That’s almost as bad as succumbing to the blackness engulfing me, although it’s nowhere near as headstrong as my final command. “Hand Roxanne the reigns. This is now her monarch.”
For years, women in this industry were seen as worthless. They were disposable, unforgettable, and easily replaceable, then Roxanne was thrust into my life.
She could have destroyed me.
I could have destroyed her.
But together, we created a bedlam not even God himself can control.
She made me stronger, she gave my life purpose, and if she’s half the woman I saw in her eyes when she stood across from me with mascara-stained cheeks and goth-loving attire, she’ll bring the fury of hell to earth to make sure the last image I have of my kids isn’t of them in bulletproof jackets.
8
Roxanne
My breaths come out with a quiver when the expression on Dimitri’s face goes from pained to peaceful. He hasn’t spoken a word since he ordered for me to become the monarch of his realm, but I know he’s still with me. I can feel it in my bones, sense it in the prickling of the hairs on my arms. If the man I loved were dead, I would know it… wouldn’t I?
My watering eyes lift from the tablet I’m never without when Dimitri is on the ‘job’ to Rocco when he says, “Grant me permission to go on field.” His eyes are as wet as mine, his lip just as gnawed. “Let me get him out of there, Rox. Come on, they’re going to fucking slaughter him if you don’t order someone there now.”
“It’s too late,” I reply, shocked I can talk through the despair clutching my throat. We’re not just halfway to the safehouse Dimitri bought when I was laid up in a hospital bed fighting for my life, we’re over sixty miles from Ravenshoe. “Not even a helicopter could get us there before they storm in.”
I twist the screen of the tablet to face Rocco. It reveals there are armed agents stretched down two blocks. They’re about to storm Rico’s apartment building even more perversely than the final three dozen men who swarmed in via the rooftop garden. Smith had every floor covered. He hadn’t considered them entering from above.
“We’ve at least got to try.” As Rocco’s eyes bounce between mine, he adds a plea to the many I see in his eyes. “Do you truly think the feds give a fuck if he dies or not? They don’t give a fuck about him. They don’t give a fuck about anyone. They’ll let him bleed out in the ER just so they can claim they took down Dimitri Petretti.”
“Someone in the bureau cares about him.”
As confusion crosses Rocco’s features, I call Smith’s name.
Forever on alert, he replies remarkably fast. “I’ve called Ellie a dozen times. She isn’t answering.”
I appreciate his blur of the lines, but we need to go well past a favor to get Dimitri out of this alive and without handcuffs circling his wrists. “Call Isabelle Holt.”
Smith exhales a deep breath. “What?” He only spoke one word, but it relays how stupid he thinks I am. “They’re not related.”
“No, Dimitri and Izzy aren’t related. I don’t even know if they know one another, but Rico is her brother, and Dimitri was shot protecting him and her sister-in-law.”
“That’s a stretch, Roxie,” Rocco breathes out, jumping back into the conversation. “But it could work.”
While Rocco coaches Smith on what to say to Isabelle—if he can get past her husband—I lean over the privacy partition so I can redirect the driver to a secondary location.
“Are you sure this is what Dimitri would want?” asks Preacher, uneased I’m guiding a fleet of pricy vehicles to an area well-known for its love of hotwiring.
“I’m sure,” I reply, hopeful I’m not making a mistake.
It’s rare for people to get the chance to redeem themselves, so I can only hope my mother doesn’t squander the opportunity. If she hurts my babies while I endeavor to safe their father, I’ll let Dimitri kill her as he wanted to years ago, and I won’t shed a tear while he does it.
The unease twisting in my stomach gets a moment of reprieve when I glance back down at the tablet. Dimitri’s reflection is still in the middle of the frame. He isn’t alone. A blonde-haired female agent is pushing swatches of material onto his stomach while screaming for a medic.
Seeing Ellie in her element pops a brilliant idea into my head. It will ensure we will never be friends, but if it gets the father of my children out of the carnage alive, I’ll accept it.
“Mama loves you, baby boy.” Matteo’s dark hair tickles my lips when I press them to his temple. He’s passed out cold, the hour drive in the car too much for his little body at this late hour.
I wouldn’t be here unless I truly believed this is the last place Dimitri’s enemies would look for the heir to the Petretti monarch. Dimitri said we were being evacuated from our family home because the crew endeavoring to topple Nikolai’s reign knew too much for him to believe we were safe there. If that ‘too much’ involves our children, I have to take drastic measures to keep them out of harm’s way.
This is as drastic as it gets for me. Even with my mother remaining in rehab for over a year, I cut her out of my life. I didn’t want my children to question why my relationship with their grandmother was estranged, so I took the cowards way out and buried the truth under a whole heap of dirt. It made it seem as if I were suffocating the past three years, but its grip around my throat isn’t close to the painful squeeze my heart is currently facing.
“It’s okay, mama,” Fien assures when she spots the wetness in my eyes. “I won’t let anything happen to him.” She snuggles in close to Matteo’s side like she’ll forever protect him as I’ll always protect her. “Girls can be brave too.”
My heart melts a little. “They sure can, Fien. You’ve shown me that more than once.” After kissing her head as I did Matteo, I tuck them in tight before exiting my mother’s room.
Although she was issued a full pardon from Dimitri, her life isn’t anything close to glamourous. Her apartment is two blocks over from the rat-infested pad Estelle and I shared years ago. Bills are piling up on her kitchen counter, and the last time I had Smith hack into her bank account, she only had a few dollars to her name, but in all honesty, her life is still better than it was. She doesn’t have to sell her body to fund her husband’s drug addiction, she’s not beaten when she fails to live up to his unachievable expectations, and her daughter is happy. At the end of the day, the latter is all any parent should ever strive for.
“Preacher will be stationed in the living room—”
“I won’t hurt them,” my mother promises, stepping closer to me. She looks healthy now. Gone is the gaunt, waif-like woman I saw walk out of rehab three years ago. Replaced with one who looks like she wants to get her life on track, but she doesn’t know how. “I never meant to hurt you either, Roxie.”
“Now is not the time to re-hatch decade-old conversations.”
She pats my arm in an understanding manner. “I understand. I’m sorry.”