by Alexa Land
“But you said he’s really careful not to leave evidence where you can find it,” I pointed out.
“He’s careful, but not infallible,” Dmitri said.
“I’ll help you,” Catherine said. Dmitri glanced at her and she told him, “It’s both of our lives that he’s messing with.”
“But he’s your father, Cat,” he said. “If you work against him, you may regret it.”
“The only thing I regret is not telling him to shove his money and his threats up his ass a long time ago,” Catherine muttered.
“Not to be negative,” Irina or Nat said, “but it’s kind of naïve to think arresting Gregor would stop him from going after Jamie – and Jamie’s the most likely target here, after all, not us. Gregor would send someone else to do the job, even while behind bars. He’d have him killed just out of spite if he thought Dmitri set him up.”
“Nat’s right,” Irina said. Finally I had them straight. “All Gregor would have to do is make one phone call from prison, and Jamie’s a dead man.”
Dmitri sighed and said, “Really, what I need is evidence to blackmail Gregor: he touches a hair on Jamie’s head, and I go to the police.”
“Blackmail’s not the answer. He needs to be in jail, Dmitri,” I said.
“Ideally, yes. But keeping you safe is my main priority.”
“Baby,” I said, “You don’t have to worry about keeping me safe. I’ll keep myself safe.”
“No. I have to keep you safe. I love you so much, Jamie. If anything happens to you –” His voice broke at that last part, and he turned his back to the room.
That triggered an avalanche of sympathy from his family. They converged on him, all talking at once, offering support and advice and hugs. I stepped out of the way and let them do their thing for a few minutes, before wading back into the crowd and taking Dmitri in my arms and holding him to me.
Eventually Ani said, “Well, look, I’ve got to get to work. Girls, let’s give these two some space.” She crossed the room to her brother and squeezed his shoulder. “Dmitri, don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine. Just concentrate on keeping yourself and Jamie safe and we’ll take care of ourselves.”
Lena added, “And we’ll all help in any way we can with this whole Gregor situation, so call us if you need anything. We all love you, D.”
“I love you, too,” he said.
“Keep us in the loop,” said Irina as they filtered out. “No more secrets, even if you think you’re keeping stuff from us for our own good. We want to know what’s going on with both of you.”
Finally all that was left was the two of us and Catherine and Jess. “Those women are total bad-asses,” Jess grinned as we went into the living room. We sat on the couch and she crossed her legs, pulling the hem of her black skirt toward her knees.
“True,” said Catherine, who was sitting on Dmitri’s opposite side. She was dressed in a tight sleeveless pink top and mini skirt, apparently single-handedly keeping the entire Lycra industry in business.“Sorry about the sister invasion,” Catherine added. “I didn’t expect Ani to show up with all the twins in tow.”
“That’s a surprising number of twins,” Jess mused before sipping her coffee.
“Oh I know, it’s kind of bizarre. Lena and Marley’s boys are twins, too.” Catherine said, then took a huge bite of bagel.
“Did they use a sperm donor?” Jess asked conversationally.
Catherine nodded and said around a mouthful of food, “Lena’s eggs, donated sperm, and Marley’s uterus.”
“I didn’t know you had a gay sister,” I said to Dmitri.
He shrugged and said, “Guess it never came up.” He was staring at the carpet.
I looked at him closely and asked, “Baby, are you ok?”
“Yeah,” he said. “But God, I can’t believe I acted like that in front of my family. My sisters probably think I’m on the verge of some sort of breakdown.”
“Acted like what?”
“I almost started crying in front of them,” he said.
“So what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” Catherine chimed in. “Your sisters and I love you, and we really don’t expect you to be strong all the time. It’s perfectly ok to show some vulnerability sometimes.”
“It’s really not,” he said quietly. “Not with them. I need to be strong for them.”
Jess asked, “So what was the upshot of all of that? Do you know what you’re going to do to get Sokolov out of the picture?”
“Not yet. But at least we know Dmitri’s sisters are looking after themselves,” I said.
“They’re not really,” Dmitri said. “The body guard idea is just going to give them a false sense of security. They won’t be able to handle Gregor if he decides to make any one of them a target.”
“Bullshit,” Catherine exclaimed. “They’re every bit as capable as you are. And I’m shocked to hear that old-school Russian sexism coming out of your mouth, Dmitri.”
“I’m hardly being sexist! I’m not saying that because they’re women, but because they’re a group of people that, despite their tough attitude, have lead very sheltered lives. Sure, they talk the talk. But what do you think they’d do if Gregor bought off their body guards and sent a couple thugs around to any one of their houses?”
Catherine grabbed her shiny silver purse from the end table, hauled out a big Glock, and said, “They’d blow the thugs’ motherfucking heads off.”
A bark of laughter escaped Jess, and she said, “Damn, I think I was the only woman in the house this morning that wasn’t packing.”
“Well good,” I told her, “since carrying concealed is actually illegal in California.” I shot a pointed look at Catherine, then asked, “Wait, how’d you get that thing on the plane when you flew in yesterday?”
“This is one of Dmitri’s,” she said. “I had to leave my own Glock in my apartment in New Haven. Mine’s actually bigger than this one.” She returned the gun to her purse.
One of Dmitri’s. For some reason, hearing that was a surprise. I glanced at him and saw that he was watching me closely, gauging my reaction.
“Why do you have a gun?” I blurted. It was a stupid question. Why wouldn’t he have a gun? He was in the mafia, for God’s sake. “Never mind, don’t answer that.”
I was sorry I’d said anything as I watched his expression. He looked ashamed, remorseful. Hurt. He got up from the couch. “I have to get dressed. I’m expected at the club soon.” And he left the room.
I started to go after him, but Catherine grabbed my arm. “Give him a minute,” she said quietly.
“I didn’t mean to suggest there’s anything wrong with owning a gun. It just surprised me,” I told her. “it’s not something I’d expect from him. Why did he react like that to what I said?”
“Dmitri is terrified of not being good enough for you,” Catherine said. “He keeps waiting for you to get totally disgusted by the whole mafia thing and walk out on him. He’s a really insecure person.”
“How do you know all that?”
“We’ve been best friends since we were kids. He confides in me.”
“How can someone that beautiful be so insecure?” I said, mostly to myself.
Catherine said, “That beauty is all most people see when they look at Dmitri: the pretty face, the hot bod, the perfect clothes. For most of his life, that was all he ever let anyone see. Dmitri wears his attractiveness like armor, but what’s underneath is just a scared, lonely kid that wants to be loved. Not so different than the rest of us, I guess.”
“He has to know I love him,” I said quietly. “I tell him all the time. I love him more than anything, and I’m never going to leave him. What can I do to make him see that? So that every time I say something stupid, he doesn’t feel like I’m headed for the door?”
Jess put her arm around my shoulders and said, “Just keep telling him and showing him you love him. No matter how insecure he is, you’ll get through to him.”
W
e heard him coming downstairs after a few minutes, and I turned toward the sound of his footsteps. He appeared in the doorway to the living room in full armor: every hair in place, wearing an immaculate black suit and black dress shirt, shoes polished. But then he looked at me uncertainly and said, “I’ll be done by dinnertime. If, you know, you’d like to have dinner with me.”
I pushed up off the couch and crossed the room to him, and grabbed hold of him. I actually dipped him slightly, as if we were dancing, and planted a deep, wet kiss on him before swinging him upright again. He was flushed, wide-eyed, lips parted in surprise as I told him, “Of course I want to have dinner with you. Every night for the rest of my life.”
“Oh. Well, good. Ok then.” He looked adorably flustered and wonderfully happy.
I grinned at him. “Now go to work. Sooner you finish, the sooner you can come home to me.”
He smiled at that, eyes still wide, and nodded. “Ok. I’ll see you soon.” And he headed for the garage.
Catherine chuckled at that. “He forgot Jess and I were even here.”
“And you know you pretty much just proposed to him, right?” Jess said.
“I did?”
“Yup. Dinner together every night for the rest of your life? Sounds like a proposal to me.”
“That wasn’t a proposal. When I do propose to him,” I said, crossing the room to sit in a big club chair opposite the two women, “I hope to do a much better job than that.”
“Meaning you’re actually considering it?” Catherine asked.
“God yes. Now that I know he’s not really engaged, that we actually get a future together, of course I plan to marry him. But first we need to get this shit with your father straightened out, so there’s not a dark cloud hanging over us.”
Both women were beaming at me, and Catherine said, “I suppose Jess and I will have to flip a coin to decide which of us is Best Man and which is Maid of Honor.”
I smiled at that, too. “I think you’re right. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First we have to get the homicidal maniac out of the picture. Then we can focus on our happily ever after.” I remembered then that the aforementioned homicidal maniac was in fact Catherine’s father and I stammered, “I mean – shit, sorry, Catherine.”
“Dude,” she said, “I said it before and I’ll say it again. I know what my father is. You’re really not going to insult me by speaking the truth. And speaking of Daddy Dearest, I’m going to drop by his office today.”
“What? Why? Is that safe?”
“I’m the only person that is safe around him…probably. He’s going to hear that I’m in San Francisco in the middle of the school term and he’ll wonder why, so I need to talk to him. I’ll have to make up some excuse for my visit, since we don’t want him to know the engagement is off just yet. And while I’m there, I’ll take a little look around his office, see what I can see.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” I asked.
Catherine raised an eyebrow at me. “That’d go over big, kind of like waving a red flag at a bull. He’s tolerating you in Dmitri’s life for now. Let’s not accelerate his desire to get rid of you, shall we?”
“Yeah, ok,” I said. “But be careful. Even if you are his daughter, I’m guessing he wouldn’t be too thrilled to catch you snooping around his office.”
Jess stood up then and said, “Well kids, I need to get to work. You still want to come along, Catherine?”
“Absolutely. Just let me grab my shoes.” Catherine sprang from the couch and left the room.
“She’s going to the boutique with you?” I asked.
“Yup. She packed in a hurry and wants to do some shopping.”
“Does your store sell a lot of Lycra?”
Jess grinned. “No, and that’s the whole point of shopping there. She wants something demure for when she goes to see her father.”
“When did you and Catherine bond, exactly?”
“In the two hours between when I arrived this morning and when you and your boyfriend finally came downstairs.”
“Two hours! God, what time is it?”
“Almost noon,” she said.
“And how long were the sisters waiting around?”
“Maybe forty five minutes.”
“Did they…” I felt my face getting warm. “Did they hear anything this morning?”
“Like what? You and their brother having wild monkey sex?” Jess asked with a big grin.
“Oh God.”
“I’m teasing. No one heard anything. Well, except for Catherine last night. Apparently there was some screaming involved.” Her grin graduated to a full-blown smile.
I sunk down in my chair as Catherine reappeared in the living room. She’d added a pair of five inch silver stilettos to the pink mini skirt and sleeveless top, and had put on some pink lipstick and fluffed her long blonde hair. She looked like Hooker Barbie, not that I was going to tell her that.
She smirked at me as she pulled her silver purse over her shoulder. “Yeah, I know: Hooker Barbie. That’s actually the look I was going for.”
My eyebrows shot toward my hairline. “How did you know I was thinking that?”
“You blushed when you saw me, doll. You’re charmingly innocent, you know that?” Then she turned to Jess and said, “I called a cab, my treat. Hooker Barbie doesn’t do public transit. Come on, it’ll be here any minute.”
Jess crossed the room to me and kissed my cheek. “Bye, Jamie. Text me later.”
“Thanks for coming. I’m sorry we didn’t really get to talk.”
“So we’ll talk later.” And she was out the door with a cheery wave.
And abruptly, I was left alone in the sudden stillness of Dmitri’s house. I went to the kitchen and ate a bagel as I cleaned up after his family, putting the food away, loading the dishwasher and turning it on, washing out the coffee pot and wiping down the granite counters. Ok, so he probably had a housekeeper that came in to take care of all of that, but I was used to doing things myself.
And something occurred to me then. Turning on his uncle would probably mean turning his back on this whole lifestyle. His uncle had paid for all of it, after all – the house, the car, the club. Surely Dmitri wouldn’t keep all of that after getting free of his uncle. Would he?
I tried to imagine Dmitri moving in to my shabby little apartment with me after walking away from all of this. Getting a run-of-the-mill job somewhere after he let the club go. Going to my fifteen dollar barber for a haircut. Going to the Laundromat.
It was all pretty freaking hard to imagine.
But the alternative was what? Me moving into this big house paid for with mob money? Us continuing to reap the benefits of his uncle’s criminal activity? I couldn’t see that either.
Ok, so all these questions about our future were something Dmitri and I would have to hash out at some point. I wasn’t going to solve this right now.
I went upstairs and put on my flip flops, then gathered up my clothes and stuffed them in my overnight bag. I took it downstairs with me, set the alarm and locked up Dmitri’s house, then drove Lucy to my apartment and double-parked her in the street.
A few minutes later, I had stuffed a huge Santa sack of laundry into the van and driven a few blocks to my favorite Laundromat. It was my favorite because they sold good coffee and excellent pastries from a little counter at the back of the building.
I took up six machines, between my clothes and towels and sheets (smiling as I remembered how they’d gotten so dirty), and blanket and quilt. Good thing the Laundromat was empty mid-week. I then got comfortable on a bench in the corner with a latte and a big Danish and the newspaper.
I was licking glaze off my fingers when someone said, “Hi Jamie.”
Charlie was sitting on the bench directly across from me, elbows resting on his knees, fingers laced together. I hadn’t heard him come in. I raised an eyebrow and said, “Are you stalking me now?”
“Yup.” His green eyes studied me carefully.
“Can we talk?”
Instead of answering that question, I asked, “How’d you find me?”
I drove by your apartment and saw you loading Lucy. I knew you’d come here to do your laundry. You love the Danishes.”
“It’s annoying that you know so much about me,” I said, leaning back against the wall and turning a page of the newspaper, scanning the headlines.
“Please, Jamie, don’t ignore me. Even if I righteously deserve it.”
I glanced up at him. He was wearing Levi’s and a form-fitting jade green polo shirt – that I’d given him, actually. He looked great in that shirt, he always had. It really brought out his eyes, which had been the whole point of getting it in that color. “Was the wardrobe choice intentional?” I asked him.
