I continue my deliberation on my opposite hip when the shadow from the door moves to my side of the bed. I know its Dimitri because I can smell myself on his skin like his sudden departure from his office was too important to wash off the desecration my desperateness shrouded him in.
“Roxanne.”
When he tugs on my shoulder, I stay perfectly still, my body ignoring his touch as skillfully as my mind does his snapped delivery of my name. I’m not scared of him anymore. How can I be scared when all I’m feeling is embarrassed?
“Roxanne.” Dimitri’s voice is louder this time—as is his shove. “I know you’re not asleep.”
I almost bark out that he doesn’t know me well enough to know when I’m fake sleeping, but hold back the urge. I’m done playing his game as much as I’m done playing nice.
“Do you want to know how I know you’re awake?”
More silence—lots and lots of silence.
“Your nipples always bud when I touch you, but when you’re asleep, you instinctively roll onto your back, begging for more.”
I don’t know what to respond to first. His confession that he touches me when I’m sleeping or his lower, more controlled tone. I can feel how worked up he is, smell it roasting on his skin, but he’s fighting to keep his anger under wraps. For why? I have no clue.
The stranglehold of emotions clutching my throat flies out the window when Dimitri tries a different tactic. “We got a solid lead from one of your contacts tonight.”
I roll over, too inquisitive for my own good. “Who?”
Dimitri’s smile when he calls me for being a sucker shouldn’t make me hot, but it does. “Dr. Bates.”
“The OBGYN?” I sound shocked. Justly so. Dr. Bates was the least creepy of the bunch. He was half the age of my other suiters and wasn’t shy about his intentions. He didn’t just want a virgin for the night. He wanted something more long term.
When Dimitri nods, I scoot up in the bed. “What type of lead?”
He fiddles with the cuffs on his shirt, a sign he’s stressed. “His practice ordered more prescriptions, fertility drugs, and pregnancy supplements than what was needed for the number of patients he’s had the past three years.”
His confession appears to be a solid lead, but I’m a little lost. Smith went light on details when he explained what happened to Dimitri’s wife, but he let it drop that she wasn’t given any type of anesthetics, so what does a prescription scandal have to do with any of this?
When I advise Dimitri of my confusion in a way that won’t drudge up bad memories for him, he shunts my horror into terrifying blackness. “Tonight’s guests weren’t here solely to bid for your virginity. Some are involved in the baby-farming market.”
“Farming? As in, they produce babies—”
“For well-to-do clients who can’t have their own,” Dimitri fills in as if I’m talking slow for any other reason than confusion.
Although his see-sawing personality has me all types of baffled, I can’t hold my curiosity back. “But that isn’t what happened to Fien, right? You paid to keep her safe.”
An unfamiliar expression hardens his features when I say his daughter’s name, but he’s quick to shut it down. “The incident with Fien is different than what we’re investigating, but like most things in life, there are a handful of common links I can’t ignore.” When I remain quiet, too confused to speak, he keeps talking. “Over the past couple of days, I’ve been led to believe that the people who took Audrey didn’t realize who she was to begin with. They didn’t know she was my wife.”
I twist my lips. “That kind of makes sense. They’d have to be nuts to go against a man as powerful as you.”
I thought my comment would lift a thousand bricks off his shoulders. Regretfully, it seems to have had the opposite effect. “A baby farm nets a tidy profit every year, but its overhead is high. You have to feed the women, cloth and house them—”
“Let alone a woman can only give birth on average once a year. You might get a rare one who can pop out two kids in eleven months, but that’s generally not recommended.”
A spark darts through Dimitri’s eyes before remorse strangles it. “That’s why they changed tactics. The upkeep of a baby is nowhere near as expensive, especially when you have a father willing to pay any amount requested.”
“About that, something has been bugging me.” It’s obvious Dimitri isn’t familiar with two-way conversations. He doesn’t know whether to be amused or annoyed by my interruption. “Why are Fien’s ransoms so minute? The figures tossed around by your guests tonight were ridiculous, and then there was the money being laid down for gambling last week. You’d have to be making a killing, so why are her captives only asking for a little over a million dollars every year. If I had an endless money pit at the ready, I’d milk it for all I could.”
My throat grows scratchy when Dimitri’s eyes narrow into tiny slits. “Perhaps if you’re still around tomorrow, you can give me your opinion on a fairer amount.”
Still around? Am I going somewhere?
A rock-hard mask slips over Dimitri’s face when he spots my unvoiced questions in my eyes. After standing from the bed, he rolls up the sleeves of his dress shirt like his night isn’t close to ending before he nudges his head to the door. “Come with me.”
A part of me wants to tell him to go to hell. After what he did, I don’t owe him a thing, but the stonewalled expression on his face keeps my lips locked tight.
The desire to bend in two bombards me when Dimitri hands me my dressing gown. He hates it as much as Estelle. I’ve heard him threaten to burn it under his breath multiple times the past five days. “It’s cold where we’re going. I wouldn’t want your lips turning blue.”
Ignoring the dread in the lower half of my stomach, I slip into my dressing gown and cinch it around my waist before following Dimitri’s stalk out of our room. My pace is a little slower than his. Although our tryst didn’t end as I was hoping, pain is still being felt.
The atmosphere in the lower half of the compound is starkly contradicting to the party-like one I faced only hours ago. All the guests have gone—even the scantily clad ones who were hoping to occupy Dimitri’s bed for the night.
A worry that Dimitri no longer needs me skitters through my veins when our descend down the stairwell is quickly chased by another decline. We’re heading toward the basement—the dark and dingy basement Dimitri had Rocco order for me to stay away three times earlier tonight. He was adamant I wasn’t to go anywhere near it. Now he’s walking me right into the underbelly of it. It has me sick with worry.
I didn’t think my life could get any worse until Dimitri swings open a door at the end of the corridor. My father isn’t bound to a chair by rope, chains, or any humanitarian way to keep a captive hostage without carnage. He’s nailed to the wood. If that isn’t bad enough, almost every inch of his skin is covered with a range of bruises, nicks, and cuts. However, they aren’t the cause for the sob racking through me. It’s the low hang of his head. The purple mottling of his skin. The evidence he’s dead even without seeing the bullet pierced through his skull.