by Shandi Boyes
I stumble more than I sprint, but my fumbling movements are all that is needed for India to take her eyes off the prize for just a second. When she drops her knife to my stomach, preparing to maim me as she did Audrey, Dimitri snatches Fien from her arms, cradles her into his chest, then falls back while firing.
Bang. Bang. Bang, booms into my ears.
One bullet thrusts India into the wall with a pained yelp, the other pierces through the drywall next to my head, and the last one shreds through the pain that’s been crippling me the past five days. It tears through my stomach, stunning me that it isn’t as painful as anticipated.
That could have more to do with the fact the man I love shot me.
He. Shot. Me.
“No!” Dimitri falls to my side as quickly as he screams for Smith on repeat. “Stay with me, Roxanne… Smith!”
As I peer up at the ceiling, I gargle on the blood bubbling in my windpipe. Death is more peaceful than I predicted. It isn’t filled with gore and horror. It’s quiet and surreal, somewhat warm, or is that the blood seeping into my clothes?
“I swear to God, Roxanne, if you don’t fight, I’ll tan your fucking ass. By the time I’m done with you, your ass will be bleeding more than a little bullet wound.”
I shouldn’t laugh, the pain it causes is horrific, but it can’t be helped. Just like Estelle searches for humor in every situation, Dimitri seeks darkness.
As my breaths shiver in the coolness enveloping me, I reach out to touch Dimitri’s face, startling when my briefest touch smears his cheek with blood. I must be bleeding a lot because my hands were nowhere near my stomach before I moved them.
“What the fuck were you doing here, Roxanne? You were meant to stay away. That’s the only way I could guarantee your safety,” Dimitri mutters as he pushes on my stomach so painfully, I cry out. “I’ve got to hurt you, baby. If I don’t hurt you, you’ll die. You don’t want to die, do you? You’re too fucking strong to die now… Roxanne… Roxie... Rox…”
Dimitri slaps me two times—hard. He isn’t meaning to hurt me. He’s merely doing everything in his power to force my head out of the black cloud it’s sinking into. “Fuck, Smith, hurry. We’re losing her.”
The absolute pain in his voice almost drags me out of the dark. I fight with everything I have, but the pull is too strong. I’m sinking into the abyss faster than my woozy head can keep up with. I barely get ‘I love you’ out before the blackness swamping me takes over the reins. Still, I swear somewhere between my float from reality to a much darker realm, Dimitri responds, “As do I, Roxanne. As do I.”
37
Dimitri
“How the fuck does a woman with a bullet wound get out of your city without you knowing about it?”
Henry doesn’t get the chance to reply. My fist breaks through the drywall behind his head long before a syllable leaves his lips. I’m pissed, peeved as fuck, and since the person responsible for the anguish eating me alive isn’t in my reign, I’m taking it out on the wrong person.
“She tried to kill my daughter and wife…” It feels like the final strand of the thread I’m clutching unravels when I force out, “I don’t even know if she succeeded with Roxanne yet.”
She’s fighting—my fucking God is she fighting—but it’s touch and go. The medics lost her twice during her transport to the hospital. If it weren’t for Rocco and me holding our guns to their heads, they would have given up on her. They said she was clinically dead, that she was in cessation.
I didn’t give a fuck what they called it, I wanted them to give her a chance to show she’s stronger than her tiny frame and ageless face portrays. I wanted them to give her a chance to prove them wrong because if she can’t do that, I’m dead too.
It was the jarring of my arm when I adjusted my fall to ensure Fien wouldn’t get hurt that caused me to misfire. My bullet pierced through Roxanne’s stomach, so if anyone is going to pay restitution for my error, it will be me.
Assuming my silence stems from believing he is incompetent, Henry says, “I have men combing every inch of my city looking for India. If she’s still here, they’ll find her.”
The confidence in his comment should offer me some sort of comfort.
It doesn’t.
Not in the slightest.
“What if she’s already left?”
“Then we will find out where she’s going and beat her there,” Henry immediately fires back like he already considered the possibility our search for India will be longer than I’m hoping.
I rake my fingers through my hair, knowing it won’t be as easy as it sounds, but hopeful I’ve been put through enough to ease Karma’s nasty bite. India is smart, she has plenty of money at her disposal, and convincing-enough looks to make men disregard her hideous insides. She’s a foreign version of Theresa.
“I have all my men on this, Dimi. The Albanians, the Italians, hell, even the Russians are looking for her. It might take longer than you’re hoping, but we will find her… eventually.” Henry squeezes my shoulder before stepping closer. His relaxed facial expression reveals why he was a good candidate for the boss of all bosses. He keeps politics out of the equation, and to him, it truly is family first of all.
He couldn’t be more different than my father if he tried.
“But for now, your focus needs to be elsewhere.”
When he motions his head to the flappy doors they wheeled Roxanne through hours ago, I crank my neck back so fast, my muscles scream in protest. It’s horrible for me to sigh in disappointment when my eyes lock with Audrey’s across the room. The guilt is still horrendous, the angst won’t quit, but I’d be a liar if I said I weren’t praying for her to switch places with Roxanne.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
Audrey is the mother of my child, my wife, yet I still can’t put her first.
Because you don’t love her, screams a voice inside my head. You never have, and you never will.
Realizing what I need to do, I return my focus to Henry. I don’t get one of the million words in my head out. He just squeezes my shoulder for the second time, wordlessly assures me he has everything under control, then leaves the Intensive Care Unit waiting room.
I’m not surprised when the number of people in the room remains the same after his departure. He has a reputation that doesn’t require muscle. The fact he felt the need to bring backup to our impromptu meeting last week shouldn’t make me smile, especially under the circumstances, but it does.
The boss of all bosses title isn’t a handed-down legacy. It’s earned through hard work and mutual respect—the very things my family’s name was once founded on, and the very things I intend to return to it as soon as possible.
I just have to get a feisty redhead with gleaming green eyes out of the woods first because family comes first of all. Roxanne doesn’t have the blood nor the Petretti title, but she has something more valuable than both those things.
She has my heart.
She stole it when she stood across from me with black, chunky smears rolling down her cheeks, earned it when she put her life on the line for a child she had never met, then secured it for life when she did it all again without the slightest bit of hesitation.
She went to the ends of the earth for me, and I’ll do the same for her. She won’t have to ask for a single thing. I will give her the world, and I might even occasionally smile while doing it.
I’m a cold, calculated killer, but Roxanne not only gives me purpose, she makes me want to be a better man. Since that will also make me a better father, I’m sure the weakening of my reputation will be worth the sacrifice.
I’ve faced worse things in my life, and look how well they’ve turned out for me.
38
Roxanne
It takes me a few seconds to work out where I am. I can feel the thud of Dimitri’s pulse even with no part of his body whatsoever touching me, hear Rocco’s laugh, smell the slightest hint of Estelle’s perfume, and the annoying thump of Smith ta
pping away on a laptop matches the mariachi beat in my head.
The thought of him always working forces a smile onto my dry, blistering lips. Smith wouldn’t be Smith without a laptop balancing on his hand, just like I wouldn’t be me without Dimitri’s dark, mysterious aura igniting my senses.
While blinking to lubricate my eyes, I attempt to sit a little straighter. I’m already in a half-seated position, but since a pillow is wedged between my bed and the mattress, I’m not comfortable. I’m actually more uncomfortable than sore.
I barely move my hand an inch when a warm one slips over it. “Stay still. You’ll pull your stitches if you move too much.”
Stitches?
The figure that moves to stand in front of me is hazy, but I know who he is. A million droplets of rain couldn’t hide his eyes from me, so I doubt a healthy dose of sedatives could.
Perhaps that’s why I feel so spaced out?
Maybe I’m drugged up on the good stuff Dimitri reserves for his ‘special guests.’
After swishing my tongue around my mouth to loosen up my words, I ask, “Where am I? And exactly how much did I drink to get here?”
Rocco breaks the news since the concern on Dimitri, Smith, and Estelle’s faces steal their ability to talk. “You’re in the hospital. Dimitri shot you.” His last two words come out with a groan, compliments of Dimitri’s fist landing in his stomach.
Always willing to push the boundaries when it comes to Dimitri, Rocco laughs before asking, “Was I supposed to keep that a secret? My bad.”
I half groan, half laugh, the humor in Rocco’s voice too strong for the bland white walls and antiseptic smell surrounding me to discount. I’ve awoken in a room like this before. Thankfully, this time around, I’m not alone.
“It was for the best,” Smith says, not only jumping into the conversation but between Dimitri and Rocco before they come to blows. “Your appendix was a mess. When it ruptured, the infection spread to your abdomen. The sepsis was severe. In a way, it was lucky Dimitri shot you. It forced your stubborn ass to the hospital and allowed the doctors to treat the infection before it became life-threatening.”
He’s joking, right?
He honestly doesn’t want me to believe being shot saved my life.
Actually, come to think of it, it sounds about right. I’m nothing close to ordinary, so why wouldn’t a bullet be my savior?
As memories of what had me admitted slowly roll into my head, my heart dives down low. So deep, I feel its thuds in my toes when I ask, “Is Audrey okay?”
“She’s alive,” Dimitri answers calmly. “Thanks to you.”
“Did she…” I don’t want to finish my sentence. I’ve given Dimitri enough reasons to hate me. I don’t want more added to the stack. My parents hurt his wife. They treated his daughter like scum, so I really don’t want to tell him everything isn’t as it seems.
Dimitri scoops up my hand in his in an almost-nurturing manner. Almost. He still has a little bit to go in regard to being gentle. I don’t mind. I like him rough and ready. His dominance is one of his most alluring features. “She told me everything.”
“Everything?” I shouldn’t be interrogating him. I’m neither his wife nor the mother of his child, but I can’t help myself. The connection between us has always been explosive, and even with me being laid up in a hospital bed, it is the most blistering it’s ever been. It has me thinking I can do no wrong and more than willing to risk punishment just to see how far my newfound abilities extend.
My heart sinks even lower than my toes when Dimitri signals for us to be left alone. Rocco and Smith are his closest confidants, so for him to want privacy from them means this must be big. It honestly makes me feel ill, like more than my life is on the line right now.
Dimitri waits for Estelle to press her lips to my temple and join the boys outside before he says way too casually, “Audrey told me everything. How India forced her to come to Hopeton to gather semen samples. The surrogacy. India’s last-minute change of heart when she held on longer than expected after Fien’s birth, and how you tried to save her even knowing she could one day be your competition.” His gaze clings to my face as the slightest smirk curves his lips. “She even told me how India tried to kill her when she confessed to pouring a mixture of tomato soup, baby oil, and corn starch over your nightgown when you passed out so Maestro would believe you had miscarried.”
What is he saying?
I don’t understand what he means.
Dimitri doesn’t laugh, joke, or glower at the shocked mask slipped over my face. He merely clears it away with the quickest brush of his fingers. It’s a callous yet gentle touch that makes my heart rate soar as much as his murmured comment, “You didn’t miscarry, Roxanne.”
If he’s about to say I didn’t miscarry because I was never pregnant, he can stop right now. I saw our baby, clear as day, directly in front of me. I’m not skilled at pregnancy, and I’ve never trained to be a sonographer, but I know what I saw. Deep down in my heart, I know that the little black blob on the screen was our baby.
It looked almost identical to the jellybean on the strip of images Dimitri dangles in front of me. “Does this look familiar?”
I clamp my hand over my mouth to hold back my sob before nodding. “Is that...”
I can’t talk through the frantic throbbing of my pulse. It’s thumping out a crazy tune, stunned by the date and name on the ultrasound images in Dimitri’s hand. If the date on Smith’s watch is anything to go by, my scan was yesterday. Nine days after I was freed from the hell that killed our baby, and four days after learning Fien’s true paternity.
It takes me a couple of seconds to talk, but when I do, my voice is so full of hope, I may very well die if I don’t hear the answer I want. “Is that our baby?”
There’s no chance in hell I can hold back my sob when Dimitri smirks, then nods. His response is almost too surreal, too calm, too fucking outrageous ever to believe it’s true.
How is he not freaking out?
Why isn’t he fuming mad?
I trapped him exactly how India tried and failed. Shouldn’t that make him angry?
I take a mental note to have Smith scan me for mindreading devices when Dimitri mutters, “You can’t snare a man in the trap he set, Roxanne.” There’s no trace of emotion in his voice when he says, “You can congratulate him on his victory, then hope like hell your stroke of his ego gives you a couple of months of freedom before he traps you again.” He bites on my lower lip, slides his tongue across his teeth marks to soothe the sting, then presses his curved mouth to my ear. “The future belongs to those unscared to make it theirs. My future is with you, Roxanne, and whether you agree or not, yours is with me.”
His comment should fill me with dread. It should make me panicked. I’m in love with a mass murderer who’d rather slay me than see me with any man who isn’t him, but that isn’t close to what I am feeling.
He killed my boyfriend, tortured my parents, and has threatened to kill me more than once, but I love him, and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.
Dimitri
Four Months Later…
* * *
A tap sounds at my office door before Roxanne’s head pops through the gap. “Hey, Smith said you wanted to see me.”
I gesture for her to enter, loving that even walking past dozens of women paid to cater to our ‘guests’ every whim hasn’t dampened the sparkle in her eyes I re-lit when I told her our baby had survived both the carnage of her captivity and his mother being shot in the stomach without the slightest scratch. She knows whores are a part of this industry, but she also accepts that I have no interest in them.
The latter is responsible for her blasé response.
No fear.
Even with my son growing in her stomach, and my daughter on her hip, Roxanne doesn’t hesitate to put the women who step over the line she deems unacceptable into place.
If you touch what is hers, expect to pay for your stupidity wit
h your life.
Same goes for me.
I won’t just kill you, though. Your entire family will be extinct. Your father, your brothers, hell, I’ll even kill your second cousin if you do my family wrong because family comes first of all.
If you don’t believe me, ask Maestro’s family. You’ll have to find them first. Trust me when I say that won’t be easy. The Italian Cartel doesn’t leave bodies because corpses can talk. Take the toddler in the wall at the Shroud family ranch as an example.
Is Megan related to me? Unfortunately, yes. Is she my sister? Hell-to-the-fucking-no. Our connection is a consequence of the fucked-up world my father raised me in. Babies, made-to-order wives, underage whores, if you could make money from it, my family dabbled in it in some way.
That’s all done and dusted now. My father is dead, killed in a way too deserving for him, but without a single ounce of remorse felt. Most people believed he died in a joint FBI/Ravenshoe PD operation, only I know that isn’t the case.
I’m not a fan of dark, hidden crevices until it conjures up a way to take down the man responsible for my family’s utmost turmoil.
Fathers are supposed to protect their children.
They’re supposed to save them from harm.
My father did no such thing.
If he had the chance to profit from it, he ran for it, but shacking up the only surviving member of his family with a vindictive bitch who couldn’t give her husband’s actual royal lineage an heir was a new low for him. Mafia blood is royal, it has been around for centuries, but it isn’t something you auction off to the highest bidder without expecting to pay for your stupidity with your life.
I hate what Smith unearthed about the agreement between India and my father after Agent Brandon James left his briefcase unattended within days of my crews’ return to Hopeton. It made a mockery out of my family name even more than it was already facing, but it gave me plenty of motivation to kill my father without fear of punishment. Rules not even someone as high as my father could break were shattered, leaving me no other option but to re-invent the game.
