Page 37 of Tarnished Reign

Ten minutes later the two men stand and shake hands. The handshake seems like good news at least. Jinx heads my way and as he passes me by, he gives me a small dip of his head and averts his eyes, which is at least a sign of acknowledgment. I offer him a smile in return, but he doesn’t look back at me to see it.

Dimitri does not even glance my way as he heads inside, leaving me alone on the deck. A moment later, however, Alexis appears and sits opposite me as he takes out his phone and starts messing around on it. After a few minutes he curses, swipes the screen, curses again and stares at the screen shaking his head.

“I suck at this game,” he mutters.

“What game is it?” I ask.

“It's a word game. You’re sitting here with your head in a book; want to try?”

“I can take a look, but I warn you that I'm useless at anything like that.”

“You studied English literature, Dimitri said. I would have imagined that you'd be fantastic at word games.”

“Reading and analyzing texts is a totally different skill to being able to guess words from cryptic clues.” I shrug. “I've always been very bad at crosswords.”

“Me too,” Alexis says. “Not Yuri, though. He's brilliant at crosswords. Don't tell him that you learned this from me because he likes to keep it secret. Yuri is so good at crosswords that he has a paid side gig.”

“He gets paid to solve crosswords?”

Alexis chuckles. “No, he gets paid to create them. He has a crossword every week in one of the local Bay newspapers.”

I stare at Alexis, aware that I probably look like a fish with my mouth hanging open. I can't quite get my head around this information. Yuri, big, crude Yuri—who is an enforcer for organized crime—also writes crosswords.

It just goes to show that you never can judge a book by its cover.

“As for Dimitri, he almost has a photographic memory. Not completely, but almost.” Alexis taps his phone distractedly.

“Seriously?” I lean forward and then realize I look overly eager to hear crumbs of information about the boss.

“Yes. Show him a map, and he can remember it for hours. Give him coordinates, and they’re lodged in his head. Perhaps it comes from being in the military, but I think it was probably there before he joined, and it's partly what made him such a good soldier. That and the fact that he speaks so many languages.”

“How many languages does he speak?”

“I lose count, but I know he speaks a couple of the languages the military requires, certainly for the sort of high level work he was doing. He also obviously speaks Russian. He speaks Italian. I think he might speak some French. English, clearly. He picks languages up very easily. The thing about Dimitri is that most people underestimate him. Most of our enemies have no idea how highly trained he was in the military. Most people don't know just how intelligent he is either.”

Alexis looks around to make sure nobody is near. I follow the movement, glad to note that Jinx is at the far end of the deck, back where he was sitting before when he was speaking to Dimitri.

“The other thing about Dimitri,” Alexis says, “is he's always at least two to three steps ahead of the current situation. That's just how his brain works. Me, I'm sitting on this boat right now, and that's where my head's at. Any threats on the horizon? If the answer is no, then I'm happy. Dimitri isn't like that. His brain will already be figuring out what the next move might be from Dorian’s men, followed by our countermove. He can calculate the odds of a situation so fast. It’s amazing to see.”

“I had no idea,” I say.

“Why would you?” Alexis offers me an easy smile. The kind you give to friends. “You don't know him. You don't know any of us.”

“What are the three things you think I should know about him?”

Alexis thinks. “I'd say that the things you should know about him as a guest of his on this boat are that he's absolutely ruthless and determined. As I've already said, he's incredibly intelligent and aware of his surroundings. And finally, I would say for you, a really important thing to know is that he's a man of his word. If Dimitri promises you something, he'll move heaven and earth to keep that promise.”

His words give me a measure of comfort. I had already sensed that was the case, my gut instinct telling me it was so. To hear Alexis say it too is an extra layer of reassurance. Of course, Alexis could be telling me all this because Dimitri asked him to. He could be blowing smoke up my ass and making me fall into a false sense of security, but I don't believe that to be the case.

I finish my coffee and place the cup down. “Well, as you can imagine it's been an extremely tiring few days, and I think I should go to bed.”

“You have the room next to Dimitri’s,” Alexis tells me. “I've moved all your things there. I hope that's okay.”

“Why?” I ask, alarm suddenly hitting me. I might be attracted to the man, but I’m nowhere near ready for anything to happen between us right now. Is that why they moved my things?

“So he can know you are safe. That’s all.”

“Which room is Dimitri’s?” I ask, wondering where on the ship they’ve put me now.

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