Page 80 of Deadly Knight

“Hey, what’s that?” Vanessa appears over my shoulder, her gaze locked on her computer, reading quickly. “That’s fucked up. Ivan and his sick games. Not his first, mind you.”

“Well aware,” I reply dryly, wondering exactly how much she knows about my past. She knew enough to answer Anastasia’s questions while hinting towards understanding it to be big and bad.

“I suppose you would be.”

“Dimitri told you?”

She shakes her head. “I knew he was disappearing to Canada often, but not why or where, despite spending years harassing him about the trips. I respected him too much to pry, but when finding my father’s journal after his death, he detailed much of his early life, including what his brother did to you and Dimitri.” Her eyes lower. “On behalf of the Bratva, I apologize for what you lived through. For my uncle doing that. He forced Dimitrito choose between you and the Bratva by making you deal with those horrors.”

“Except Dimitri didn’t choose. I did. I left.”

“You had your reasons,” she murmurs. “Dimitri gets that.”

Does he? Somehow, I doubt it.

Using the email to save me from this quickly depressing topic that only forces me to explore everything I’ve been protecting behind my mental walls, I gesture at the screen. “What would you do? He was nice to me and I genuinely enjoyed going out with him, but Ivan left him with no other option. As messed up as it is, I understand why he did it. If he didn’t go through with the deal, an innocent woman would be dead.” Apregnantwoman, which is worse.

“My advice would be to ignore the message for now and not decide. A day, two, a week—whatever. You’re right on both sides. He had a decent reason, and it’s one any of us would make, but you’re the one who paid the price. Be angry about that. Hell, don’t ever answer him if it makes you feel better.”

With her advice, I tap the red X on the browser and slide her laptop back to her. She positions it off to the side before propping herself on the desk’s edge, staring at the afternoon light shining in from the window behind us.

“So, Dimitri would have followed you on that date then?”

My stomach flips at the thought of him watching us in the restaurant. Worse, since we were by the window. At the time, it was a lovely table to be seated at, but now I wish we were tucked in the far back.

“Guess so.”

“I’ll have to give him more credit. Can’t be easy seeing the woman he loves go out with another man. Truthfully, I’m surprised the guy’s still breathing.”

Vanessa pushes off her desk and heads out of her office without another word, but that last statement rings long after she goes.

“Can’t be easy seeing the woman he loves go out with another man.”

Caleb wasn’t the first I’d gone out with, and if Dimitri’s really been in the background this whole time…fuck.

I get up from her desk, wandering into the hallway and eventually the staircase that’ll take me up to Dimitri’s bedroom, where I’ve been spending most of my time. With a longing look at the front door, I ascend the stairs. Even if I get past the cameras and soldiers Vanessa has stationed by the front entrance, I have nowhere to go. Realistically, even amidst my own stubbornness, this is the best place for me to be.

In his bedroom, I’m bathed with the sweet-and-spicy scent from Dimitri that, while fading over the almost week he’s been gone, continues to make my insides react with desires long buried out of fear and necessity.

I cross the room towards the floor-to-ceiling window, pulling the heavy drapes back before dropping onto my sleeping arrangements; the pillows and blanket dragged from his mattress. It’s here, staring at the forest behind the mansion, I’ve been spending most of my free time when not hanging around Vanessa or Anastasia.

With the blanket over my lap, I push as near to the window as physically possible and drop my forehead to the pane, wondering if Dimitri has done the same over the past decade.

Ten fuckingyears.

And he’s never let me go.

I recall all I’ve done in that time. Everything he would have watched from afar.

Moving to Toronto. The breakdowns. The nightmares. University. Seeing my first counsellor. Graduating. Getting hiredat the youth centre. My outings with Nora. Sunday lunches with my family. The occasional date.

Everything.

Ten years of settling, of moving on, of building walls only to realize Dimitri is like the scars on my arm. There’s a reason they’re permanent, unfading. Exactly like my feelings for him.

However… For all the same reasons as the past, he can’t expect differently once his father is dead. Ivan’s life might be a small factor, but it doesn’t change that my walls are gone, shattered, and now need to be rebuilt. I’m far from being done with therapy. Nightmares occasionally plague me. I’m a fucking mess. Hell, more now than in the past. No matter what he argues, I’m still not the woman he’ll need by his side in this difficult life. Still broken, still hiding from the past horrors, and still not what he deserves.

And what does him stalking me say? He’s trauma-bonded to me and doesn’t even realize it. No, this time when I go, he can’t follow for his own well-being.