“Go with Dimitri,” he says to Justine after taking down a man to the left of me. “He’ll keep you safe.”
Justine is shaking like a leaf, but no amount of jitters can hide the bob of her head. She’s awarding me a trust I’ve only ever been given from one woman, and it has my thoughts so far away from the carnage prevailing in front of me, I don’t feel the halo of bullets racing my way until one of them shreds through my shoulder.
As images of my wife and children filter through my head, I fall to the ground. My stumble doesn’t come without additional carnage. I take down three perps during my collapse before my gallantry is thwarted by a second bullet ripping through my stomach.
While wheezing through the blood creeping up my windpipe, I roll onto my side so the frantic cries of my wife sounding out of my earpiece aren’t gobbled up by the chaos I was born to rule but sometimes wish I didn’t know. I should have known she’d be listening. She’s too stubborn for her own good, and too fucking caring to ever let me believe I’m walking alone.
“H…elp is coming, Dimi. Sm...ith… dispatch… C… Clover… S…s…stay…”
As Roxanne’s chopped up confirmation that help is on its way trickles into my ears, I allow the peace floating above me to settle around me. Not enough I’ll walk toward the gates of hell anytime soon, but enough I can recall the peaceful expression on Roxanne’s face earlier tonight when she was nuzzled in my chest.
I was born craving chaos. I sought it as often as I did a woman to warm my sheets each night, and created it at every available opportunity—excepttonight. I relished that twenty minutes Roxanne was cradled in my chest so much it was the sole reason I initiated evacuation orders when Smith caught wind of a takeover bid. To ensure my family’s safety, I was willing to be seen as a coward. I would have taken it up the ass for as long as my enemies demanded if it guaranteed they wouldn’t be harmed.
Now I realize that was wrong of me to do.
Roxanne’s past pains are what made her the woman she is today. She loves our children so fiercely because she fought for them with everything she had. Taking away her ability to fight for what she believes in will change her. It will make her bitter like my father, vindictive like my mother, and as evil as the man I once emulated to be.
By hiding her away, I kept her safe as promised, but I also stripped her of who she is.
That’s almost as bad as succumbing to the blackness engulfing me, although it’s nowhere near as headstrong as my final command. “Hand Roxanne the reigns. This is now her monarch.”
For years, women in this industry were seen as worthless. They were disposable, unforgettable, and easily replaceable, then Roxanne was thrust into my life.
She could have destroyed me.
I could have destroyed her.
But together, we created a bedlam not even God himself can control.
She made me stronger, she gave my life purpose, and if she’s half the woman I saw in her eyes when she stood across from me with mascara-stained cheeks and goth-loving attire, she’ll bring the fury of hell to earth to make sure the last image I have of my kids isn’t of them in bulletproof jackets.
8
Roxanne
My breaths come out with a quiver when the expression on Dimitri’s face goes from pained to peaceful. He hasn’t spoken a word since he ordered for me to become the monarch of his realm, but I know he’s still with me. I can feel it in my bones, sense it in the prickling of the hairs on my arms. If the man I loved were dead, I would know it…wouldn’t I?
My watering eyes lift from the tablet I’m never without when Dimitri is on the ‘job’ to Rocco when he says, “Grant me permission to go on field.” His eyes are as wet as mine, his lip just as gnawed. “Let me get him out of there, Rox. Come on, they’re going to fucking slaughter him if you don’t order someone there now.”
“It’s too late,” I reply, shocked I can talk through the despair clutching my throat. We’re not just halfway to the safehouse Dimitri bought when I was laid up in a hospital bed fighting for my life, we’re over sixty miles from Ravenshoe. “Not even a helicopter could get us there before they storm in.”
I twist the screen of the tablet to face Rocco. It reveals there are armed agents stretched down two blocks. They’re about to storm Rico’s apartment building even more perversely than the final three dozen men who swarmed in via the rooftop garden. Smith had every floor covered. He hadn’t considered them entering from above.
“We’ve at least got to try.” As Rocco’s eyes bounce between mine, he adds a plea to the many I see in his eyes. “Do you truly think the feds give a fuck if he dies or not? They don’t give a fuck about him. They don’t give a fuck about anyone. They’ll let him bleed out in the ER just so they can claim they took down Dimitri Petretti.”
“Someone in the bureau cares about him.”
As confusion crosses Rocco’s features, I call Smith’s name.
Forever on alert, he replies remarkably fast. “I’ve called Ellie a dozen times. She isn’t answering.”
I appreciate his blur of the lines, but we need to go well past a favor to get Dimitri out of this alive and without handcuffs circling his wrists. “Call Isabelle Holt.”
Smith exhales a deep breath. “What?” He only spoke one word, but it relays how stupid he thinks I am. “They’re not related.”
“No, Dimitri and Izzy aren’t related. I don’t even know if they know one another, but Rico is her brother, and Dimitri was shot protecting him and her sister-in-law.”
“That’s a stretch, Roxie,” Rocco breathes out, jumping back into the conversation. “But it could work.”
