by Shandi Boyes
After wiping at the slosh drooling down my chin, I lock my eyes with the camera above my head. I’m bawling, shaking uncontrollably, and on the verge of being sick, but it feels like I hit the jackpot when Dimitri says, “Enough.”
He isn’t approving of my grotesque eating skills. He’s telling Clover to back off, halting the horrific noises of a woman fighting for her life from sounding over the speakers. He’s sparing the life of my best friend all because he was handed the last bit of power I had left.
“Go,” I push out breathlessly, hopeful Estelle can still hear me.
My prayers are answered when she asks, “Where?”
I wipe at the tears streaming down my face while answering, “Anywhere. I’ll find you. I promise.”
“Roxie—”
“I’m fine. I promise you I’m okay. I just need you to go.”
Her snivels break my heart. “Okay. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I wait for the creak of the safety gate on the elevator of our building to sound down the line before locking my eyes with the camera above my head. I stare straight at the blinking contraption as if not an ounce of fear is bombarding me. I don’t know if my strength stems from my determination not to have my entire world stripped out from beneath my feet or the wary churns of Estelle’s motor when she cranks the ignition on her shit box. Whatever it is, it shifts my protest from peaceful to anarchy in less than a nanosecond, and even quicker than that, it sees me shredding off my clothes as brutally as Dimitri did weeks ago.
Once they sit in tatters on the floor, I growl out, “Send one of your goons to deal with me now. I dare you.”
Fifteen
Dimitri
“Shut down the feed.” When the eyes of over a dozen thirsty men who should know better than to look at anything they don’t own stray toward my laptop screen, I scream at the top of my lungs, “Shut down the fucking feed!”
Even knowing too well yanking the cord out of my laptop won’t stop the camera in Roxanne’s room from broadcasting elsewhere, I rip it out before sending my laptop sailing across the room. My plan worked. I forced her to eat. Now she’s upped the fucking ante.
“Tell me it’s shut down, Smith.”
When he hesitates, my jaw works through a hard grind. “It’s not an easy fix, Dimi. You wanted the best. The best doesn’t crumble for anything. Besides, the feed shouldn’t be the sole focus of your concern.”
After spinning away from the group of men gawking at me, annoyed I canceled the provocative show early, I ask, “What should be?”
“Rocco.” Smith’s simple reply shouldn’t agitate me to no end, but it does. “He’s heading to Roxanne’s room.”
“Call him back.”
He laughs at me as if I’m an idiot. It’s the same chuckle he hit me with when I told him about my plan to force Roxanne to eat. “He isn’t wearing an earpiece.”
After hitting a pompous prick with a stern finger point, warning him I’m seconds from removing his finger if he dares to tap my shoulder one more time, I ask, “Why not?”
Smith’s laugh shifts to a bark. “‘Cause you wanted to keep him out of the loop with your plan, that’s why.”
“Lose the fucking attitude, Smith. My plan worked, didn’t it?”
He acts as if my threat doesn’t have an ounce of sting to it. “If you consider your girl being eyeballed by men who’d happily hurt her while she’s butt-naked, yeah, I’d say it was successful.”
I don’t know what to take my anger out on first. Roxanne’s gall or Smith’s fucking shitty attitude. I go for both when I snarl, “She isn’t my girl.”
“Then you’ll have no issues with her and Rocco getting super friendly in ten… nine… eight…”
I spin around to face the procession of money-hungry gangsters so fast I make myself dizzy. “Our meeting has been postponed until next month.”
They have the hide to grumble at me under their breath like I don’t have the ability to sideswipe their entire existence with my pinkie finger. They did the same thing when I took an intermission in our meeting to authenticate the effectiveness of my ruse with Roxanne. I acted as maniacally back then as I do now.
“You either accept a second interlude in our proceedings, or we permanently part ways.” When silence stretches across the room, I get cocky. “That’s what I thought. I don’t want to work with you pricks any more than you don’t want to lick the soles of my shoes for an ounce of my attention. Unfortunately, you don’t have a choice. You need me. It’ll do you best to remember that the next time we meet.”
After ensuring my father absorbed my words along with the rest of our ‘family,’ I race out of my office and hotfoot it up a set of stairs I’ve avoided like the plague the past four days.
Smith is no longer counting in my ears, but I mentally tick over two just as I stop outside Roxanne’s bedroom door. I’m too worked-up to mull over the fact Rocco could be inside. I just throw open the door and step into a warzone without adequate protection.
Roxanne doesn’t just hurl words when she’s angry. She tosses out fists as if they are grenades. She whacks them into my back, my stomach, and attempts to collide them with my nuts before I pin her to the wall with my brooding frame.
With her fists immobilized at her sides, she uses the rest of her body to inflict her anguish. She thrashes out her legs, throws her head around, and screams like she’s being murdered.
“Stop it!” I shake her hard enough that her brain rattles in her skull. This isn’t just about anyone but me seeing her naked anymore. If she doesn’t calm down, she will hurt herself. That’s as unacceptable as her wish to starve herself to death. “I had to do something to force you to eat. You were fading to nothing.”
Her words seethe out of her mouth like lava, “Don’t act as if any of this was about me! You tried to destroy the only person I’ve ever cared about.”
“Clover was ordered not to hurt her.”
She calls me out as the liar I am. “He’s a trained killer! That’s all he knows, and you put her on his radar!”
“To protect you!” I scream back, as unhinged as her. “That’s why you’ve been locked in your room. That’s why I stayed the fuck away. I was trying to protect you.”
To ensure she can’t miss the angst eating me alive, I release one of her wrists from my hold before bringing her eyes to mine by a brutal grip on her face. I’m hurting her, but it has nothing on the pain that ripped through me when Smith announced the price on her head was double the ransom they requested for my wife.
“Seven point six million dollars. What do you think they’d want for that amount, Roxanne? Your virginity? A couple of kids?” I press into her deeper, stealing more than the air from her lungs. “Your fucking soul? They have my daughter, my flesh and blood, yet they’re still not done fucking me in the ass. They want you, too.”
Roxanne’s tiptoe to insanity is showcased in the worst light when she snaps out, “Then let them have me!”
I shake her again, hopeful a good rattle of her skull will have her brain switching on. “They don’t want you for the trade, Roxanne. They want to torture you for hours on end before killing you like you’re a piece of meat—”
I recoil like I’ve been slapped when she butts in, “Just like you?”
My laugh reveals how close to the edge I am. I’m ready to jump, to freefall into hell, but there’s only one reason I can’t let go, and for the first time in a long time, it doesn’t solely fall on Fien’s shoulders.
“I’m nothing like my enemies.”
I step back from Roxanne like her eyes are loaded with bullets when she comes at me with more than a mutual attraction. She hits me below the belt with a rarity in this industry. She knocks me out with straight-up honesty. “You’ve said time and time again that I’m responsible for your wife’s death, that if she hadn’t been swapped for me, your life would be ten times easier, but we both know that isn’t what this is about. You didn’t give a shit about A
udrey. If she wasn’t carrying your child, I doubt you would have paid her ransom. This is about you believing I’m only here because I feel responsible for Fien’s captivity. You can’t believe someone would help you out of the kindness of their own heart. You refuse to accept that not everyone is out to get you. You see everyone as your enemy… even those closest to you.”
As her watering eyes bounce between mine, their wetness doubles. “The spark in the alleyway, that zap so fierce, I put my entire life on the line to seek it for a second time occurred before I knew you had a daughter. It was there before we discovered how fucked up my parents are, and before you realized the extent of your father’s evilness. It was there from the very beginning, yet, you’re still trying to deny it.”
For how red-faced she is, her hand shouldn’t feel like ice when she curls it around my jaw. “You’ve always believed you were fighting this war alone. Now, I’m willing to let you.” She doesn’t say she’s done with me, but her facial expression most certainly does. “If you want to change that, you know where to find me.”
She slips under my arm before making her way to the bathroom. Her steps are extra fast, hopeful she’ll make it to safety before the tears brimming in her eyes roll down her face.
Her desire for privacy is awarded with barely a second to spare. However, her retreat to the only room in this compound without a camera has its downfalls. The space is large and covered with tiles, so every painful sob she fails to hold in bounces into the main part of our room. They’re as gut-wrenching as the crunch my knuckles make when they pierce through the drywall I had Roxanne pinned against, and just as devastating as my cowardly exit of a room cloaked with hate.
Sixteen
Dimitri
My eyes drift from Roxanne nibbling on her breakfast as if she’s a mouse to Rocco when he enters my downstairs office without bothering to knock. It’s been four days since my exchange with Roxanne, four days since I raced Rocco to her room without realizing I couldn’t beat him there without overtaking him since there’s only one way in and out of my room, and four days since Roxanne has uttered a syllable to me.
She hasn’t spoken to me in days.
Not when I sneak into our bed in the middle of the night.
Not when I deliver the food she’s eaten with protest.
Not even when I pull her into my arms so the tears she releases every night can be absorbed by my chest.
She has said nothing, and it’s fucking killing me.
I’ve always thought violence was the only way to voice your anger. Roxanne is showing me otherwise. Her silence is worse than any massacre I’ve been a part of. It’s draining my veins of blood as if she ripped away a part of my soul instead of my enemies.
“Don’t bother shutting it down,” Rocco says on a laugh as he spins around the chair on the opposite side of my desk to straddle it backward. “Even with you making her feed private, I know you’re stalking her like you had me do the months after her hospital stay.”
Determined to prove I’m not the soft cock he thinks I am, I switch off the monitor Roxanne’s white face is filling before slouching low into my office chair.
I should have realized Rocco wouldn’t fall for my tricks. He knows me too well to lap up my bullshit excuses. “Do you really think that will cut it?” Although he’s asking a question, he continues talking, stealing my chance to reply. “Hiding her away won’t fix shit, Dimi. Acting as if she means nothing to you won’t fix shit.” He slants his head to the side before arching his brow. “Holding her when she cries won’t fix shit… especially when you’re the reason she’s crying.”
Smith’s silence reveals he knew Rocco’s plan to throw him into the deep end without a life jacket. If he weren’t aware, he would have defended himself by now.
I’ve avoided Rocco’s emotional jabs for the past two decades, but I can’t do it anymore. “What do you suggest I do, Rocco? Feed her to the wolves?”
I’m anticipating for him to come back with the loved-up shit his mother used to excuse his father for beating her to a pulp, so you can imagine my surprise when he takes our conversation in a direction I never saw coming. “Stop taking it up the ass as if you enjoy it.”
My laugh belongs to a maniac. It rolls up my chest as quickly as my fists ball, but it does little to weaken Rocco’s campaign. “When we were kids, every fucking game without fail, you played the character less likely to win all because you were determined to prove Princess Peach wasn’t a damsel in distress. You didn’t give a fuck that you lost time and time again ‘cause it wasn’t about winning, it was about being the better person.” He points to my door as if Roxanne is on the other side. “You finally won, but instead of giving Princess P her time to shine, you locked her away in another fucked-up kingdom.”
“To protect her.” My words seethe out of my mouth like venom.
Rocco scoffs at me like I’m not seconds from pressing my gun to his temple and blowing his brains out. “You’re not protecting her. You are bending over and taking it up the ass like you have the past two years.” His words shift to a chuckle when I dive over my desk, remove my gun from the back of my trousers, and use the barrel to smooth the crinkle between his dark brows. “You can’t kill me, Dimi. Your enemies haven’t ordered you to, and we both know you don’t do anything until they tell you to.”
Too pissed to think clearly, I flick off the safety on my gun before inching back the trigger. “I’m Dimitri fucking Petretti. I don’t answer to anyone.”
“Prove it,” Rocco mocks, staring straight at me. “Kill me.”
His suggestion both shocks and pisses me off, but I play it cool. “You’re willing to die for Roxanne?”
He shakes his head, his smile picking up. “Nah, D. This has nothing to do with Roxie. You, on the other hand, this has everything to do with you. If you need to kill me to get your balls back, I’m willing. As you said, you’re Dimitri fucking Petretti, so how about you start acting like it? We play to play, we kill to kill, and we—”
“Take down any fucker stupid enough to get in our way.”
His smile is smug now instead of mocking. “I can’t imagine what’s going through your head. I assume it’s some fucked-up shit, but you’ll never win the war if you’re not willing to fire at the opposition.”
Although I agree with him, there’s one thing I can’t discount. “Fien—”
“Is a weakness they’re exploiting because they assume you won’t fight back.” He frees himself from my vicious clutch before scooting to the back of his chair, bringing himself closer to me. “Roxanne is a way of showing them you’re not to be messed with. Bring back the fear, Dimi. Bring back the respect.” He nudges his head to the monitor I switched off when he arrived. “Bring back the woman willing to die for a little girl she’s never met. If you bring those things back, Fien will soon follow. I guarantee you that.”
Rocco doesn’t make pledges he can’t keep. Everyone he has made, he’s upheld—including his promise that he’d walk away from our friendship if I married Audrey. He knew it would cause a heap of trouble, though I doubt he ever guessed it would be this bad.
That’s why I sent Clover to do Audrey’s ransom drop instead of Rocco. We had been out of contact for months. Something about Audrey rubbed him the wrong way. He never told me what, but it was as obvious as the sun hanging in the sky.
Taking my silence as the end of our conversation, Rocco stands to his feet, flips his chair back around, then makes a beeline to the door.
He halts opening it when I ask, “What was it about Audrey that you hated.”
He cranks his neck my way. “I didn’t hate her, D. She just had nothing in her eyes that proved she deserved you.”
“And Roxanne does?”
His lips curl into the corner. “Fuckin’ oath she does.” He pivots around to face me front on. “The first time I saw her, the thoughts I had when you showed me a photo of Fien rolled through my head. Born in the wrong era, to the wrong family, but so fucking full
of life, she’d survive the shittiest of circumstances.”
I try to hold back my nod, but my chin bobs before I can. That’s almost spot on to what I thought when I saw Roxanne with black smudges smeared on her cheeks. The beauty she tried to hide with goth clothing and black makeup captured my attention but knowing she could leap over the grief holding her down utterly sealed my devotion. She had strength I’d never seen in a woman—not even my mother.
Strength she could have again if I’m willing to loosen the reins.
“Rocco…”
He takes a moment to wipe the hope from his face before answering, “Yeah.”
He shouldn’t have bothered. It comes back in abundance when I say, “Have Smith clear my schedule. Unless it directly corresponds with Fien, I don’t want to know about it.”
He hits me with a frisky wink. “It’ll be my pleasure.”
He isn’t glamouring up because he finally has the chance to run things around here. He’s had numerous opportunities to create his own sanction the past decade. It’s never been of interest to him. He’s just grateful we’re once again on the same team. That hasn’t been the case the past four days. Roxanne’s silence wasn’t the only one I was dealing with. Rocco had kept his distance as well.
That’s done with now. Rocco is right. I can’t be fucked in the ass unless I’m willing to lay down and take it. For too long, I’ve allowed others to write my story. This is my life and my mistakes, so I refuse to let anyone edit out the parts that need to be shared—even the brutal bits. This is my story, and I’m going to tell it how it’s supposed to be told.
Seventeen
