Page 69 of Bloody Lace

“Why?” The single word comes out more bluntly than I meant for it to, but Dimitri doesn’t seem to take it the wrong way. He just lets out a breath, rubbing one hand over his mouth as he settles into his chair.

“We didn’t start out as enemies,” he says quietly. “When we first met. Or that night when your shop burned down, when we met for the second time.”

“Enemiesfeels like a strong word,” I start to say, and he shakes his head. I fall silent again, waiting to hear what else he has to say.

“We’re not there yet. But there’s plenty of time left on our marriage’s clock. And we’ve been at each other’s throats. This world is strange to you, and I’ve been strained, trying to maintain what I promised you. Trying to keep you safe.” Dimitri pauses. “I don’t want us to end as enemies. So I want to know more about you. About your world. About what you want while we’re doing—this.”

I blink at him, still startled into silence. I don’t think, in all the dates I’ve been on, that a man has ever asked me so plainly to talk about myself. “I—what do you want to know?”

He pauses, as the server comes by. He orders an old fashioned and I ask for red wine, and we order appetizers of crispy shrimp with a spicy sauce and scallop crostini with balsamic glaze. “What made you decide on fashion?” Dimitri asks as the server walks away, and I pause, thinking back to when I first picked what I wanted to do.

“It’s art,” I say finally. “Dahlia focused on art, too—she did art history. But all of that kind of art, as beautiful as it is, always seemed static to me. Paintings, sculpture, photography—it’s all incredible, don’t get me wrong. I’m wowed by those who are good at it…but fashion felt like living art, to me. Seeing something you designed on the person wearing it, moving, out in the world—it felt like an entirely different kind of art. And it made me excited to create it.”

Dimitri is looking at me as if he’s never seen me before, something soft in his expression that I don’t dare let myself think about for too long. “I’ve never thought of it like that,” hesays, reaching for his drink. “That’s a beautiful way of describing it.”

I feel my cheeks heat. “I would ask you what made you pick your line of work. But I don’t think you did, did you?”

Dimitri chuckles. “No, I didn’t. I was born into this. I suppose I could have gotten out of it, although I can’t say I’ve ever known an eldest son of a mob family who tried to leave and made it out alive.”

“Wow.” I blink at him, startled by the casual way he says it. “That’s—intense. I can’t imagine mylifebeing on the line for my career choices.”

He gives me a lopsided smile. “Well, it’s not exactly a choice then, is it? My younger brother could have taken over, I suppose, if I’d left and chosen not to do my duty. But he died some years back. So even that option was taken away.”

My mouth parts slightly in shock. “I’m—I’m so sorry.”

Dimitri swallows a sip of his drink, and he looks calm, but I can see the tension in his jaw. I’ve begun to notice things like that. Small things, things that feel intimate if I think about them for too long. “It was five years ago. It still hurts, if I let myself linger on it, so I don’t. As with many things in this life.” He sets his drink down, reaching for a piece of crostini and setting it on his plate. “This life is brutal. You become accustomed to the brutality. I don’t know that I’ve really thought about just how much, until I met you and brought you into it. It’s become more—apparent, since then.”

“I’m…sorry?” I don’t know what I should say to that. It sounds as if I’ve made his life more difficult, but he doesn’t look as if that’s what he means. If anything, he just looks…thoughtful.

“No need to be.” Dimitri finishes his drink with a long swallow, nudging it to the edge of the table for the server to see. “It’s good, I think. A reminder to keep the violence in check, when possible. My father was once one of the most brutalpakhans the American Bratva had ever known. He slipped, in his later years. Became more paranoid, his hits based on emotion rather than fact. But I’ve always had it in my mind that I would try to be different. More measured. That I would mete out violence when necessary, but not as a first resort.”

It fits with what I know of him so far. “Like not punishing Gus for my mistake.”

Dimitri’s mouth twitches. “Yes. Like that.”

I reach for a bite of shrimp, unsure of how to feel. He asked me to open up to him, and I did, and he did the same for me. But where does that take us? What can come of this? I don’t know the answer to that. Nor do I know the answer to the question that’s much more frightening: what do Iwantto come of it?

I like him more than I should. More than I could have ever imagined liking a man like him—a man steeped in violence and a culture I can’t begin to wrap my head around, and that I don’t know if I ever want to. I liked him when we first met—his confidence and the gentlemanly sheen over a rougher side just beneath, his sense of humor and the way, when he looked at me, I felt like he wasactuallylooking at me. Trying toseeme, to understand who I really was, and not just who he hoped I’d be.

It was why I ran from him that first night, because I knew I could fall for him. It was why I tried to put up so many barriers between us for this marriage. And yet, he keeps breaking through them.

He still makes me feel the way he did that first night, before I realized what this marriage would mean. And now, sitting at this table with the city skyline stretching out around us, a smile on Dimitri’s lips and feeling like I can breathe for the first time in days—like I’mhappy—I can’t help but wonder what it would be like for this to be real.

For us to go home together tonight, and fall into bed together without guilt, without worrying that it will tie us together in ways we can’t break.

For the ticking clock over our marriage to finally stop counting down.

25

DIMITRI

The morning after the holiday party at the Met, I’m awoken even earlier than usual by a text from Vik, telling me to come down to the warehouse by the docks. I know he wouldn’t send me a message at this hour of the morning unless it was something that I wouldn’t want to wait on, so I get up carefully, not wanting to wake Evelyn, and dress in the semi-dark, texting my driver before heading downstairs.

Last night was torture. At dinner, we talked more than we have in weeks, and at the gala she was happy and bright, talking with Dahlia and sipping champagne and finally agreeing to dance with me after a couple of glasses. I wanted to take her home and take her straight to bed. Which I did, eventually—but nothing happened, other than her falling asleep while I stared at the ceiling, wondering how I managed to get entangled with the one woman in the world who could apparently make me feel this way.

I didn’t know I was capable of it—of having to fight off deeper feelings for someone. I’ve never even come close before. And this—I feel as if I’m constantly having to ward off letting myself fallfor Evelyn, from blurting out things that can only complicate matters far more than either of us are willing to entertain.

Vik is waiting for me when I get down to the docks, smoking a cigarette in the early morning light. He tosses it aside as I get out of the car, grinding it out under his shoe as he turns to me. “We got one of the Crows,” he says gruffly. “One of the guys who was there the day Evelyn almost got snatched. We leaned on him a little, just enough to make sure he really is who we thought. The rest we left for you, boss.”

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