The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2) (11 page)

Dimitri snatched the paper from his hand in passing and looked to Ava. “Let’s go.”

She was staring at him, her green eyes enormous with shock.

“What?”

She started to say something, but seemed to think better of it and just shook her head.

After paying for her meal—and leaving a generous tip—they left the diner. They got back into the car and drove in the opposite direction from the cabin.

“This isn’t the way back,” Ava said.

“We need to change cars,” he said.

“Why?

Rather than answer, he pushed the bunched wad of paper into her lap. “What were they showing you?”

Ava smoothed the paper out the best she could before flipping to the spot. “This month’s bikini girl.” She found the page and showed him the scantily clad woman in a bright, orange bikini. “They wanted to know if my breasts were as firm as hers and if I’d let them compare. Quite rude if you ask me. I mean, who does that in a diner?”

They were, he thought absently. Ava’s breasts couldn’t be matched by any woman. But that was a discussion for another day.

“Is there anything else in there?”

Seconds passed as she went from article to article, head rocking slowly from side to side. “I don’t see … oh, wait!” She stopped on something and began reading.
“Authorities are on the lookout for the persons involved in the shooting late last night that left two unidentified men dead at the East End Hotel. Cameras at the hotel show a woman being dragged off by who the authorities are considering as the suspect to the …
oh my God! That’s me! Dimitri, it’s my picture!”

Carefully, he pulled onto the shoulder of the road and took the paper from her trembling grasp. He scanned the article carefully and the found the only mention of him as an unknown dark man. Ava, on the other hand, had been mentioned by name and even wielded a picture of her, bright and smiling into the camera. It gave her description, along with her job at
Chaud Magazine
. What they didn’t mention was John Paul or her mother, which momentarily hit him as odd, but not enough to dwell on.

“I didn’t kill those men,” Ava gasped, looking dangerously pale under the green tinge of her skin.

Dimitri shook his head. “You’re not their suspect. They only want to talk to you.”

What he didn’t tell her was that this also put her face on the Most Wanted hit list for the person whose men Dimitri had shot the night before.

“I need to call John Paul,” she said firmly, but with an undertone of terror. “And Robby. They will have seen this. They will…” she broke off with a sound between a gasp and a sob.

Wordlessly, Dimitri took out his phone and passed it to her. The flicker of surprise on her face told him she hadn’t expected that, but she took the phone quickly and dialed.

“Don’t tell them where we are,” he warned her. “We don’t know who is listening. Ava.” He put a restraining hand on her arm, stopping her from hitting talk. “I mean it.”

She nodded. “I won’t.”

Resorted to believing her, he let go and sat back in his seat. The paper was tossed into the backseat and he pulled back onto the deserted road.

“Dad? It’s me.”

Dimitri couldn’t hear the exact words coming from the other end, but the volume of John Paul’s exclamation echoed into the air in an intelligible garble.

“No, I’m okay,” Ava assured him, sounding horribly false even to Dimitri’s ears. “I’m with Dimitri. He saved me last night from those men.”

The response was lower, calmer, but firm. He was no doubt telling Ava to tell him where she was.

His theory proved correct when Ava said, “I honestly don’t know where we are, but I’m safe. I promise I am. I just needed to call you and…” she broke off abruptly, then, “No, I understand that. I do, but Dimitri … yes, but…”

There was a stretch of silence on her end.

“All right.” She whispered at last, pulling the phone from her ear. She glanced sideways at Dimitri. “He wants to talk to you.”

He’d expected as much, and didn’t bother concealing his deep exhalation as he put the call through the car speakers.

“Yeah?” he said in the way of greeting.

“What the hell have you done?”
was John Paul’s immediate response.

Dimitri shook his head when Ava opened her mouth. Didn’t matter. John Paul wasn’t done.

“If anything happens to her, Tasarov, I will personally put you so far into the ground, the earth’s core will melt your bones.”

“Dad!” Ava cried, horrified.

John Paul either didn’t hear her, or chose to ignore it.
“I have spent the last sixteen years keeping her away from your bullshit, away from that world, and now, she is at the very center of a nationwide manhunt. Every dirty bag in the country is looking for her, because of you.”

“Dimitri had nothing to do with any of this!” Ava protested.

Dimitri put his hand up to stop her.

“He knows what he’s done,”
John Paul hissed, livid fury a white hot iron in his voice.
“Bring her back. Now.”

It was now or never, Dimitri thought, gripping the wheel more securely between his hands.

“What’s in it for me?”

The silence rolled through the car with the same intensity as an approaching storm. It rose in dark, electric currents that had all the hairs on Ava’s arms lifting. A chill rippled along her spine with serrated fingers. She shivered.

“What?”
Calm, so much eerie calm in a single word, it terrified her.

“You want her back, but I also want something,” Dimitri replied with a curtness that suggested they were discussing a matter that meant very little to him. “I think I have the bigger bargaining chip, don’t you?”

Ava sat in horror as the conversation unfolded. The flippant disregard cut deep, leaving jagged claw marks on her soul, but it was the implication of what he was saying, the emphasis on her life that had her staring at the man next to her, horrified.

“You won’t hurt her,”
John Paul countered after a heartbeat.

Dimitri laughed, the sound actually amused. “Based on what? Some ridiculous few months a hundred years ago? I’ve worked very hard to be where I am and to get what I want. Ava barely means a thing to me anymore.”

John Paul was silent long enough to make her heart skip over. The absence of his immediate resolution had her stomach jittering. All her life, he’d been her knight, the one with all the answers to all her problems. To hear nothing when her life was in danger made her want to cry.

But was she? She glanced back at Dimitri, at his cool, confident profile, and really wondered if he would hurt her. It had been eight years, but he wouldn’t. She had to believe he wouldn’t. No. Absolutely not. Whatever he was playing at, it was to rile John Paul, because even while he was discussing her life as though it meant less to him than the flicking of an ant off a picnic blanket, she had never felt more safe. Maybe that made her a lunatic, but she stood by it.

Then another thought occurred to her—John Paul knew. He knew about her and Dimitri. How? She had no idea, but he seemed unconfused by Dimitri’s backhand response.

“What do you want?”

If the question pleased him at all, Dimitri’s expression never altered. His eyes remained focused on the road, slightly narrowed as he came to a rolling stop at a four way, glanced in all four directions and then turned the wheel right down a long stretch of dirt. He never even peeked at her.

“You know what I want,” he said at last.

Then, to her absolute shock, he disconnected the conversation.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “You can’t just tell someone you’re going to kill their daughter and then hang up.”

“That’s how negotiation works,” he told her quietly. “If he wants to see you again, he’ll have to think about what I want and call me back.”

Ava was silent for a long moment, possibly too long, because he shot her a quick, sidelong glance before focusing on the road again.

“Would you really?” she asked, so quietly even she had trouble hearing it.

“What?”

She raised her voice a notch. “Would you kill me if he says no?”

She had to give him credit when he said nothing for a long stretch of time. It made her think he was considering it, debating how to explain to her that he meant none of it.

“Yes.”

Ava blinked, momentarily too distracted by her own swirling confidence that it took a full second to understand his response.

“What?”

He peeked at her, a quick twist of his head before looking away. “I would if he doesn’t do what I say.”

Ava stilled. “You’re lying.”

His shoulders lifted with his deep inhalation. When the air came out, it was with a heavy sense of exasperation.

“It’s been eight years, Ava. I’m not the man you once knew.”

“So, what then?” she snapped. “What kind of man are you now, eh? The sort that beats women? Kills them? Do you get off on the torture of children? Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Doesn’t matter what you believe.”

She refused to let it slide that easily. “I heard what you said back there, at the restaurant to that man. I heard what you called me.”

He turned left down yet another length of road into even more endless nothing.

“Christ, I was caught up in the moment,” he grumbled. “Didn’t mean a damn thing.”

“You’re a liar!” she shot at him. “You said yourself you’d never hurt me. Did you get caught up in the moment then, too?”

“Yes.”

Ava folded her arms. “All right then, Mr. Big, Bad Killer, go on then. Hurt me. Let’s see it.”

“Ava…”

“No, really. I’m calling you out.”

“Stop it.”

“Can’t do it, can you?”

The car came to a violent, shrieking stop in the middle of the road. Clouds of dust plumed up behind them. Ava pitched forward and only just caught herself on the dash.

Dimitri practically turned all the way in his seat, his eyes molten pools of dark, coiling rage. “Knock it off!” he growled. “Everything I said was to get you to shut up and do what I say until I can get rid of you. That’s what all this is about. You’re a means to an end, Ava. Things will never go back to the way they were between us. Those days are over, or was I not clear when I left? So, whatever stupid idea you have in your head about me loving you, get it out now, because I don’t care. Not about you. Not about what happens to you. Not about how I send you back to John Paul. Understand?”

Not a muscle worked by the time he finished. Every nerve, bone, fiber of her body had crystalized. She’d become a sculpture of ice, frozen to her seat as he sat back, his expression never altering.

Her heart hurt. It was odd because she’d expected the useless thing to be clutched in his bloody hand where he’d torn it from her chest. But it twisted and bled like he’d actually stabbed her. She honestly never thought anything could hurt more than the time he’d left, yet this was worse. The pain was so much more vivid. Maybe she’d lathered herself in a balm of ignorance the last time, the foolish ignorance that maybe it wasn’t what it seemed. There was no salve now, just a cold slap of reality.

“I … understand,” she whispered, finding her voice from the bottom of some distant well.

He hesitated. It was no more than a split second, but then he was slamming down on the gas and nothing more was said.

John Paul never called back. It made her wonder if maybe he didn’t have Dimitri’s number, or if the thing Dimitri wanted would take a long time to obtain. Whatever it was, she wished he’d hurry. Every hour that passed was a new form of torture. It didn’t matter that she’d locked herself up in her room and left him to stomp about below. His very existence in the same air space was suffocating her. She tried to sleep. She crawled beneath the itchy blankets and wedged herself against the lumpy mattress, desperate for sleep to come, to take away the endless hours until she could go home, but each bout of slumber seemed only seconds long and left her edgy and miserable.

That was when the tears came. They flooded down her cheeks in a maddening rush of emotions she was powerless to stop. Each flow burned a hot path, making the skin feel tight and itchy. She tried to wipe them, tried to stifle them with the pillow she crushed to her face, but they just kept coming until she was certain she’d fill the entire room.

She wasn’t entirely sure why she was crying. Despite everything, she wasn’t scared. She didn’t believe Dimitri would hurt her, or that John Paul wouldn’t do everything in his power to see her safely home. In all reality, the entire situation was more bothersome than frightening. Yet, she couldn’t stop the stupid tears. It was irritating.

Maybe it was seeing him again. That had certainly been a mind fuck. She’d just begun to get used to the idea of not being with him ever again. Maybe it was anger and a mixture of hurt. It was hard to tell when everything was all tangled together inside her. Seeing him again had definitely brought on things she’d fought to repress, things like that morning, of waking up and finding him gone. The countless voicemails that went unanswered, the hours spent at their favorite meet up spot waiting for him, the nights curled up in bed wondering what she’d done wrong. Then the weeks that passed, the months, the years, and finally the conclusion that he wasn’t coming back. Maybe it was the absence of closure, the unanswered questions, the unhealed wounds. He’d left a crater in her and that was bound to have screwed with her emotions. 

A soft click had her head coming up. It was incredibly loud in the crackle of nothing only nature could conjure. Ava had always hated that weird, eerie whisper the absence of civilization held. John Paul had tried to take her camping once, but he was no better at it than she was and they never did it again, which had been a relief for both of them. But the snap of locks tumbling into latch had her bolting upright. Her head snapped in the direction of the door, still shut, but holding a sinister edge to it now.

“Dimitri?”

Tossing back the blanket, she sprinted to the door. Her hand closed around the knob. She twisted and yanked. Nothing happened.

“Dimitri!” She smacked the wood with the palm of her hand. “Unlock the door!”

In the distance, from somewhere below, a door shut. An engine started. Twigs and leaves crunched as a car rolled back.

“Don’t leave me here!” she shrieked.

Nothing answered back, not even the wind. The house sat in a morbid stillness that made her think of every horror movie she’d ever seen that started with a group of idiots going to a cabin in the middle of nowhere and unleashing something terrible. It didn’t help that she had absolutely no idea if he was even coming back. For all she knew, the exchange had been made and she would be left there until John Paul came to get her. She wasn’t entirely certain she could survive until morning in a haunted cabin with a weird smell.

Chest thumping with dread, she took a step back. Then another. She kept going until her knees caught the edge of the mattress. She sat heavily, making the mattress springs jingle.

It was impossible to tell how long she waited. It felt like hours. Like the rest of the house, the room was a square, colorless box with a metal bed, a dresser, and a nightstand. There was an empty closet in one corner that was something straight out of a horror movie and a window that was painted shut despite her many efforts to try and get it open. The rest of the place was decorated in fine strings of cobweb and dust. It was evident that no one had spent any length of time there since it was built. It wasn’t cared for properly. The air was stale and thick with the sour stench of decay. The smell of whatever had died in that place was beginning to make the climb from downstairs. It hadn’t been as bad when they’d arrived, but it was all she could focus on. It was a physical force seeping from the walls and creeping out from beneath the door.

Maybe it was a body, a human body, she mused. Or maybe it was the normal stink of nature. She wasn’t sure, nor was it something vastly important in the scheme of things. Her bigger concern was the full bladder she’d been studiously trying to ignore for the better part of forever. Without her phone, she had no real idea how long it’d been. She was so dependent on technology that she didn’t even own a bloody watch. But the way she was beginning to squirm, it had been longer than an hour.

“Fuck!” she moaned quietly to herself, and wondered if she would need to start doing her business in the closet. But did she trust the closet not to eat her alive? That was the real question.

She hopped to her feet and began to pace, busying her mind with the cracks in the ceiling and the number of times it took her to get from one wall to the other.

It was during the fortieth pace when the lock on the door clicked and the knob rattled. Ava expected John Paul, or even Jarvis, but Dimitri stood in the darkened doorway, looking particularly sinister with his broad shoulders caped in shadows.

“You locked me in!” she exclaimed, savage in her outrage. “I nearly died!”

Not waiting for a response from him, she shouldered past and bolted for the bathroom. The door slamming echoed through the hallway, ringing of her desperation.

“Asshole!” She kept yelling all the while doing her business. “Next time, I’m shitting on your bed!”

There was silence, but she knew he was there, no doubt still standing by her open door, waiting for her.

“What if there was a fire?” She washed her hands and emerged. “What if I was possessed by the lost souls trapped in this place?” She’d been right. He was exactly where she’d left him. “Have you any idea how hard it is to exorcise a demon?”