is way too fucking blinding for my thumping skull. “With guidance from Rocco and me, of course.”
He walks to my desk to gather up his laptop. Once he has it fired up, he shows me the many angles they’ve been working the past three days. The reports are so impressive, they have me worried I’ve been out a lot longer. Not only is Dr. Bates’s office wired to the hilt with state-of-the-art equipment, he has a month’s worth of work on display.
“For now, Roxie’s grandparents’ estate is a dead end. There were a handful of biochemicals there, but it was mainly placentas, fetal matter, and the occasional soiled mattress. No bodies were located.” He sounds as disappointed as I feel. “Some good came from the search, though. We unearthed a set of records in the rubble. They date back years before Audrey was taken. I’m not sure of their significance yet, but I’m working a few angles.” He waits for me to jerk up my chin before he hits me with the motherlode. “We also found Roberto.”
“Dead or alive?” I don’t know why I asked my question. If he’s not dead, he will soon be wishing he was. I had barely gotten over Ophelia’s death when he disappeared, and his vanishing act sliced my siblings from four to nothing in an instant.
I take a step back when Smith says, “Alive.” When he clicks on the keyboard of his laptop two times, an image of a much older and rounder Roberto fills the screen. If you exclude the dirty apron stretched across his midsection and his unnoteworthy strut, his identity could never be discounted. The Petretti genes are strong.
“II Lido,” I stammer out, testing the name on my lips. “I swear I’ve heard of that restaurant.”
Smith nods before he opens up a secondary screen. It reveals that II Lido is an Italian restaurant in New York. It’s owned by none other than Mr. Isaac Holt.
My next question is barely heard since my words are ground through my clenched jaw. “Why is Roberto working as a dish hand for Isaac?”
The worry blazing through Smith’s eyes tells me I won’t like the answer to his question, but he gives it to me anyway.
I’m an unforgiving, malicious man, however even I have a hard time stomaching the image of my eldest brother huddled on the floor, tearing his hair out as efficiently as the tears streaming down his face tear my heart out. He’s completely undone, wholly destroyed by the horrid world we were born into.
Once the footage ends, Smith brings up several news clippings on the death of a Rochdale woman. She was struck by a drunk driver, killing both her and her unborn son. Although the reports don’t say Roberto is responsible, my heart knows that’s the case. He was a drunk longer than he was a man.
Can you blame him? He was our father’s firstborn son. He didn’t just have the world on his shoulders. He had our entire legacy as I do now.
“How is he living?”
Smith gives me a halfhearted shrug. “It’s not close to luxurious, but he’s
comfortable.”
“Like CJ?”
His second shrug is nowhere near as willy-nilly as his first one. “Similar. He just works for what he has instead of his little brother handing it to him.” His underhanded ribbing isn’t to maim, he’s just stating things as he sees them. CJ does nothing for his money. He merely waits for me to deposit a check every month. “We can fix that if you want?”
I take a moment to deliberate before shaking my head. “If Roberto stayed hidden this long, he wants to remain hidden.” My brows join when an ill-timed grin crosses Smith’s face. Unlike Rocco, he knows the right time to express himself. Now isn’t the right time. “What?”
“Nothing.” He places down his laptop and fiddles with some papers on my desk like he can’t feel my scorning wrath burning a hole in the back of his head.
“Smith—”
“It’s nothing, I swear.” When I growl, he squawks like a canary. “Roxanne said the same thing. It’s kinda cute how you two are synced like that.” He steals my chance to respond to his ridiculous statement by gathering up his stuff and making a beeline for the door.
Since he believes he’s seconds from safety, he gets on my last nerve. “Rocco wanted me to tell you he only kept Roxanne’s sheets warm for two out of the three nights you were out cold.”
Not thinking, I pick up the stapler on my desk and peg it at his head. It smacks into the drywall a mere second after his head darts past it. Although he’s sprinting down the corridor like I’m hot on his tail, I hear his chuckles as if he’s standing next to me. He isn’t laughing loudly. His voice is being projected through the speakers above my head.
He should count his lucky stars his breathless chuckles remind me that I’m anal about security, or my next aim would have included a bullet.
After ensuring my door is closed, I grab my tablet off my desk and log into the security app Smith installed months ago. With Smith’s disclosure at the forefront of my mind, I drag the timeline back to three days ago. I still feel like shit, and my brain is pounding like drummers are going to war between my ears, but this can’t wait. I haven’t been out of the loop this long in years. I’d hate to think about what I’ve missed.
