Captive of the Hitman: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance Novel (20 page)

T
here’s
a buzzing in my ear and I can’t fully make sense of the words coming out of the detective’s mouth.

Dimitri is at my side, his arm draped around me, my eyes puffed up and swollen. Everything that’d happened between us in the office had been instantly forgotten in a mess of tears and frantic sobbing. Dimitri hasn’t cried, though. If anything he’s become harder, as if in the span of the last few hours, he’s grown a decade.

“We deserve to know,” he’s saying, his hand clutching my arm. “We’re her kids.”

“It’s a delicate situation. We don’t have all the information yet, so we need to ask a few more questions. The better you can help us, the faster we can resolve this.”

Dimitri’s jaw clenches, but he nods.

“Do you know if your mother had any enemies?”

“My mother owned many companies, was on the board of two groups, and had more power than most in New York,” Dimitri says with a mix of pride and agitation. “You don’t get to her level without making some enemies.”

“Any that could do something like this?”

Dimitri shakes his head, his lip pulled into a sneer.

“Of course not. Corporate tycoons are willing to ruin you in a dozen ways but murder isn’t high on their list.”

I sob, and Dimitri squeezes me tighter, leaning in and whispering in my ear, “Go into the guest room, Sarah. I can finish this up and I’ll tell you anything important.”

I’m too weak and exhausted to argue, and so I stand and give a teary nod to the detective before I make my way down the hall.

I shut the door behind me and go to the pristine, white bed, collapsing into it. I know Rebecca and I didn’t have the best relationship, and I’ve thought about her being gone more than once, but never like this. My heart was breaking for Dimitri, and I hate myself for being so weak that I’m reduced to a simpering mess.

Maybe it’s just the intensity of the day, of how it happened.

Of how much it reminds me of when my father was killed.

I was so young, but the pain stabs through me like it was just yesterday. The fear, the vulnerability, the pain, it all floods through me, and I’m devastated once more. I was just a girl, abandoned by the only biological family I had. Rebecca inherited all of my father’s fortunes, and I was left to her mercy.

Dimitri was the only reason I was able to get through it, and now I know I have to be strong. To help him through this loss.

But when I sit up, wiping away the tears, trying to collect myself, I can’t bring myself to face them. I walk to the dresser, looking into the mirror at my disheveled platinum hair, my stormy, blue eyes, and the redness beneath them. I’m so pale that my sorrow stands out like a sore thumb, and I open the drawers, looking for a spare box of tissues.

The guest room mostly contains old linens that are past their prime, though in the bottom drawer I find something that I thought had been lost. A golden locket that had belonged to my biological mother. My breath hitches as I open it up, seeing the small picture of us as a family.

I was only ten or eleven in the picture, the edges a bit worn and faded, and I look at my mother’s face. She was so beautiful, so vibrant, and I have to close it once more. A couple years later and she had passed away from the cancer that ravaged her.

I close the locket with a faint click and slip it into my blouse pocket, finding the box of tissues I’d been searching for. I dab my eyes free of their tears, and take a deep breath.

“Be strong. Dimitri needs you,” I tell myself in the mirror. There’s still a sob trapped in my chest, but helping him is more important than getting stuck in mourning for people I lost years ago. Rebecca didn’t deserve what happened to her, but it was the reminder of my own parent’s death that was truly haunting me.

I plaster a fake smile on my face. I once heard that if you smile, even if you don’t want to, that you’ll start to feel a bit better. Unfortunately, that little upward pull on my lips did little for my mood, and even less for that pit in my stomach. I remember all too well how inconsolable I was after mom died, and that was natural.

How angry I was after dad died?

Dimitri must be feeling that ten-fold.

I’m about to push open the door to rejoin Dimitri and the detective when there’s a knock on the wood.

“Sarah?” Dimitri’s voice sounds harder than ever, and I open the door to look at his steely face.

“The detective’s gone for now,” he says, his eyes roaming over my face, and I hope I don’t look as terrible as I did moments ago. His hand reaches up, touching along my jaw, and for a split second I remember what we’d done in my office just moments before we found out the horrible news and a heat floods through me.

It’s not appropriate
, I remind myself, referring to both the act itself and the memory coming back to me.

“Are you okay?” he asks, some of that gentleness returning to his voice, and his dark eyes meet mine.

“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” I admit, my gaze dipping down. “I’m sorry for freaking out.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he says. He moves in and I catch a whiff of his cologne in the air. “This... It’s going to be a hard few days.”

“When can we start making arrangements?”

“We won’t be able to do the funeral until they perform...” he trails off, but I know the drill. They have to do the autopsy first, and that could delay the funeral by a few days at least.

“We’ll need her will.”

He nods. “Her lawyer’s already been called. She’ll be meeting with us later to go over mom’s wishes.”

“Dad’s plot...” I trail off when I feel my voice breaking.

“I know. He wanted them on either side of him. His two special ladies,” Dimitri replies, tucking some of my stray hair behind my ear. “You don’t have to worry about this, Sarah.”

“I’m not sixteen anymore,” I say with a sigh, but inside, I feel like I may as well be. I’m not prepared to deal with this, not again.

Why does everyone I love have to die so tragically? I’d gone through this all before. The detectives, the constant questions and dead ends, the uncertainty. I lost my father, and we never found his killer. And now the only family I have is Dimitri.

My eyes meet his once more. Dimitri. The man I was so close to losing my virginity to. The man that has haunted my dreams and my fantasies for years.

The one man that’s supposed to be off limits to me.

He’s looking at me so seriously, studying me with this strange edge to his dark gaze. I can’t get a read on his emotions or how he’s feeling, just this strange sense that things aren’t right. His jaw is set hard, the little bit of stubble making him look a bit darker and more disheveled. He’s run his fingers through his hair a few too many times and now it’s sticking up in places, making him seem a little more manic.

He looms over me in the doorway, and for a long time, we don’t say anything. His hard fingertips run along the shell of my ear, and it’s both soothing and scary in a way. His eyes rarely move from my face, and the air grows thick between us.

“I know what you were doing for Rebecca,” he says quietly, breaking the extended silence, and a chill goes up my spine. His voice is... off. Ominous and yet emotionless at the same time.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, but I can’t meet his eyes when I lie to him, and he can see right through me.

His index finger lifts my chin upwards, and for a second I wonder if he’s going to kiss me, but when I see his narrowed eyes, I know I’m not that lucky.

“Don’t lie to me, Sarah. Don’t ever lie to me.”

I flinch. He’s pissed.

“I know what you were doing for Rebecca. And you and I are going to go through this shit with the detectives, and we’re going to tell them nothing about that, right?”

I nod my head, but there’s a pit of dread in my stomach. Dimitri couldn’t have had anything to do with this. He’d never hurt his own mother.

His own mother who was using her stepdaughter to spy on her son? Her son who knew she was spying on him?
I shiver. There’s no way. Dimitri’s fallen in with a bad crowd, but he’d never kill someone. Least of all his own mother.

But I still remember the screams of Anton, the pleading of the man as Dimitri and Slava’s fists and boots worked him over.

“You’re going to help me,” he commands, his eyes narrowing as he continues to force me to look at him. “And we’re going to find out who killed my mother. And then, I’m going to make him pay.”

“
M
ay her memory be eternal
.”

Dimitri gave a tight smile to the oft repeated phrase. The funeral had been delayed much longer than expected, and now that it’s finally here, we both feel a bit... off.

Mourning someone who’s been murdered is different than mourning someone who’s died of natural causes, in that there’s no way to really come to terms with how unexpected it is, and how much anger and hurt swirls within. I stand beside him as a chorus of well-wishers pass us by, dressed in black with somber expressions.

We still don’t know who would’ve killed Rebecca, and the police are probably even further off the mark than we are. And now we’re going through the funeral while her killer’s still out there; mourning her loss while dealing with this simmering rage.

I look at Dimitri, and I wonder if he feels the same way as I did when my father was killed. If maybe now he’s starting to understand why I clung to him so much, why I was so afraid that I’d die at any point in time. I was sixteen, torn between dealing with something most adults never have to deal with and just wanting to see my daddy again.

Sure, my dad fucked up with my mom in the end, but he didn’t deserve to die like that, no more than Rebecca did.

“Their memory will be forever with us, in our hearts and prayers,” another old woman says in a thick Russian accent, shaking both of Dimitri’s hands at once. “Rebecca was a dear girl,” she says, leaning in to whisper towards Dimitri in Russian. It’s just the three of us near the coffin, the rest of the guests further away.

It’s been years, but I still recognize that word she uses in her too-loud whisper.
Avtorityet
. Slava had said that, the night he and Dimitri beat Anton.

I look back to the coffin, to Rebecca looking stunning even in death. A ribbon lay upon her forehead, a tradition I didn’t really understand but accepted as my own.

“Thank you, Aunt Vera,” Dimitri says, leaning in and kissing her greying hair.

She looks to me and nods before going to the Rebecca, kissing upon the ribbon before gently placing the two flowers with the others.

I’m exhausted, and numb, but when Dimitri’s hand encompasses mine, I get another jolt of energy and give him a gentle look of gratitude.

“How are you holding up?” I ask, my voice just above a whisper.

“When this is over, it will be easier,” he replies, and I wonder if he means the grieving... or the revenge.

I
’m hoping
Joanna is out when I finally get home, but no luck. She wanted to come to the funeral with me, but it would just feel weird. Especially since I told her about how I nearly hooked up with my boss. I can’t have her learning he’s my stepbrother after I told her that.

She gives me that soft, kind of confused smile that people do once they find out someone you know died. The cautious look that says they don’t even really know how they’re supposed to feel, let alone what they actually feel.

“How was it?” she asks, and I set my purse aside, taking off my black high heeled shoes.

“Sad,” I say on an exhale. “A lot of her business colleagues came early in the day, then mostly just family and personal friends. The memorial dinner was...” Strange? I don’t really know what to say. Rebecca had us do all the same things for my father’s funeral, saying that it was customary, and I was too young and filled with grief to argue at the time.

It’s almost nice to know that this is how she would’ve wanted it, though.

“I’m mostly exhausted.”

Joanna nods, then points to the TV with the remote.

“Wanna do a romcom or something? Might take your mind off things.”

I agree and quickly change into my pajamas, returning with a bowl of popcorn. It reminds me of when I was a girl, snuggled in between Rebecca and my dad, watching some dumb movie. She wasn’t always a witch to me, especially not when dad was still alive.

Joanna hits play and she settles back in the chair, stealing some of my popcorn.

“So was your boss there?”

“Yea,” I admit, but the last thing I want to talk about is Dimitri. If he wants revenge, I know he’s going to get it, and I know what he’s capable of. Hell, he was only nineteen when he kicked Anton’s ass, so who knows what he’s capable of now.

“Bet he looked good in his suit,” Joanna says with a sly grin. She has no idea that my boss is Rebecca’s son, so of course she’d be light about it. Especially with how much I railed on Rebecca since I moved in with Joanna.

But she’s not wrong. I’d have to have been blind not to realize how good Dimitri looked in black, his dark eyes cold and somber. He’s biding his time.

“He always wears suits in the office.”

“Oh right. Most guys I work with you’re lucky to get them in a button-down shirt.”

I’m trying to catch what the actor just said, but I glance at Joanna for a second before turning back to the TV. “Not Dimitri. He’s always formal.”

Damn it, I missed a joke. The actress’s nose scrunches up and she looks adorable. I wish I knew what he’d said.

The movie pauses, and I figure Joanna must’ve missed it too, but when I look at her, she’s staring at me with utter confusion on her face.

“Wait, Dimitri?”

Oh shit.

“That Dimitri?” she continues, her voice growing a bit louder. My face must be burning red right now and telling her everything she needs to know about the situation. When I’d told her my boss kissed me, I’d purposefully left out his name, because I bitched about Rebecca and Dimitri to her more than a few times. It was practically a part time job for a while.

Damn it.

“Yea,” I admit. What can I do, lie to her about it? Pretend like it’s all coincidence?

She leans back in her chair, staring straight ahead, and I can’t make heads or tails of her expression. How the hell would I respond if I found out that she was working for her step-brother, went over to his place in the middle of the night and made out with him?

I put the popcorn to the side, folding my legs under me.

“And he kissed you?”

I nod.

My stomach is tightening into knots. I never told anyone else about Dimitri, about my feelings for him. Everyone would know how wrong it is, and how stupid I was for fooling around with him only to get burned. But I told Joanna all about the cold shoulder he gave me and how much he hurt me.

“What about before?”

I chew on my lower lip. “We were just kids,” I say with a shrug.

“You were eighteen and he was, what, twenty?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Not really kids, Sarah.”

“I know,” I admit with a sigh. “But he seems different. And we’ve just been spending a lot of time together.”

“Because you work for him now.”

“Right. And it just... It just kind of happened.”

“Was that the first time?”

I shake my head, and all at once, I almost just feel relieved. Even though she looks so shocked, and I’m dreading what she’s about to say, just telling someone is a weight off my shoulders. My eyes dip down.

“It’s not like we’re really related.”

“You grew up together.”

“Not entirely. And we were always more friends than anything...”

She shakes her head, grabbing for her drink and taking a sip.

“Do you want to again?” I tilt my head and she clarifies, “Kiss him.”

“Yea,” I mutter. “But now’s not the time for that. I mean, he’s just lost his mom...”

She stares at me like I just said the stupidest thing.

“What are you talking about? He’s a guy, Sarah. Fuck, it’d probably help him to get his mind off of it for a while.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Of all the reactions I anticipated, that wasn’t even on the list. My nose crinkles and I nervously tuck some of my blonde hair behind my ear.

“Are you serious?” I mutter, and I imagine his lips pressing against mine, the taste of cinnamon burning my mouth as his tongue flicks against mine.

“Sure. I mean, if you’re both into each other, why not?”

“I might get hurt.”

“Well yea, Sarah, that’s a relationship for you. I’ve been dumped by how many guys since you’ve known me? And dumped even more. It stings, but you move on.”

“But then I wouldn’t have him in my life anymore.”

“You didn’t have him in your life for two years and you survived,” she reminds me, and I know she’s right. But Dimitri hurt me so bad before, I just don’t know if I can go through that again. But the thought of it working out... That hadn’t even really entered my mind.

I nab another piece of popcorn, tossing it in my mouth and chewing it slowly.

“Just show up to his house?”

“That’s what you did last time, right?”

“Yea.”

“And he didn’t leave you again when you left without putting out?”

I laugh, my nose crinkled in distaste.

“Well, no. I had to keep seeing him at work. Though...”

Now I have her full attention. Joanna turns and looks at me curiously.

“Well, it’s just... before we got the call, we were in my office and...”

“And... oh my God, you were making out in your office?”

My cheeks are burning with embarrassment. I’ve never really had another girlfriend to talk about sex stuff with. Not that there had been any sex stuff to tell before now. I’ve been too busy focusing on just staying above level to date, not that I had a lot of interest in it anyways.

“Holy fuck. You guys screwed?”

I sputter, shaking my head, my face hidden from her.

“We... No. I mean, almost, but then the call came...”

“Awkward,” she said with a half-smile. “Talk about a massive cock-block.”

I throw a pillow at her, hitting her in the side of her head, “Joanna! Your mouth is getting filthier by the minute.”

She throws it back at me, threatening to knock over my popcorn before I catch it just in time.

“Yea, well, you’re the one screwing your step-bro, so I’m hardly the dirtiest one here,” she teases back, her words so light and lacking in judgement. It’s a relief to talk about it, to hear it said so plainly, and I lick my lower lip, drawing it into my mouth.

“So you think he’d like if I just dropped over?”

“Hell yea. Damn, if my mom died, I’d be desperate for a distraction. Especially if I were a guy. It’s not easy dealing with that, especially by yourself, you know?”

I nod, taking a deep breath.

“You don’t mind if I go?”

She rolls her eyes.

“Get out of here. You don’t need my permission to sleep with him. Just be careful.”