Twisted Throne (Bratva Born #2)

25. Dimitri

Dimitri

I lean back in the chair and crack my neck side to side, working out the kinks. Jesus, I’m tired. It’s been a long day. A shipment got delayed, and it’s caused a headache, and some little shit has been skimming off the top at one of our nightspots.

A lot of diplomacy sorted out the first issue, and fists and violence, the second. Not my fists and violence. No. The Pakhan doesn’t do his dirty work, as Jacob likes to say. I disagree and do still like to put the fear of God into assholes personally now and again, but mostly, I am happy sending Yuri or Riley to beat them down.

Alexis is still shadowing Nataliya, and a better guard she couldn’t have. He’s like a rottweiler when it comes to her safety, and I trust him with her life. If they leave the compound, he always takes two more people with him, but he’s always there. In the background, making sure she’s safe.

Adriana has her own guard now too. I called in Blade and asked him to be her personal bodyguard. He doesn’t come cheap, but he’s worth every single penny.

I close down my laptop and stretch before I stand and leave the study. I poke my head into the living room where Jacob is playing chess with Virgil. “I’m heading home,” I say. “Let me know what time you want to go to the showroom tomorrow.”

He nods. “I’ll call in the morning. Thanks, son.”

“Don’t forget dinner tomorrow night,” Mamma calls from the kitchen.

“I won’t,” I shout back. “See you tomorrow, Jacob.”

He waves at me, and I head out into the hallway. I’m taking him to look at an adapted car as he’s struggled to drive since the stroke.

Exiting the house, I take in a deep breath of air. It’s fresh, and there’s a faint briny tang we don’t normally get this far from the bay, carried on the breeze. I cross the yard and approach my house. Except it isn’t my house any longer—it’s our house. Mine and Adriana’s.

We went and got her things. Hana’s home is being sold and so is the property we requisitioned from Dorian. The money will go to a charity for trafficked women and into trust for Cade. Hana is in prison. I found enough information about her role in Dorian and Ari’s operation to hand over to the authorities. I made a deal with them. Hana and the rest of the property and assets of Dorian’s crew, in return for a blind eye to the fact that we’d effectively disappeared them. Jacob had been right. The cops didn’t give a shit that a load of people traffickers had disappeared from their streets. One less headache for them, I guess.

I wanted to kill Hana myself. With my bare hands, but Adriana persuaded me not to. She said this way was better and that Hana would face true justice. Time in prison was harsher than death in some ways, she said.

I’m not sure that’s true. But Ari is dead, and the bleached bones of his hands are hanging outside the cabin, rattling in the wind, right this minute. A warning to all and sundry not to touch my wife-to-be.

I nod to the guard on the door and push it open. As I step inside, I look around the hallway. It used to be glossy and perfect, and now it’s full of stuff. Life .

There are Cade’s spare rubber rain boots that he keeps here. Plus a pair of his sneakers. Small and cute, they make me smile. My shoes are next to them and some of Adriana’s. Monty’s lead is hanging on a hook. Yeah, we got a dog.

He comes skittering around the corner as I hang my keys by the door. A cane corso, he’s stunning and also trained. To protect Adriana. “Hey, boy.” I ruffle his head as he whines excitedly. “I’ll take you out in a minute.”

I head into the kitchen and stop when I see Adriana sitting at the table. I thought she’d be upstairs, reading, or working on the room she’s turning into a library. But she’s sitting, headphones in and reading.

A grin tugs at my lips. I walk over to her and wait for her to look up and see me. When she does, she grins in return, and pulls her headphones off. The tinny sound of Prince rings out in the room, until she turns the song off on her phone.

“These are cute,” I say. My heart is falling over itself at the sight of her in these glasses.

“They’re silly, I know, but they remind me of Mum. They don’t really fit, but I like to wear them sometimes.”

They’re pony shaped glasses and just about the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. Adriana wears glasses most of the time. She asked me if she should get contacts, said she’d tried them before and didn’t like them, but didn’t want to look less beautiful. They were her words. As if anything could make her less beautiful to me.

I love her in glasses, and she has so many pairs. Most of them are a bit crazy and fun, but she went shopping with Nataliya and they went to an expensive optician, so now she owns some designer pairs too.

“What are you reading?” I glance down at the folder full of papers in front of her.

“It’s something I need to talk to you about,” she says. “You know the money you gave me? Is that just for if I ever need to run, or can I use some of it?”

I sigh. We’ve been through this before, but she doesn’t seem to get it. “That money is yours, Adriana. You can spend it on Halloween candy if you want. Make sure you have enough to leave suddenly if you need to, and spend the rest. Hell, if you spend it all, that’s fine, I’ll just give you more.”

She giggles and looks up at me, her love for me shining in her eyes. That love makes me ache. I’m always hard for her. As if she can sense where my mind is going, she shakes her head. “Not yet. I want to run this by you before you ravage me.”

“Who says I was going to ravage you?” I ask. “Maybe I was going to make sweet love to you.”

“I mean, you can, or you can take advantage of the fact that I’ve given all the staff the evening off, and it’s Blade’s night off, and we can play our own version of kiss chase.”

My cock kicks in my pants; it likes that idea. I love chasing her.

The most depraved sex we ever had was a few weeks ago. I’d taken her out to the cabin because she asked to go. When she saw Ari’s bones hanging in the breeze, I thought she’d tell me the engagement was off. Instead, she’d asked me if anyone ever came onto the land. I told her truthfully that no, they never did. And she’d shocked the shit out of me by stripping off and pressing my hand to her soaking pussy.

“Feel that?” she’d whispered. “You scare me sometimes, Dimitri, with the things you do, but you also make me wet. So perhaps you aren’t the only monster here.”

I’d fucked her on the balcony with the sound of Ari’s bones clacking every now and then.

“But,” she says, dragging me back to the here and now, “before we get into the kinky shit, I want to show you something.”

Half an hour later and I’m even more in love with my fiancée, and I didn’t think that was possible.

“It’s a solid plan,” I say. “The financials add up, and you’d be doing so much to help the community. My mother knows lots of matrons who host fundraisers; we can get them on board too.”

“You really think it can work?” she asks.

“I really think so.”

“It would do so much good,” she says. “It’s something I’m passionate about, and I can use my skills.”

She wants to create a literacy outreach program here in the Bay area. Helping adults who struggle with reading and providing free books and library programs. It’s an amazing idea, and she’s worked so fucking hard on her proposal.

I pull her onto my lap and kiss her deep. “You’re astonishing.”

Her hand rests on my chest and then sweeps onto my shoulder, and I wince slightly as she touches the fresh ink.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Nothing. I have something to show you.” I undo my shirt and pull it back so she can see the ink. She gasps.

On my shoulder is a bluebird, just like hers. “I want to wear you on my skin,” I say. “There’s also this.”

I hand her a device. “What’s this?” she asks.

“I know where you are at all times, and you said that wasn’t fair, so I had a tracker put in this bracelet.” I lift my sleeve to show her the leather bracelet around my wrist. It’s fastened by a tiny lock, and I take something out of my pocket. “This is the key. I can’t take this off. Only you can. At any time, you can look on the tracker and see where I am. No secrets, littleblue. Fair’s fair. Right?”

She laughs and kisses me, wet and eager, and I forget everything else but the feel and taste and scent of her.

I have everything I could ever need, right here in my arms.