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Abby

Madrid, Spain

Present day

“ H ow do you feel about swapping the Spanish sun for Miami humidity, Abby?” Dimitry gestures to the waiter for more wine, his dark gray eyes holding mine across the table.

Thankfully the waiter arrives, saving me from answering immediately. Tonight, winter in Madrid is anything but warm. Rain trickles tears down the glass windows, beyond which the cobblestones are slick and cold.

It’s summer in Australia right now.

Lately, I’ve been thinking of Australia a lot. Of the life I left behind—and of the life that is slowly taking its place.

“Darya will be back from her honeymoon soon.” I avoid Dimitry’s eyes along with his question. “I can’t leave her when the baby is coming in a few months, especially since she’s asked me to be godmother. ”

I toy with my tapas, which gives me an excuse to look at my plate instead of my boyfriend.

And Darya Borovsky isn’t just an excuse. She’s my best friend.

She’s also married to Roman Borovsky, Dimitry’s oldest friend.

It sounds perfect. Four close friends, all partnered up. There have been times over the last few months when it’s felt like that, too. Sunlit Spanish afternoons filled with wine and laughter that felt like I was living in paradise.

But there’s always a snake in paradise. And the one in our garden is called Stevanovsky.

Up until recently, that was Roman’s surname. It’s still Dimitry’s. They were both orphans on the Miami streets when they joined the Stevanovsky bratva clan and took that name as their own.

Now the Stevanovskys are Spain’s most powerful clan. And although Roman’s name has recently changed to Borovsky, he remains their pakhan .

Which means he’s also Dimitry’s boss.

Lately, that last fact is one I’m finding increasingly difficult to live with. Even if Dimitry Stevanovsky is an addiction I cannot imagine living without.

Dimitry leans across the table and spears a sliver of my jamón with his fork.

“When Darya gets back to Spain,” he says in a deceptively casual voice, “she has Roman’s mother to help her.

Not to mention her own father, and an army of household servants.

” His hands are so huge, blunt and scarred, they make the polished fork look like a toothpick.

“I can’t imagine anyone who needs help less.

Besides.” He gives me a grin, but I can sense the wariness behind his eyes.

“I’m supposed to be godfather, but you don’t see Roman hesitating to send me off to Miami. ”

“No, of course not.” My acerbic response is out before I have a chance to think better of it. “Roman gets what Roman wants, right?”

Dimitry’s face tightens.

I’ve just walked too close to the line no good bratva soldier ever crosses: loyalty.

I might not give a single fuck for their rules, but those rules are Dimitry’s world.

Which is part of the problem.

“I just mean that Roman never lets anything get in the way of business.” I attempt to soften my tone.

“And while we’re on the subject of Roman’s business, have you told him you want me to leave Spain and join you in Miami?

I’m the bar manager of his flagship nightclub, after all.

He might not be happy about filling my role at Pillars for.

.. How long are we talking about, anyway? ”

I can almost feel the air thickening as I ask the question. That’s the thing about hard conversations.

There’s never a right fucking time to have them.

Dimitry studies me over the table. I’ve always loved the way his eyes seem to caress me, absorbing every nuance of the way I talk or move.

Tonight, though, his scrutiny feels like a test I’m destined to fail.

“Pillars will survive,” he says quietly. “But I might not survive Miami without you.”

His small smile does nothing to lessen the weight of his words. They settle inside me like stones, crushing the breath from my body.

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true.” I force a smile, keeping my tone light. “Isn’t Miami where all the college girls head for spring break? You’ll forget about me by Easter—”

“Stop avoiding the question.” Dimitry isn’t smiling anymore. His huge body is hunched over the small table, eyes piercing mine. “You’ve been dodging it for weeks. I understood it at first, when I was still helping clean up after the war.”

The war in Miami happened several months ago, when the Orlovs, a rival clan, kidnapped Roman’s two goddaughters in an attempt to blackmail him and Darya.

But long before Darya met Roman, I knew her as just plain Lucia Lopez: my best friend.

For two years, we’d worked together as waitresses in the same shitty Malaga café. Bonded by laughter, long hours, bad tips—and the secrets we both kept.

Even from each other.

And hard as those days were, I miss their simplicity.

Now Lucia is living under her real name, Darya. And her husband is a bratva pakhan who rules over an empire—and my boyfriend’s life.

“I understood why you wanted to stay in Spain until after Darya’s wedding.” Dimitry’s hard tone pulls me back to the present. “But since then you’ve found a thousand excuses to stay in Malaga, none of which make any sense. You only came to Madrid today because Roman was sending Ofelia here by car—”

“Yes,” I cut in, helpless to stop the sharp edge to my voice. “And because he made it extremely clear that I had to accompany his daughter, whether I wanted to or not.”

Dimitry’s eyes narrow. He sits back in his chair, mouth set in a hard line.

Fuck. Why do I always say the wrong thing?

It’s all I seem to do lately, whether on the phone or in person.

Given that Dimitry is most definitely a man of action, he’s shown more patience than I knew he had. But I can tell that it’s wearing thin.

Unfortunately, so is mine.

“He practically ordered me into the car this morning.” I don’t attempt to hide my annoyance.

“You might be happy to spend the rest of your life taking orders from Roman Borovsky, Dimitry, but I never signed up for that. I might work at Pillars, but I’m not Roman’s puppet, to be pulled here and there at will. ”

His fingers drum the white linen tablecloth in a silent rhythm.

The restaurant is in a small side street off the Plaza Mayor in the old historic center of Madrid.

Normally I would adore the carved wooden furnishings and chipped marble floors, eating exquisite tapas while soft lighting turns the cobblestones gold outside.

But tonight everything seems melancholy instead of cozy. The night feels sad, rather than intimate.

I shiver, pulling my pashmina tight around my shoulders despite the warmth of the restaurant.

“You know how my world works, Abby.” Dimitry’s tone is calm and measured. “You’ve known for a long time.”

I want to slap the calm right out of him. Want to scream and claw at his skin, throw myself at him in a fit of insane tears and make him feel all the confusion I do.

“Oh, I know exactly how it works. I know exactly what you are.” I’m as unable to soften the brittle edge to my voice as I am to craft a less sarcastic response. “You’re Roman’s chief brigadier. His main vor . Isn’t that what you Russians call it in the bratva? Vor? Warriors?”

My voice has risen, and a few people are surreptitiously glancing our way, as people do when they can smell a domestic argument in the making.

“That’s enough.” Dimitry pushes back his chair, his face set and hard as he gestures for the check. “We’re leaving.”

No argument from me.

The restaurant feels claustrophobic in a way that has nothing to do with air quality.

It’s the future that’s closing in on me .

I can’t run from this conversation anymore.

And I’m terrified of what that means.

I know it isn’t fair to take out my fear on Dimitry, just like I know that my anger and confusion existed long before he came into my life.

None of this is his fault, no matter how much I want to make it that way.

Heads turn curiously as we head to the door. They always do when I’m with Dimitry.

We’re quite the spectacle, he and I.

The truth is that I’ve always loved the way Dimitry turns heads, particularly female ones.

His six foot five inches of rock-hard muscle, with some fine inkwork in all the right places, is enough to warrant a second glance from anyone.

Combined with a square, almost brutal face, a white scar running the length of one jaw, and steel-gray eyes that stare straight through a girl, Dimitry is a showstopper.

By contrast, despite being raised nowhere near the Australian coast, I look like a classic blonde, blue-eyed surfer girl. I come from solid old-fashioned farming stock in outback Western Australia.

Which is a very long way from Dimitry’s world. And not just in air miles.

He holds the door open, and I step almost gratefully into the soft rain, ignoring the umbrella he opens over my head as I stalk off toward the Plaza Mayor.

“Abby.” Dimitry ditches the umbrella. His jacket is unbuttoned despite the cold, and rain darkens his black shirt and suit trousers to midnight. “We need to talk this through.”

I give a strangled laugh and keep walking. “What part, Dimitry? The part where you jump whenever Roman snaps his fingers? Or the part where I pretend like I have some kind of future in this life with you, some role to play? ”

My boots slip on the cobblestones, and Dimitry captures me before I fall. “Slow down, for Chrissakes,” he says through gritted teeth, “before you break something.”

Like my own heart, for example?

I’m grateful for the rain that disguises the tears forming in my eyes.

I don’t want this ending. But the truth is that it’s been coming for us since the beginning.

I just kept trying to fool myself it could go a different way.

“Are you sure it’s my world that you don’t like?” His face is grim. “Or is this more about the fact that you refuse to face parts of your own?”

I try not to think of my bag sitting in the apartment across the plaza, or the e-ticket hidden in my phone.