I don’t breathe while snapping my eyes back to Dimitri’s. He wouldn’t do that, would he? He wouldn’t risk his daughter’s safety because I insinuated I’d only sleep with him if he paid me. Only an insane man would let his pride get in the way of his daughter’s well-being. Dimitri isn’t one of them.
My eyes pop open when the truth smacks into me. He watched me come via the hand of another man before he murdered the security guard who interrupted his show, then he tortured my boyfriend for six hours straight. Those events could have seen him facing thirty years to life in a maximum-security prison. He’s far from sane.
“I’ll do it for free!” My eyes dance between Dimitri’s frozen ones when I join him in sitting on the edge of my seat. “On the agreement you let me go once your daughter is found.”
I doubt I’m getting through to him, but am denied the opportunity of hoping when our negotiation is interrupted for the second time. This time it isn’t from the large brute on my right. It comes from the front of the car, from the driver. “We’ve got a tail. They’re a few spots back, but they’ve been with us the last two miles.”
“Fuck,” Dimitri curses under his breath after cranking his neck back. The moon is barely a slither in the sky, meaning even someone with poor eyesight would have no trouble seeing the curved headlights of a sedan in an almost pitch-black night. “Pull over here.”
I watch nervously when our break is closely mimicked by the car tailing us. They’re close enough for their presence to be felt but far enough away, they won’t see the sweat that beads on my temples when Dimitri throws open the back passenger door and slides out. He doesn’t approach the vehicle three hundred yards back. He heads straight for the trunk where he removes two shovels and a tarp.
Oh my God. I’m about to be buried where I’ll never be found.
“Please,” I beg when Dimitri dips the lower half of his body into the cab so he can pull me out a few seconds later. “I can help get your daughter back. Rocco proved I’m worthwhile. You just need to give me a chance.”
Since my arms are bound behind my back, it takes Dimitri no effort at all to pluck me from my seat and drag me to the front of his sleek ride. Not even digging my heels into the rugged terrain slows him down. In a matter of seconds, I’m kneeling on the tarp he laid out, and his gun is aimed at the petrified crinkle between my brows.
“Please,” I plead to the man who stood in the rain to watch me climax instead of the maniac standing in front of me. “I’ll do anything you ask. I can cook,” I groan about my inability to lie, “Not very well, but it’s edible… for the most part. I’ll clean, wash your clothes. I’ll do anything you want as long as you don’t kill me. I don’t want to die.” The dusty conditions make the tears welling in my eyes feel like sawdust. They scratch my eyeballs as well as a sudden urge to live warms my veins. “I’ve barely lived. Please, Dimitri. I’ll do anything you ask.”
“You’re the reason my wife is dead.”
His words are barely heard over the drumming of my heart, but I cling to them as if they’re a life raft, and I’m in the middle of the Indian Ocean. “I know, and I’m sorry. I’d take it all back in an instant if I could.” When my words appear to break through Dimitri’s cold, hard exterior, I keep blubbering. “We’ll be good together. I saw the way you looked at me in the alleyway. You liked what you saw.” I pause to see if truth registers on his face before continuing, “If we had that much spark from a distance, imagine what we’ll have when we’re close together. Your enemies won’t doubt our connection. They’ll truly believe you’re moving on.”
I’m not one hundred percent sure what Rocco meant when he said Justine’s ruse worked, but I’m so desperate to live, I’m willing to give anything a shot. “If you want your daughter back, you need me. You can be angry at me, you can hate me, but you still need me.” I bounce my drenched eyes between his. “I’m no good to you dead, Dimitri. I’m worth more to you alive than dead. I can be what you want me to be. I can be anything you need.”
After running the back of his hands down my mascara-stained cheek, he smiles as if I flashed him my tits. I didn’t, but it was pretty damn close. I offered myself to him, wholly and without constraint. I’ll be his if he doesn’t kill me.
“Please, Dimitri. I’m begging you for mercy.”
His smirk shifts to a full teeth-bearing grin, full of angst and confusion. I understand things drastically changed for him from the last time we stood across from each other, and that he’s most likely only holding on by a very thin thread, but his anger shouldn’t be projected at me. It should be rained down on the people holding his daughter captive, and the ones responsible for his wife’s death.
When I say that to Dimitri, the muscles in his neck bunch. “Why do you think you’re here, kneeling before me?”
With his lips arched at one side and his eyes locked on mine, he curls his finger around the trigger and takes his shot.
Chapter Sixteen
Dimitri
As the scent of my recently fired gun lingers in my nostrils, I stray my eyes to the black sedan idling a few spots back. The brightness of the Audi’s high beams ensures I’ll never see the occupants inside, however my gut has no issues identifying him.
My father doesn’t trust anyone. He is who I got my neurosis from. He’s so distrusting, I’m surprised he didn’t request to helm our trip to the woods.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand his concern. Roxanne saw him murder Old Man V for a measly ten-thousand-dollar dint in his profit margin. That’s an instant one-way ticket to a graveyard. I’m seeing things differently now, though.
Although Roxanne was a witness to one of my father’s many mistakes the past three months, unfortunately for him, she wasn’t his only witness. He’s made an incalculable number of costly blunders during his reign, but tonight’s was by far his most senseless. He showed his hand way too early, and now this wolf is primed with anticipation.
I’ve been seeking answers for months, and it came in a way I never predicted. Because my father was as distracted by Roxanne’s tear-stained face as I was on that night almost twenty months ago, he fucked up in a way he can never come back from. He ruined his legacy with one little word.
He said, ‘wife.’
Not plaything.
Not whore.
Not a cunt to keep me warm throughout the winter as he called Audrey many times the seven months of our marriage.
He said wife plain and clear for all to hear.
I failed to join the dots together until Roxanne peered up at me with mascara smeared down her cheeks mere seconds ago. She once again had me trapped, blinded to everything happening around me that didn’t include her. I was so caught up by her beauty and determination to live in spite of her horrid upbringing, I played her re-entrance into my life on repeat until the clog in my mind spilled away.
Roxanne is to blame for my wife’s disappearance. She is the reason I haven’t laid my eyes on Fien in over nine months. But she is also responsible for my father’s slip up. If it wasn’t for her, I’d still be trying to push a four-pronged puzzle piece into a three-pronged spot. She freed my mind from the torment, and she did it all the while offering herself to me.