Dimitri Read online

  Today, however, I had slipped away from all of them, thank heavens. So here I was with my sketchbook in my lap, sitting in front of the lake. I was excited because it was the first time since I had been home that I’d had five minutes alone. Granted it was five a.m. but I could live with that. I wasn’t sleeping a shit ton right now because it seemed that all I did was fall asleep and I would begin to dream of Dimitri.

  Once more I placed my charcoal to the page and began to draw the object of my obsession—Dimitri Dudikov.

  “Well hello, beautiful lady,” a man called to me. His accent was a heavy Russian, so I assumed he was an associate of Dimitri’s. I quickly closed my sketchbook and looked over my shoulder. Not that I was obsessed with my looks, but considering that I was the only woman, I knew he was talking to me.

  “Can I help you?” I asked the man and narrowed my eyes, taking in everything at once. Everything in me screamed to get up and run. I rose to my feet in case I needed to do just that. The good thing about living where I did for as long as I had was the fact that I knew every inch of this place like the back of my hand. I didn’t bother to grab my book or pens. That was all replaceable. I had to be able to move and fight if I needed to, and the fact that the thought of fighting ran through my mind scared the shit out of me.

  “We have a mutual friend,” the big man told me as he worked his way closer, stepping almost in a dance move.

  “Oh really? I can’t imagine that we would run in the same circles.” I was being bitchy, but this man was getting under my skin and making me want to puke. He reeked of cheap cologne and it made my eyes water and stomach roll.

  “Dimitri, Dimitri Dudikov. You are important to him.” The man rocked his hand as if he were rolling a set of dice.

  “Good for him. I’ve met the man exactly once and that was not really a meeting. I saw him at a Gala and then was told by everyone at my table to stay away from him, so I have not the first idea why you might think that I’m important to him when he doesn’t know me.” I had learned to lie with a straight face when I was a kid. This was child’s play to me.

  “Oh, beautiful lady, you are important to him or he wouldn’t have men watching your every move. In fact, my men had to kill three of his men just so that I could come here today to talk to you. Between his men watching you and the guards that your family keep on you, I am very curious why everyone is so protective. You are better protected than some of the people that reside up on the Capitol that make the laws for this great nation.”

  Oh hell, did he just say kill? He had killed some of Dimitri’s men? Holy mother, I needed to be gone and I needed to be gone like before this conversation started.

  “Don’t run. If you run, you will make me angry and make my friend there even angrier.” I suddenly felt arms wrap so tightly around me that for a moment I couldn’t breathe. I swear I heard a rib crack before the Russian said, “Not so tightly, Igor. ?You will break her before I am ready, and that will make me very upset.” The man lessened his hold on me, but just barely.

  If there were two men, there might be three. I could tell by the feel of the hulk arms around me that Igor wasn’t a small man, so I had to think of how to escape and evade. I couldn’t fight. I wasn’t that damn stupid. If I could get away, however, I could possibly get to the Halvorsons’ and get help. I calculated in my head. While they likely wouldn’t hear me screaming, they probably would if I started to scream after I ran for a couple of minutes.

  “I can see the wheels turning in your mind already, beautiful woman,” the man said and shook his head. “Igor, gag her.”

  I fought. I knew the likelihood of me winning was slim, but hell, I was a trapped animal, so I had that on my side. I got in several shots, shocking both Igor and the man that had ordered him to gag me. Igor dropped me and because of that I was even able to start to run before another man grabbed me. A fallen-angel looking man. A handsome man that I would typically stop and take more than one look at. However, right now I wanted to claw his face off. I felt him slap my ass and that pissed me off even more. How dare he? No one was allowed to touch my ass except Dimitri. Wait, what made me think that? What the hell was wrong with me?

  “Where do you want her, boss?” the beautiful man asked.

  “Take her to the SUV. I’m sure that Dimitri will be searching for her himself when his men don’t answer. He’s supposed to be back in the country today, and from what I learned from our friend in his midst, he’s beyond pissed off that he’s been away from his woman for so long. He seems to think there is something that the woman is hiding from him.” What the hell was the man talking about? What was I hiding and was that why Dimitri hadn’t called me back? Was that why Gregori told me that Dimitri would call me back when he was able? What in the hell was going on?

  “You have got to have the wrong person. I’m telling you,” I said, then gagged. Jesus, I wanted to puke. This damn flu bug that had me in its grip for the last week was killing me. The man laughed as he picked up my sketchbook and flipped through it while we walked.

  He ripped a page out, then showed it to me. “Really, you don’t know Dimitri?” Another laugh and he moved in closer to me. I puked. I didn’t care. I puked down the back of the pretty boy holding me. He was seriously fucking messed up because he only laughed. All of these assholes just laughed.

  I watched the man with the strong cologne write a note on the page he’d ripped from my sketchbook, then as he stabbed it into a tree with an oddly shaped knife. The blade was rounded slightly and wickedly long. “Now then, let’s get you cleaned up and some tea, shall we, matushka?”

  “What the hell does that mean?” I had only learned a little over a month ago what moya lyubov meant, and Dimitri had a lot to answer for when I finally was able to talk to him again. I was slowly learning Russian, but I had to do it on the down low and I couldn’t very well do it online at home because then the ’rents would know and question everything I was doing, which was crazy. I was a grown woman and yet I was still hiding from them. I screamed. Because of everything. Because of not standing up to my parents. Because I was still at home. Because I was being taken freaking captive because I had bypassed my guards. Balls. This was bloody fucking unreal!

  All of the men began to laugh and speak in Russian. They were laughing at me. What did they know that I didn’t? Then there were the tears. Goddammit it seemed as if I was either angry, happy, puking, or crying lately and that just pissed me off. I hated life right now. I was an emotional roller coaster, and I knew it was because Dimitri left and hadn’t told me he was leaving. I mean sure we had just fucked, but still he said it meant something and the term he used meant my love, so that was something special, at least to me it was.

  The fucking asshole who was carrying me dumped me into the back of an SUV while I was in full-on tears mode. I didn’t even realize it until I had my hands wrapped in duct tape. They secured my legs and knees, and for giggles the asshats wrapped my elbows together in duct tape as well. These bastards wanted to make sure I didn’t get away, that was for sure. I was about to scream again when the smelly bastard said, “I wouldn’t scream. The SUV is bulletproof and as you know from growing up as you did that means it’s soundproof as well. All you will do is piss us off. I really would rather not hurt you any more than I have to, pretty lady. Don’t make me hurt you.”

  Who the fuck was he? Seriously? He was right, though. Screaming in a bulletproof SUV would only make my throat hurt. Hell. I only nodded and glared at the bastard. At least I hoped it was coming off as a glare with as pissed off as I was.

  “Good girl.” He stroked a hand over my hair and smiled. “I can see what he sees in you. You have spirit and are beautiful. Perhaps once I have gotten my revenge upon that bastard, I will take you as mine.” For some reason the man looked at my stomach. How fucking weird. “Then again, I don’t like second helpings.” He slammed the door in my face.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dimitri

  Two fucking months. I had been
fucking pulled out of the country in the middle of the goddamn night and hadn’t been able to get back in for two fucking months. I had pulled more strings than a puppet master at a show to get back in the country. I had no fucking idea how I had been deported, but I had and now my vengeance was swift and deadly. The people who had removed me from my home were paying the ultimate price, and I was now searching for the ones that had conspired against me.

  I sat in the Hummer and listened to Dafid and Ivan, my anger growing. “And Scarlett?” She was the only person I could think of at the moment. I had to see her. I needed to see her. It had been two months and I had to know if she was carrying my child or not. I had to know because, if so, she had to be freaking out. Maybe that was why she hadn’t tried to contact me.

  “She didn’t try to contact you at all while you were gone,” Ivan had told me. No, that couldn’t be right. She felt something. I fucking knew she did.

  “Where is she?”

  “The last time her guards checked in she was just sitting down at a lakeside with a sketchpad. I will make the call to Nevil now.”

  Nevil. He was a younger guard. I wondered why they had put someone so untried on her guard duty when I had demanded only the best for my woman. “Why Nevil?”

  “Because she took off so early we had to send out the three that we had. We sent Nevil, Jorge, and Henrik.” Well, at least Jorge and Henrik had been with me for a long time and had been in the protection game even longer.

  “Well good, call them. Find out what lake and we will go there now.” I was exhausted from the flight, but I didn’t care. I had to see Scarlett. It was almost a living, breathing thing inside of me to see her.

  I heard the phone ringing, and when no one picked up, I leaned up. “Which fucking lake?” I wasn’t about to let this go. “Track their GPS and go there, now.” I reached into the door panel and pulled out the weapons I hadn’t been able to have on the flight with me. Something was wrong. Something was wrong with my woman. I knew it just like I had known that Dafid had been in a situation where he could have lost his life so long ago.

  “Tracking now, boss,” one of the men said from the front.

  I saw my men getting armed as well and knew they could feel it, too. The three of us had always been as close as brothers. We had bled for each other and killed for each other, and right now it looked like they were ready to kill for my woman as well. “Fuck!” I punched the seat beside me in anger. I could handle just about anything, including all the shit thrown at me when I was in Mother Russia, but only Scarlett scared me enough to worry.

  When we finally made it to the lake, I knew who took her the moment I saw the fluttering piece of paper that was stabbed to a tree with a scimitar. The anger in me rose nearly to the surface, but I tamped it down. I wouldn’t allow it to explode. I had to find Scarlett. Then I would deal with my anger issues. She came first. “Ivan, Dafid.” I called their attention to the tree because, obviously, I was the only one with fucking eyes at the moment. When they were at my side, I saw that the blade had been driven in between the eyes of a charcoal drawing of me. That didn’t bother me. What bothered me was the writing that had been done in heavy and bold charcoal, a handwriting that I would never forget because the bastard had branded me with his handwriting when he’d kept me in his prisons.

  “Sebastian has her.” It wasn’t a question so much as a statement, a war statement. I had left Sebastian alone, allowed him to live even when I wanted to kill him, because he had let us all go from the Gulag instead of killing us. It had been a blood debt that I had honored until now. Now he had my woman, and I was never going to allow that man to continue to breathe.

  “I thought he was still in Russia.” Ivan knew what this meant for Scarlett just as well as I did. My woman was being used as a pawn, and we all knew that pawns were replaceable, easily and readily taken off the board. I wouldn’t allow that to happen, not to Scarlett.

  “We all did. Now me being deported makes a great deal of sense. So does the fact that I wasn’t killed upon returning to Russia.” It hadn’t made sense to me when I had arrived on the tarmac, but now it did. I had thought it was because I had called ahead, calling in for the men who still owed me their lives to be there for me with weapons, but no, it was because that son of a bitch, Sebastian, was here and likely had been watching me for a long time. That was the only way he could have known about Scarlett. I had only seen her at the Gala, then in private at the masquerade. I had certainly ensured she was protected above and beyond the guards her parents had provided for her. I also put the fear of me into that little fuck, Joseph Hunter, who I learned was going to try to use his family connections to force Scarlett into marrying him. Fuck that, she was my woman.

  “We should have dealt with him years ago,” Ivan said as we all moved to the SUV.

  I had the paper and I knew where they had my Scarlett. Sebastian wanted me there. He wanted me to see what he had done to her. I knew this man and he wanted to strut and play a part in a game, but I wasn’t going to play his games any longer. No, it was time to get Scarlett, then end him and every fucking one of his line.

  Once we were moving, I was already making calls. I didn’t give two fucks how freaked out the alphabet soup agencies would become when they saw my men mobilizing, because all that mattered was a show of force and right fucking now that was me. I also made a call to Sean O’Casey, Patrick O’Casey’s younger brother and one that I could stomach a little, to simply tell him, “I am coming onto your turf to get my woman. She was kidnapped by an old enemy. Make certain that everyone knows I will be there and that if they get in the way, I will assume they are an enemy as well.”

  “You are asking a great deal from me, Dimitri.” I heard the smooth Irish lilt from the younger man, a man that should have taken over from his father, not his idiot brother.

  “I am. I’m also offering you and only you a favor from me to you.” I didn’t give those freely, and he would know the value of what I was offering him. “I will back you when you decide to take over from your brother,” I told him in as simple terms as possible.

  “Done. We have heard of someone taking over a warehouse today, and I was going to send a team to figure out who they were, friend or foe. Now you have answered that question, so I will let you deal with them. Get them out of my town before tomorrow,” Sean said, then hung up the phone. I could respect that. He was a man of few words just like me. I hoped Sean took over from Patrick before the whole area was run to shit and there was nothing left for me to come in and take over.

  “The younger Irish is clearing a path for us,” I told my men, then took a deep breath and made a phone call to a man that I had tried to buy off numerous times. I called Scarlett’s father, a man that hated me but loved his daughter unconditionally.

  “This is Dimitri Dudikov. I’m sure that your men have already told you this by now, but I need for you to know as well. Scarlett has been taken. I’m on my way to get her now, and I damn well will kill anyone that gets in my way.” I wasn’t going to pretend to be or do something that I wasn’t. “I need your help,” I said finally.

  “I assume you know who took her and why?” Vincent Vanderwall asked gruffly, and I even heard him snapping his fingers at someone. He was obviously trying to get someone’s attention, and I was sure it was to have them get ready to call the cops.

  “Don’t call the cops or the Feds. The man who has her will simply kill her. You need to let me handle this my way. However, when it’s all done, I need for you to know that I plan on having Scarlett in my life.”

  “If she wants to be. I know that you’ve sent your men to watch over her and we will talk later as to why. Right now just get her. Do whatever you have to in order to save her. I’m sending Vincent to meet you. He might not have the street training you have under your belt, but he has training Uncle Sam gave him, along with the credentials you might need should there be police force called in. I won’t budge on this. I want my little girl safe, and you say you want th
e same thing. I also have something you don’t and that’s her exact location because of the subdermal tag she has.”

  Well damn, the old man could surprise me. For years I’d tried to get this old asshole to work with me, and now here we were talking about working together. He had never seemed like the type to tag his children, but then again what did I really know about this man other than he was influential as fuck and couldn’t be bought? However, he was offering me the help of his eldest son. I wasn’t going to turn that away. I knew just how deadly the man was even if his sister didn’t. “Thank you, I would appreciate your help.” Goddamn those words sucked and it seemed I was saying them a lot, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was getting Scarlett out and killing Sebastian. This way she would have someone she knew and loved to take care of her and get her out of where she was being held. “Have him meet me in front of Saint Mary’s.” I named the Catholic church because it was the best place to pick up a rider, especially if he was packing. It had a shit ton of cameras, but I could place a single phone call and they would all be off if that was needed, which I doubted. I had a feeling that the man knew his way around things and could easily hide in plain sight just like my men could.

  “He is on his way,” the man assured me, then added again, “I will stand behind Scarlett’s decisions, no matter what they may be, but it doesn’t mean I like it. You, however, should tell her everything about yourself and your enterprises before she falls too hard for you. I don’t want my little girl nursing a broken heart over a mobster like you.”

  “I don’t intend on her heart ever being hurt,” I whispered, because that was a truth I wasn’t ready to face yet, how I was feeling. I needed to get Letty safe. Then I would try to figure out my feelings. Right now I needed to focus on what had to be done so that it could be done. It was all about getting the woman I loved safe.