Page 43

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ROMAN

“ I f you think I’m getting back into that boxing ring, you can fucking think again.” Dimitry glares at me. “I don’t mind being your punching bag, Roman. But twelve days out of fourteen is starting to push the friendship. And Abby’s starting to wonder why I turn up with a new black eye every couple of days.”

“Suit yourself,” I snarl, heading for the ring. “I’ll find someone else to spar with.”

“Good luck.” He crosses his arms and raises his eyebrows. “Look around, brother. There’s not another soul in the place. They’ve all started running the minute they see you walk in.”

I glare around the studio.

Motherfucker’s right. The place is empty.

“I’m going to give you some advice,” Dimitry says. “And don’t bother giving me the death stare. You know it doesn’t work on me anyway.”

“I’m not fucking interested.”

“I don’t give a shit.” He moves in front of me. “Whatever’s happened between you and Lucia, you need to fix it.”

“Don’t say that goddamn name.” I thud my fist into a nearby bag, only barely restraining myself from landing it on Dimitry’s face. “Ever. Don’t ever say that name again.”

His eyes narrow. “Wow. That might be a bit of a challenge. Seeing as, I don’t know, she’s living with you?”

“With the children. Whole different thing. And not for much fucking longer, so I wouldn’t get attached.” I thud another fist into the bag.

“Bullshit, Roman. If you wanted her out, she’d be gone already.”

“Don’t”— thud— “want”— thud— “to upset kids.” I unleash a lightning left-right cross that sends the bag flying.

“Oh, right. So you’re keeping Lu—keeping her around just to keep the kids happy.” Dimitry leans against the wall, studying me, his arms still crossed.

“That’s right.” I avoid his eyes and keep thumping the bag. “They’ve had enough disruption already.”

“And this has absolutely nothing to do with whatever it was Pavel uncovered about her.”

I stop punching abruptly and swing around to face him. “What do you know about that?”

“Nothing, until just now.” Dimitry’s grin is at total odds with the sharp look in his eyes. “But I figured you must have found out something, and clearly I was right. Have you asked her straight-up about it?”

I kick the bag in frustration and walk across the deserted studio, not least so I don’t have to face him. “There’s no point,” I mutter.

“Really.” His tone is so derisive I turn around, scowling at him.

“Yes, fucking really.” I’ve spent two weeks reading every goddamn thing I can find on the Petrovskys. I’ve devoured every word of Lawrence Carter Rydell’s paper and read every other skeezy article he’s written. And I’m about ninety percent certain that the little fuck’s theory is dead-on.

But I’m also a hundred percent certain that he doesn’t know who the fuck I am. I plan on keeping it that way. And that means getting Darya and Sergei Petrovsky out of my life as soon as possible. Just as soon as I work out exactly what they know and what their game is.

I just haven’t quite managed to find out yet. But asking Darya directly will only give the game away. And as far as I’m concerned, Miss fucking Petrovsky has already played me for long enough. I don’t plan on giving her any more string to tie me up in. Which means not touching her at all.

Which has been fucking torture.

I thump the bag with particular vehemence.

“Do you remember,” Dimitry says thoughtfully, “what you said to me that first night after we ran from the halfway house? When we slept under the overpass?”

I roll my eyes and belt shit out of the bag. “Spare me the psychotherapy, mudak .”

“I knew that family services would be out looking for me,” he goes on, completely ignoring my warning. “And I was shit scared of being taken back into care.”

I can’t help but remember him the night we met, a scrawny kid in clothes from the juvie bin, running silently through the streets at my right shoulder. Part of me thought he’d run out of breath long before we got clear of the kids chasing us. Part of me almost hoped he would.

And I was secretly relieved when he didn’t.

I focus on the bag, punching a steady rhythm.

“You told me I had a choice,” Dimitry goes on. “One was to go back to the halfway house and take whatever came. We both knew that with a juvie record, I wouldn’t get another foster family, or not a good one. But you never said that. You just said that if I wanted to go back, you’d take me. I asked you what the other choice was. Do you remember what you told me?”

I punch methodically, ignoring him, but in the back of my mind, I can still see us as we were that night, huddled in the dirt, sharing a tin of beans and jumping at every sound. It was a lifetime ago. It feels like yesterday. I remember how that overpass smelled, like piss and fear and loneliness.

“Do you remember?” he asks again.

“Of course I fucking remember.” I punch the bag so hard it flips up into the air and turn to face him. “I said I could help you disappear so they would never find you. Since you’re here pissing me off right now, clearly we know what choice you made. So the fuck what?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s the part you would remember.” Dimitry pushes off the wall and grabs the bag, bringing it to a halt and eyeballing me around the side of it. “But you said a lot more than that. You told me that disappearing meant living in the shadows, maybe forever. Never trusting anyone with my name or story. You told me the only way to stay safe in the shadows was to bury my past and forget who I’d been up until that moment.”

“I was a kid.” I grab the bag and push it hard enough to knock him out of the way. “I was probably fucking high, if I was gabbling on with that crap. You should have clipped me in the mouth, like I’m fucking tempted to do to you right now.”

“You’ve never been high in your life.” Dimitry stands aside and lets me punch. “Every word you said was the truth, and you knew it. Yes, I chose to stay. But not for the reasons you think. Not because I was scared of going back to the halfway house, even though I knew it meant more beatings, and probably more rape.”

I wince. I still hate thinking about the shit Dimitry went though before I found him. He’s never directly said the word rape , although the nightmares he had when he was a kid gave me a pretty good idea of what he’d endured. I keep punching, not looking at him.

“I stayed because up until that point, I thought I was the loneliest, saddest motherfucker in this world. But that day, I realized I’d met someone even lonelier than I was.”

I stop punching and stare at him incredulously. “Are you trying to tell me you stayed out of fucking pity ?”

“Of course not.” Dimitry holds my eyes steadily. “I stayed because it amazed me that anyone could have lived for years feeling as lonely and lost as I did then, and still find it in themselves to defend a dumb little kid they didn’t even know. I fucking trusted you, Roman. I’d have followed you anywhere. Off a goddamn cliff, if you’d told me to. Not just because you were a scary motherfucker who I knew could keep me safe, but because I knew that even if you had buried your past, you hadn’t buried your soul with it. That was more than I could say for anyone else I met back then.”

The bag swings between us like a metronome. The studio is dead silent but for the creaking of the chain as the bag goes back and forth. Dimitry and I stare at each other, and weirdly, given his impressive bulk and hard face, in his eyes I can still see the scared kid who huddled close to me that night, so skinny his bones stuck into my side. I remember how fucking brave I thought he was, how despite the cigarette burns and the bruises, the dark shadows in his eyes and the way he jumped at every sound, he never once complained.

Most of all, I remember how it felt to finally have someone by my side. Someone who was my responsibility to care for and keep safe. Dimitry won’t ever fucking know it, but the truth is, it was him who saved me back then. He gave me a reason to wake up every day and fight for a better future, for us both.

“What’s your point, Dimitry?” It’s not quite a snarl this time. Fucking past. Fucking emotions. Lately, it feels like I’m living in a toxic swamp filled with both.

“My point is that you never stopped being lonely. Not when Yuri adopted you. Not when you built Hale. Not even when you made enough money to buy all the women you could want. No matter what you’ve achieved, part of you has always lived in the shadows. Right up until the day you moved Lucia into your home. And fuck you,” he says, holding up his hand to ward off my protests. “I’ll say her name if I want to. She’s a beautiful girl, Roman, and she fucking adores you. Whatever your problem is with her, you need to sort it out—or you’ll be living in those shadows forever. And that’s not tough, Roman. It’s just fucking sad.”

We stare at each other over the punching bag for a full minute. Then I pull my gloves off and throw them at my bag.

“Fuck this,” I growl. “Let’s go and get drunk.”