Page 15 of Craving Dahlia

I wait until Padraig and Antony have said their piece, watching them walk across the cemetery towards their waiting cars. When they’re gone, leaving only Dimitri, his men, and the woman next to him at the gravesite, I step away from the tree and stride towards them.

Dimitri is saying something quietly to the woman next to him. His wife—I know that from the research I did. A woman named Evelyn Ashburn, with no connection to any crime family. I can’t help but wonder howthathappened. My brother has always been the kind to do his duty, and I always imagined he’dmarry someone who benefited the family, through either money or connections.

The woman nods, and leans up, kissing him lightly on the mouth before walking away with Gus. I see my brother watch her as she strides back towards one of the waiting cars, Gus just behind her like a menacing shadow, and the look on his face only deepens my curiosity about how my brother ended up with a wife. I know what a man looks like when he’s deeply in love—after all, I was once—and Dimitri watches Evelyn go like he can’t quite breathe as well now that she’s not next to him.

He watches her until the car pulls away, and when he turns back towards the gravesite, that’s when he sees me walking up.

For a second, my brother looks as if he’s seen a ghost. The blood drains from his face, and his shoulders stiffen, a look of utter disbelief etched across his features. His mouth drops open, and for a long moment, neither of us speak.

“Alek.” Dimitri’s voice croaks when he says my name. “Is it really you?”

“It’s me.” I don’t know what else to say, either. There’s no fear on my brother’s face, no indication that he’s worried some dark secret might come to light now that I’ve made it home. Nothing to make me believe that he ever had a hand in it, at least, or made sure I wasn’t rescued. But I never really believed that, anyway.

What Idowant to know are the answers to all the questions that stick in my throat.Did you try to find me? How long? What were you willing to do? And why couldn’t you? What fucking happened?

But none of those questions come out, maybe because deep down, I’m too afraid of the answer. The possibility that it might be that they didn’t try anything at all. That it was my fucking fault, and so it made sense I paid the price.

“What the hell happened tootets?” I ask instead, and Dimitri’s mouth drops into a frown.

“It’s a long story.”

“Is it? Because word on the street is he was sick.” I pause, looking down at the open grave, waiting for the cemetery workers to come and fill it in. What I see makes anything else die on my lips for a moment—I didn’t see a coffin because there isn’t one. There’s only a black ceramic urn at the bottom of the grave. Our father was cremated—and yet he’s being buried in the family plot all the same. “What the fuck is this?”

“A burial.” Dimitri’s face is expressionless, but I catch something in his eyes, a shifting glint that tells me he’s hiding something. “Alek?—”

“You’re burying an urn? Why no coffin? What happened to our father?” The questions come out like gunshots, sharp and abrupt, and I see Dimtri flinch with each one.

“Brother.” He starts to step forward, reaching out to put a hand on my arm, but I retreat a few steps back quickly. “Come back home with me. We’ll sit, talk things out. You can meet my wife?—”

“Evelyn? I don’t need to meet her. But I am curious how that marriage happened.”

There’s a flash of fear in Dimitri’s eyes when I say his wife’s name before he does, and his shoulders go stiff, his eyes narrowing in an instant. “You’ve done your research,” he says coolly, and several paces away, I see Vik and Pyotr’s hands stray towards their guns. A faint echo of something tugs in my chest, like the remembrance of what it feels like to be hurt. My brother doesn’t trust me any more than I trust him, right now.

But then again, didn’t I just go out of my way to get that reaction?

“I wanted to know what I was walking into.”

“Walking into?” Dimitri looks at me with disbelief. “How long have you been back, Alek?Howare you back? And why didn’t you come home the moment…” He trails off, as if he doesn’t know how to describe the circumstances. “I don’t know. We thought you were dead.Everysign pointed to you being dead. This is like seeing a fucking ghost, brother.”

“I’m no ghost.” Although I feel like one, still.

“How long?” Dimitri repeats, and I let out a heavy breath, shoving my gloved hands deeply into the pockets of my overcoat. There’s a gun beneath it, but I don’t think I’ll need to go for it. And even if I do, I’m willing to bet I can still outshoot any of theselokhi.

“Six months that I’ve been back in the States. I came back to New York a few days ago. After I found outotetswas dead.” My gaze drifts back to the urn, sitting in the too-big grave. “Tell me what happened, Dimitri.”

“Tell me what happened to you.” Dimitri’s blue eyes meet mine. Seeing them brings back memories I thought I’d forgotten, lost in a haze of pain. Memories of the fractious relationship between our parents, of our father accusing our mother of stepping out on him, all because my eyes were hazel instead of the typical Russian blue or green. As if our father hadn’t cheated on her a thousand times over.

I stare at him, unspeaking. I have no desire to retread the past. No desire to unpack five years of pain, when I don’t even know yet if my family tried to spare me it. Dimitri says they thought I was dead, but how should I believe that? What reason do I have to think that he’s telling the truth?

There was a time when I would have trusted him above anyone else in the world. But I no longer believe that love is a barrier to betrayal.

Dimitri lets out a heavy sigh when he sees that I won’t give in. “It’s a story better told behind familiar walls,” he says quietly, his voice low, and I shrug.

“There’s no one else out here.”

It’s just the two of us, and Dimitri’s men. The gravediggers haven’t come back yet to fill it in, and there’s no one else visiting. The wind howls past us, and I can tell Dimitri is cold, but the sight of his discomfort warms something in my chest.

I shouldn’t take pleasure in it. But Dimitri is my big brother. By rights, he should be the one protectingme. But instead, he was the heir, and I was the enforcer. And when I needed him, he wasn’t there.

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