Page 11 of Bloody Lace

“So make a deal with me.” He smiles, as handsome as any devil. “Pretend to be my wife, and I’ll cover every cost of fixing this place for you. I’ll restore it however you like. No expense will be spared. And in return?—”

“I hand over my life to you?” I shake my head. “That’s too steep a cost, even for?—”

“Not forever,” Dimitri clarifies. “Just until my father passes. He’s elderly, and not well, but he still has an iron hand in a good deal of the Bratva’s business. When he’s gone, there will be no one to challenge me. I’ll give you a divorce, and we’ll go our separate ways. I’ll be free to pursue a different marriage of my choice, or not, as I prefer—and you’ll have your shop back. And,” he pauses, still holding my gaze. “I will make sure these men leave you alone. You’ll have my protection. They won’t target you again, not when you’re my wife.”

“They offered me protection, too.” I glare at him. “First I was being extorted for money, and now for marriage.”

“Do you want to marry one of them?” Dimitri chuckles, and I narrow my eyes.

“It wasn’t offered.”

“Would you have said yes? I’m hurt.” He presses a hand to his chest, and I fight the urge to slap him. I’m not in a jokingmood in the least, but he seems to be able to find some levity in all of this.

“No. I just—” I let out a long breath. “I’m in your territory, you said. My shop was destroyed because ofyourproblems, and I’m supposed to giveyousomething for helping me?”

“We both have a problem. We can be each other’s solution.” Dimitri looks at me, unwavering. “I could simply fix up your shop. But they’ll only attack it again, seeing that it clearly matters to me. Or, I can offer you better protection. I can keep you safe until all of this is resolved.”

I stare at him, trying to make sense of it. “It matters to you?” I repeat those few words, shaking my head. “Why? Why does this matter to you?”

Dimitri takes a step closer, enveloping me in his scent, making me feel briefly dizzy. My heart beats a little faster, my pulse leaping into my throat, and I swallow hard, looking for the resolve that I had that night at the party, the resolve to keep this man at arm’s length. But it’s already wavering. If he could help me?—

He reaches out, and his thumb brushes against my cheekbone, wiping away a mark of soot. “Because, Evelyn,” he says quietly?—

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the night I met you.”

5

EVELYN

An hour later, I’m sitting on the edge of my bathtub, my head spinning. In the crack of light through the half-open door, I see Buttons’ snout poking up against it, his soulful brown eyes watching me. The first thing I did when I walked into my apartment was sink onto the floor and cry, and for probably twenty minutes, he just laid in my lap while I sobbed.

Now I need a shower, and to think, but I haven’t been able to get far enough to do either.

What am I going to do?

Dimitri gave me a ride back to my apartment, although I insisted he drop me off two streets away, since I’m not comfortable with him knowing where I live yet. He’d tried to argue, saying that it was ridiculous, since he’d offered me marriage only a half hour before.

I told him that I hadn’t said yes yet, and slammed the door shut in his face.

It wasn’t the most polite way to handle it, considering his offer. But in that moment, overwhelmed with grief and confusion, I didn’t really care.

Now, I’m wondering if I should actually consider what he suggested.

“It’s insane,” I whisper, and Buttons noses the door open, squirming across the tile until his nose is pushed up against my ankle. I reach down, scratching between his fluffy white ears, and let out a sigh, twisting around to start the shower. The sooner I can get clean, the better I’ll be able to sort through this.

Maybe.

It feels like my entire world has been upended and scrambled in the space of just a few short hours. It’s not just the loss of my shop, which would be devastating enough all on its own, but it’s all the rest of it, too. It’s the realization that I’ve been caught in the middle of a gang war that has nothing to do with me, between organizations that I didn’t even know existed until today. It’s the offer of marriage from a man I don’t even know. The possibility that if I said yes, I could have everything I lost back, and more.

And on top of that, the fact that he clearly remembered me. Hethoughtabout me, over the last year. A man like that, wholookslike that, with the money and influence he has—I can’t lie and say it isn’t flattering. But it’s also alarming.

I push myself off of the edge of the shower, stripping out of my party clothes and letting them fall to the floor. I’ll have to get them dry-cleaned, and even then, I wonder if the smell of char will ever completely get out of the leather and wool. I wonder if I’ll even ever want to wear them again, or if that outfit that I was so excited for will always remind me of the night that my entire world fell apart.

I tip my head back under the hot water, wanting it to soothe me, but it does unfortunately little to quiet my racing thoughts. The last few hours have felt like days, and I’m so utterly exhausted that halfway through scrubbing the soot and smell off of my skin, my knees feel like they give way and I sink onto theshower floor, tears running down my cheeks again as the water rolls down my back. Next to the shower curtain, I hear Buttons let out a long, mournful sigh—and then he barks, jumping up, nails clicking on the wood floor as I hear the sound of the front door opening.

“Evie?” Dahlia’s voice rings through the apartment, a little wobbly, which doesn’t surprise me. She’s got to be more than a little tipsy, by this point in the night. The party was still going on when I left?—

The party.I realize she shouldn’t even be here. I’d left, telling her there was an emergency at the shop, without being clear about what was going on. I hadn’t wanted to scare her, or make her feel like she needed to leave her own party—the same reason why I hadn’t texted or called her yet to tell her what happened. I’d planned to tell her in the morning.

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