Page 14 of Craving Dahlia

Even before, I didn’t like wearing suits. I reluctantly put one on a couple times a year when absolutely necessary, for weddings and funerals, and dodged every gala and party that I could. Dimitri was the eldest, anyway, so he was the face of the family. I was the fists. The younger brother. The one who got blood on his knuckles and dirt under his nails so that Dimtri and our father could keep their hands clean.

I wonder how dirty his hands have gotten in the last five years. I wonder how dirty either of them were willing to get, in order to try to find me.

I wonder if they tried at all. If they did, they failed. And I haven’t been able to let go of the cold anger that writhes in my gut every time I think about it.

It’s unfair, because I don’t know for sure that theydidn’ttry. For all I know, Dimitri mightstillbe trying to find out what happened to me. But I don’t think that’s true, because if he was, he would have found me not long after I made it back to the States.

He would have known that I was back in New York, that’s for sure. Even if he hadn’t managed to ping me before then, he has eyes all over this goddamned city, especially now that our father is dead and he’s thepakhan. He stopped looking for me at some point. I feel sure of that. And I don’t know if he tried at all.

He’s my brother. I should give him the benefit of the doubt. But I lost that ability years ago. It was stripped away from me with my dignity, with pieces of my skin, with the chunks of my soul that I lost, too. Drained out of me with my blood, that I watched swirling down a drain in a tiled room over and over again.

My body survived, but I’m not sure how much ofmeis left. I felt dead, even after I escaped. Hollow. I haven’t felt alive since, not until?—

The other night.

My entire body prickles as if I’ve neared a live wire, my cock twitching instantly to life at the memory of the woman I spent Friday evening with.Dahlia. A mistake, because I was right about one thing.

I haven’t been able to forget her.

She’s been on my mind constantly since I stormed out of her apartment. Her sweet, smoky vanilla scent. The softness of her hair wrapped around my fist. The taste of her, slick like honey and just as delicious. The shape of her body in my hands, and that tight, wet fucking pussy. I’ve come innumerable times in the last few days, jerking off to the memory of her, her black lace panties wrapped around my cock. I used them until they were stiff with my cum, laundered them with my clothes, and jerked off with them again.

It was a mistake to fuck someone again at all. Like tasting a steak after years of surviving on scraps, my body is starving for more. I’ve been relentlessly hard, aroused to the point of painmore than I’ve been in years, my body demanding what it’s been denied for so long. And yet—I haven’t sought out anyone else.

The memory of her is still too close. Toogoodto replace with another woman. Everything about her felt like the first hit of a drug you’ve never taken before. Intoxicating, a high that I’ll never be able to replicate—not least of all because of the wayshereacted. Like she’d never been fucked properly before, just like I suspected. Like she was experiencing that kind of pleasure for the first time. She wasn’t a virgin, but I taught her something new all the same.

It’s taken everything in me not to go back to her apartment and fuck her again. But if there’s one lesson I’ve taken with me from everything that’s happened, it’s that repeating a mistake is the stupidest fucking thing I could do. And I know if I went back to her again, I’d end up keeping her in bed for days. I’d tie her to her fucking headboard, blindfold her, and leave her there to use her when I pleased. I’d find out how many times in a row we could both come.

Instead, it’s better to get her out of my system—exactly like a drug that I shouldn’t use again. I reach down, adjusting my now stiff cock, and let out a heavy sigh, running one tattooed hand through my hair. It flops to one side, and I sigh again.

There’s hair pomade in the bathroom. I walk across my hotel room, my fingers flicking open my belt as I go. If I’m going to take another five minutes to fix my hair, I might as well make it ten, and lessen the chance that I’m going to be at my father’s funeral with a stiff cock, thinking about the first woman I’ve come with in five years.

Fifteen minutes later, I head down in the hotel’s elevator, my hair fixed and my head slightly clearer. I need a clear head to be on my guard. Five years is a long time, and I don’t know who Dimitri is any longer. Loss changes men. Power changes them. I’m prepared for my brother to be someone I don’t recognize,any more than I recognize myself in this suit. And I tell myself that it won’t hurt, if he is.

Nothing can hurt me, any longer. The men who carved out my heart long ago.

There’s no town car waiting for me. I haven’t contacted Dimitri. Maybe it’s a shit thing to do, showing up at our father’s funeral without a warning, but I want the shock value. I want to see his face when his long-lost brother walks into that gathering of people, without giving him time to decide what expression he’ll have. That single moment when he sees me will tell me more about the truth of things than anything else. If he’s shocked, if he’s angry, if he’s emotional—whatever he feels, it will reveal something. Even if he feels nothing at all.

I hail a cab, giving the driver the address of the cemetery before leaning back in the seat. Dahlia has even ruined cabs for me—all I can think about when I slide into one now is her kneeling between my feet, looking up at me with her mascara running as I slammed my cock into her throat and came in her mouth. Andfuckif I hadn’t forgotten how good that particular pleasure was until I rediscovered it with her.

Forcing the thought away, I look out at the snowy New York cityscape instead. This part of town, the glamorous part, was never my scene. I liked the grittier areas—Hell’s Kitchen, the Bronx, even Chelsea before it started getting gentrified. I liked the dirt and the blood and the smoke. Thetruthof people, no matter how much it hurts.

Or at least I thought I did, until I got slapped in the face with a painful truth of my own. One that I never saw coming until it was far, far too late.

My fingers dig into my thighs, and I curl my hands into fists, banishing all of the memories. None of them will do me any good today. I need to focus on seeing my brother again. On whether ornot I think I can go back to being part of this family that I lost, and whether or not there’s even a place for me here any longer.

If Iwantthere to be. Or if I just want to put all this behind me, and go somewhere else. Disappear as much as a man who’s been marked by this life in more ways than one ever can. If I want to try to start over, even though I can’t shed the memories of what happened.

The cab pulls up near a stand of barren trees at the edge of the cemetery, and I hand the driver two folded, hundred-dollar bills. “Keep the meter running,” I tell him, because I have no actual idea what will happen when Dimitri sees me. If I’ll want to stay, or if my brother’s reaction will make me want to walk away and leave all of this behind for good.

The cemetery looks colder than anywhere else in New York, a tableau of dark branches stretching out against the grey sky, earth with the grass dead and gone for the season, and the endless grey of gravestones, most of them barren of any flowers or gifts left behind. In this season, most of all, it’s easy to forget the dead. To not come out and leave something for them, when it means being cold yourself, braving the frigid air and chilly wind for those who no longer feel it.

I tug my suit jacket down, the black wool coat that I threw over it billowing out around me as I walk. I see Dimitri before he sees me, standing next to a black-garbed minister, a beautiful woman with inky dark hair and pale skin standing next to him in a black dress, heels, and black peacoat. I see two other men who I recognize—an older man with a craggy face and the buttery hair of a redhead gone white, the leader of the Irish mafia here in New York, Padraig Gallagher. And next to him, Antony Gallo, an olive-skinned man with a paunch and thinning black hair, the don of New York’s Italian mafia. My father had an alliance with them, I know, and he must have maintained it over the years. They must be here to pay their respects, as well.

The others standing a bit further back are men who worked for my father—and who now work for Dimitri, I suppose. I see Vik, Gus, Pyotr, and a few other, younger men who I don’t recognize. For a moment, my steps slow, and I have a strange urge to turn and walk back to the cab before Dimitri or anyone else sees me. To disappear again, and stay gone, since none of them right now know that I’m alive.

I’m late, I can see that—the grave is dug, and there’s no coffin sitting above it. I hesitate, stepping back behind one of the large trees, unsure if I want Padraig and Antony to know I’m alive. Once upon a time, I would have had no suspicions of them, but I’m suspicious of everyone now. There’s no one left in my life that I feel certain I can trust, not even my own blood. Not until I know more about what came after.

I stand there, coat tucked behind my legs against the sharp wind, listening to the drone of the minister, most of his words lost to me in that same wind. I don’t much care about what he’s saying over my father’s body, anyway. Dimitri and our father got along well enough, but I often clashed with the old man. I was good enough to knock heads and torture men for him, but the rest of the time, my hotheadedness and rougher edges made me an embarrassment. As if those weren’t the very things that made me good at doing the Yashkov family dirty work.

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