The way his good eye twitches confirms that.
“Niko—”
“Mikhail,” I snap as I throw up a hand. “I’mMikhail here,dickhead, and you need to remember that.”
Dimitri frowns as he leans against the bathroom door. “Why the fuck are you going by that name?”
“Why are you here, Volkov?”
He grits his teeth and straightens up, using the back of his hand to wipe his mouth. “Don’t.”
“Don’t,what?” I laugh morbidly and shake my head. “Don’t get shitty with you? I think I have every right to after you betrayed me, tried to kill me, then went no contact for almost two years. So, let me ask you again,why are you here, Volkov?”
Dimitri just stands there staring at me for what feels like an eternity, his mask slipping into place even if I can tell he hasn’t put his walls up again.
Which is strange.
He’s angry with me but only over the way I’m talking to him, over my reaction to seeing him, and how negative it is. Aside from that, I can tell that he’s still relatively open, he’s receptive, and whether I want to admit it or not, I can feel how hopeful he is.
Hopeful of what, I don’t know, because the truth of our situation is a lot heavier than he seems to think it is.
“Why are you going by that name?” He pulls a pack of cigarettes from inside his jacket, sticking one between his teeth and lighting it with a match while keeping eye contact with me. “And why the mask?”
“I’m sorry, what part ofyou betrayed me and tried to kill mearen’t you understanding? Maybe how it relates to my shitty attitude, or the bond you don’t give a fuck about but still seem to think matters to me?”
Dimitri clenches his jaw, the muscle ticking along the sharp line as he exhales through his nose. “I never said that.”
“The gun in my face said otherwise.”
“It’s not that simple, Niko.”
“Oh my god,” I say with a sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose while I close my eyes. “You can’t even follow basic instructions. Don’t fucking call me that.”
“It’s your goddamn name, Nikolai.”
“Not here!” I snap. “Get that through your thick skull!” Then I pause, annoyed as fuck that I’m even entertaining this bastard right now. “You know what, how about we just go back to no contact? We did fine with that for almost two years and I see no reason to change it.”
We stand there quietly for a few moments, staring at each other in anger, both of us ready to go to war despite the silence that stretches between us.
I don’t know what cruel, twisted game the universe is playing with me, but it would be really fucking cool if it stopped. I haveenough bullshit to navigate between Liv and Rune, Styx and god knows who else since I obviously don’t know what it means to live a simple life. The last fucking thing I need, or want, is this asshole sweeping in to complicate everything on an entirely new level, and quite frankly, my fucking heart can’t take much more.
Despite how goddamn angry and hurt I am, how confused I am, I still love this man so much, and it’s killing me to watch the same emotions pass over his bruised and bloody face. Especially when it feels like fixing it could be so easy.
I can’t let him know that, though.
With an exasperated sigh, I push a hand back through my hair and ask, “Why are you here, Dimitri? How did you find me?”
“I wasn’t looking for you.”
I flinch but try to hide how that statement affected me. “Did Boris send you to finish the job? Carry out the one and only hit you never made good on?”
He takes another long drag of his cigarette and shakes his head. “He doesn’t know where I am.”
Yeah fucking right.“So, what? You went looking on your own then? You can’t really expect me to believe this was all a coincidence.”
“Alexei is my cousin. I came out here…” Dimitri trails off, dropping his stare briefly before he shakes his head. “It has nothing to do with you.”
I can feel myself getting angry all over again, a new level of rage simmering right under my skin over that bullshit lie. Whatever reason he had for leaving New York is connected to me in some way, it has to be, and if it’s not so he can kill me, it must just be to torture me. Then again, if he wanted to, Dimitri could have found me at any point over the last twenty months to do that. Since he hasn’t, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I can’t see through his bullshit as easily as I used to. It’s entirely possiblehis showing up in Minneapolis has nothing to do with me. I bet he hasn’t even given me a second thought since he put a couple of bullets in me. I bet he…oh, hell no.
