by Lia Lee
Sinking down onto the stairs, Toni put her hands over her face and tried to seek her inner calm. None of this mattered. Yes. She had been well on her way to falling in love with Dimitri. Maybe that was part of his plan, but it didn’t matter anymore. She was still Antonina Rustikov. She was a Kabalevsky. She had her own money and her own life and maybe it was time for her to figure out what she wanted to do with it all. She was wasting her time here. Perhaps it was really time to go home. Or at least to figure out where home was.
Chapter Twelve
Dimitri grabbed Anatoli and dragged him from the interrogation room where he and Ivan had trussed up Boris Rustikov like a common criminal. Angrily flinging his brother up against the wall, Dimitri silenced Anatoli’s protests with one finger pointed in his face.
“I don’t know what you’re playing at, Anatoli, but you had best remember who is in charge here.” Dimitri didn’t bother tempering the fury in his voice. He didn’t care if Anatoli know how furious he was. His brother was being an idiot.
“You’re weak,” Anatoli spat. “I don’t know what happened to you after Katya, but you are nothing!” Anatoli started to move away.
Dimitri flung his arm out, pressing his brother up against the wall and crushing his windpipe. He used his superior size and strength to force his brother into submission. “Do not make the mistake of thinking that nonsense you’re spouting is true. Caution does not equal weakness. Our father left me in charge of the family. Why? Because unlike you I can exercise good judgment. I do not give into my baser instincts every single time I am pushed. You are a hotheaded whelp who cannot see past his own thirst for vengeance.”
Anatoli struggled, his eyes bulging a little as he tried to shake off Dimitri’s grip.
Dimitri wasn’t done with his younger brother. “Ask yourself if your actions have anything to do with the disrespect shown to our sister. I don’t think they do. I think this is all about your ego. You felt disrespected by what Boris did to our sister. It isn’t about her. It’s about you regaining your pride. And that, brother, is pathetic.”
Anatoli made an animalistic sound of rage. He threw his entire bodyweight at Dimitri. The two men tumbled to the ground. Dimitri’s cooler head prevailed. He twisted in midair, managing to land on top of Anatoli. His brother attempted to arch up and throw Dimitri off balance, but he was ready for such a move. Pinning Anatoli to the ground with his wrists, Dimitri glared down at him.
“You could not beat me when we were kids. You couldn’t do it when we were teenagers. And you certainly can’t do it now,” Dimitri snarled. He was sick and tired of the posturing and bullshit. “You are no better than Rustikov. The two of you are the same. Arrogant and narrow minded with your own inflated notions of your worth.”
Anatoli struggled, bucking his body upward. But Dimitri was well balanced and ready for him. The only thing left to Anatoli was words. “You think you’re so logical and yet you’re being led around by your dick!” Anatoli spat. “Your precious little Toni! You don’t think I know who was in your bed tonight? You’re like a drooling dog after a bitch in heat. She’s got you by the balls and you don’t even realize it! You’re barely a man!”
“If I believed that any of that was true, it might bother me,” Dimitri said calmly. “But I know that your only problem with Toni is that she chose me and not you.”
“What?” Anatoli’s outrage echoed off the walls. “I would never touch that dirty whore!”
Dimitri slapped Anatoli with an open hand. A red handprint began to appear on Anatoli’s cheek. Dimitri couldn’t believe it had come to this. He was fighting with his brother over an injustice to their sister that should have brought them together as a family. Instead, it had split them apart.
Dimitri got up, disgusted with himself and with Anatoli. “Leave.”
“This is my house.”
“No. It isn’t. I am the heir. Our father left everything to me and you know it. It burned you from the beginning, but as long as I was willing to play your little games and make sure you felt important, I was not a problem. Now that I’m refusing to fall in line I’m a thorn in your side, Anatoli. But you fail to realize that I have absolutely no illusions when it comes to you or your motives.”
“You’re kicking me out of the house?” Anatoli sounded stunned. “But you can’t do that! I have no place to go.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you betrayed your family for your own selfish desires.” Dimitri turned back toward the interrogation room.
Behind him, Dimitri heard Anatoli struggle to his feet before bolting down the hallway toward the door. Leaving his thoughts about his younger brother alone for now, Dimitri focused on his immediate problem.
Boris Rustikov.
“Ivan,” Dimitri said, his tone full of warning. “Step outside and wait there. Now.”
“Yes, Boss.”
Apparently Ivan had remembered who paid him. That was good. He was a hothead who had difficulty following orders when they involved waiting or patience, but he was a hell of a good man to have at your back in a fight.
“Dimitri Alkaev,” Boris drawled. He gazed up at Dimitri through swollen eyes and managed to smile. “So you have my daughter.”
“Your daughter came to me of her own free will,” Dimitri said calmly. He locked away anything he might think or feel about Toni. Right now he simply needed to get Boris out of here without creating a situation where he would anger every other mafiya boss in the city.
“She always was a bit of a whore.” The derisive look on Boris’s ruined face made Dimitri’s temper rise dangerously close to overflow.
“I might suggest that you treat all women like whores, Rustikov.” Dimitri examined his nails, intending to show disrespect. He could see from the corner of his eye that Boris didn’t appreciate not being the focus of his entire attention. “In fact,” Dimitri continued. “Considering the way you treated my sister and the way you’ve treated your daughter and even your wife, I’m no longer surprised that you have to go through the effort of finding a new woman night after night. I can hardly imagine they would come back for more when you give them so little for their trouble.”
“Arrogant little prick!” Boris snarled.
Dimitri smiled. “Funny, but I was thinking the same thing.”
* * *
With her father tied up—literally—at Dimitri’s home, Toni could think of no better time to go back to her father’s house to pick up a few things. She walked boldly right up to the front gate and knocked on the guard’s window. The man’s expression of shock was almost comical. He nearly fell off his stool.
“Miss Rustikov?” The guard actually looked suspicious. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here,” she said drily. “And unless I miss my guess, you’re supposed to be informing my father right now that I’ve arrived back at the house.”
The man’s gaze slid to the left. “He was concerned for your safety.”
“Well he should have been concerned for his own.” She swallowed back her doubts about what she was about to do. “See my father is currently stuck at the Alkaev’s mansion about ten blocks away. They’re interrogating him in their basement because he made a complete ass out of himself and got their sister pregnant.”
The guard’s mouth dropped open. “Are you—are you serious?”
“As a heart attack,” she quipped.
The scene at the house seemed to explode like an ant hill. The guard picked up a phone and started yakking at light speed in Russian to the person on the other end of the line. Men spilled from the apartments over the garage, and from the house. Someone handed out automatic weapons and they were too busy giving orders and planning a hostage recovery mission to take much notice of Toni.
She strolled up the sidewalk to the main house and walked right inside without anyone seeming to notice that she was there. The front door snicked shut behind her, and she went directly to her father’s study.
Closing that door behind h
er as well, Toni began opening his desk drawers. She wasn’t even sure what she was hunting for, but she came across it in the bottom right side. Picking up a thick file folder, she laid it on the desk. She took a seat in his chair and stared at the state seal emblazoned on the front of the folder.
“What would my father need with official documents like these?” She thumbed through the pages. “Custody, adoption—wait—adoption?”
An idea began to take shape in her mind. With it her anger began to swell. She slammed the folder shut and scooped it up. Stalking out of the study, she headed upstairs to her bedroom. Her packing wasn’t exactly orthodox. She grabbed her bank information of course, and any personal paperwork from her own desk. Then she shoved that and her father’s file folder into a backpack along with a few items of clothing. Next she needed to stop in her parents’ room.
It was so eerie to realize that the house had been literally emptied of personnel. Her father was never without his entourage so the house had always been full of employees. Now it was silent as the grave, which suited her just fine.
Toni pushed back the ornate mirror in her parents’ bathroom and exposed her father’s safe. It was ironic really. She wasn’t stealing from him. She was only taking what was already hers. Her mother’s will had been specific. All of her property, money, investments, and personal items—including her jewelry—now belonged to Toni. To say that her father hadn’t taken that very well was an epic understatement. In fact, she fully expected him to make an attempt to take everything.
For now though, Toni spun the dial on the safe. Her mother had told her the combination many, many years ago. Maria Rustikov had laughed a little when she explained to her daughter that Boris would never use anything but his birthdate for the combination because he truly believed that was the only day the world needed to remember. As a child Toni had thought that silly. As an adult she realized that it was more disturbing than anything else.
The door swung open and Toni reached inside to begin scooping her mother’s jewelry into a small, velvet lined sack. Gold, diamonds, emeralds, and pearls went inside. There were necklaces and hair clips, earrings, and pendants galore. Her mother had adored pretty things, and although her father had never given her mother anything save her wedding ring, the Kabalevskys had amassed an amazing amount of jewelry that had been passed down to her mother from her mother and grandmother before her. The rumor was that some of these things had been smuggled out of Imperial Russian when the Czar fell.
Carefully tucking her treasure into her backpack, Toni closed the safe and spun the dial. She wondered vaguely how long it would take her father to realize that she’d liberated her personal property from his stash. She was already aware of the fact that he’d been giving a few of the small pieces to his favored mistresses. She honestly wondered if he’d been doing that while her mother was still alive. It sickened her to think that he might have.
Leaving her parents’ room behind, Toni headed down the stairs and back toward he front door. She had one place to go for the moment. Uncle Nikolai would welcome her, and nobody was going to bother her there. Then it was time to take stock and figure out what her next move was going to be. It was time for Antonina Kabalevsky Rustikov to grow up and take her place in the world.
A sudden thought of Dimitri made her heart contract painfully. How could he lie so convincingly? And how could she have bought in so thoroughly? No more. She decided that she was just going to have to harden herself against the man. Easier said that done? Yes. But Toni knew she could do anything she set her mind to.
Chapter Thirteen
Dimitri pulled a knife from his pocket and opened the razor sharp blade. To his credit, Boris did not flinch away as Dimitri had expected him to. He lifted his chin instead. In fact he looked as if he was expecting Dimitri to slit his throat. That was not an insult. It was a compliment to have such a reputation. It was just too bad that making that choice would only make things worse. No matter how angry she was at her father, Toni wouldn’t have wanted Dimitri to kill him in cold blood.
“No.” Dimitri deliberately cut the zip ties binding Boris’s ankles to the chair legs. He saw the old man’s calf muscles bunch and quickly blocked the halfhearted attempt at a kick. “You know, I’m letting you go. You would do well to not piss me off and make me change my mind.”
“Why would you let me go?” Boris looked confused.
“Because killing you serves no purpose.” Dimitri shrugged. “Unlike my hotheaded brother, I understand the value and satisfaction to be gained from making someone suffer.”
Boris’s brow furrowed as he processed this thought. “A real man would kill me and have his revenge.”
“Imbecile,” Dimitri said in Russian. “You are too stupid to understand that putting you out of your misery is far too easy. A real man—as you say—understands that there are far worse things than death.”
“Such as?” Boris stood up, holding out his hands to Dimitri as though he was a servant.
Dimitri slit the zip ties on Boris’s hands, deliberately nicking the skin and making the man swear.
“You fool! You could cut my vein and have me bleed out right here on the floor! I thought you didn’t intend to kill me. Or must I die anyway because you are stupid?” Boris’s tone and manner all suggested he was the worst sort of man.
“Come now.” Dimitri didn’t take the bait. “It’s a paltry cut. You were asking me to slice you wide open not three seconds ago. Now you’re going to cry about a little scratch? I think you’re goading me. Are you really that stupid?”
“I’ll take this incident before the council and have you sanctioned!” Boris announced. He rubbed his hands and stomped his feet, presumably to get the circulation flowing.
“Really?” Dimitri pursed his lips. “I feel like that would go badly for you. Nobody likes you, Boris. You’re a joke. You think you are important, but you’re nothing more than a gnat that nobody has bothered to swat. Try what you want, but you’ll find that you’re about to enter a whole new world of bad luck.”
“You have no power over me,” Boris said, dripping arrogance.
“Not personally,” Dimitri agreed. “But since I just bought the laundering rights on three of your businesses, I think you might want to rethink what you assume I can and cannot do.”
Boris’s face paled a few shades. Then he turned and stomped out of the room. He got to the end of the hall and paused. Dimitri almost expected him to say something else about the situation, but the man had only one more order to issue. “Stay away from my daughter. She’s an engaged woman.”
Dimitri snorted. “Now you’re just being ridiculous. But I’ll keep it in mind. Really.”
Boris was just walking out the door and ascending the steps to the portico when Ivan grabbed his arm, looking almost wild eyed with crazed excitement. “Rustikov’s men are here. They’re at the gate demanding their boss be released.”
“How convenient for them then.” Dimitri gestured to the door Boris had just exited from. “He can run up the driveway and catch himself a ride.”
“Don’t you think we should retaliate?”
“For what?” Dimitri shook his head. “They came to rescue their idiot boss. That’s nothing to punish them for. That kind of loyalty is rare, especially since Boris is such an ass.”
“We can’t let this kind of thing go without a response!” Ivan actually got in Dimitri’s face.
Dimitri put one hand out, laying his palm flat on Ivan’s chest. He bodily shoved the man out of his personal space. “Be very, very careful, Ivan,” Dimitri murmured. “You’re already on thin ice after that stunt you pulled with Anatoli.”
“Stunt!” Ivan snarled. “At least Anatoli does something. You sit around and do nothing. You wait and you play games and everyone laughs at you behind your back!”
Dimitri felt a jolt of shock, but immediately concealed it behind a poker face. It would not do to have Ivan believe that this asinine behavior was intimidating Dimitri. In reality
it was just making him realize how pervasive Anatoli’s stupidity was. It was time to clean house.
Dimitri deliberately turned his back on Ivan and left the basement. He ascended the steps, Ivan hot on his trail. With long strides, he caught up to Boris. The man had already reached the front gate. His men stood with their weapons visible, waiting for their boss to exit Dimitri’s property.
“Open the gate!” Dimitri shouted to the enforcer in the booth. “He was not a prisoner here.”
“Bullshit!” Boris snarled.
Dimitri held out his hands. “I did not order your abduction and I’ve taken pains to isolate the ones who did in order that they be punished.”
Boris curled his lip, backing quickly out the gate toward the safety of his own men. Dimitri grabbed Ivan, shoving the man forward and then giving him a kick in the pants for good measure. Dimitri knew he’d taken Ivan completely off guard. Otherwise the man would have never been so easily shoved around. But this time he went sailing through the gate and right into the arms of several of Boris’s men.
“This man is Ivan,” Dimitri shouted. “He betrayed me in words and in deed. He is the one who took Boris Rustikov prisoner and I present him as a gift to be punished in whatever way Boris deems fit.”
Ivan’s cry of outrage was lost in the cacophony of laughs and jeers coming from the assembled Rustikov men. It occurred to Dimitri that Boris’s estate must have either a skeleton crew, or no guards at all. Then he realized how and why they’d come looking for their missing boss, and how they’d known exactly where to go.
“Clever, clever, girl,” Dimitri murmured.
***
Toni kept her backpack close as the bus headed across town toward Kabalevsky territory. She felt paranoid. Of course she was carrying a huge amount of valuables in her back, so maybe she was entitled to a little paranoia. The bus bounced over a few potholes and Toni nearly came out of her seat.
