Page 16 of Craving Dahlia

It was my own fucking fault.

I quiet the nagging voice, and focus on Dimitri once again. His face looks older, suddenly, lines at the corners of his eyes, though he’s only a few years older than me.

“Otetswas ill,” he says finally. “But not in the way I let the rumor spread. A fast-moving cancer, was what I told others. One that ravaged him so completely he asked to be cremated instead of given an open coffin, so he’d have some dignity in death. Though he still asked to be buried in the family plot—thus what you see here.” He gestures at the urn sitting at the bottom of the grave.

“So what illness did he really have?” I ask impatiently, shoving my hands deeper into my pockets. I’m not interested in whatever lie Dimitri told others. I’m interested in the truth. What’s causing the flicker of guilt I now see haunting the back of my brother’s eyes.

“He was paranoid.” Dimitri lets out another heavy breath. “He stopped letting me handle things. It was only through my diplomacy that we managed to keep our alliances with the Irish and the Italians. He started looking outside the families for business opportunities.Expansion, he called it. A barrier againsttheir inevitable betrayals, though neither Padraig nor Antony gave us any reason to doubt them. Padraig wanted me to marry his daughter. Our father said no. Antony suggested the same, and our father turned him down, too.”

“So what? How did hedie?” I grit my teeth, frustrated. “I don’t care about your marriage alliances, brother. Clearly you didn’t do what our father wanted, either. That woman you married is no one.”

“Evelyn is mywife,” Dimitri snaps, his tone rising slightly. “So you’ll speak of her with respect, Alek. But no, she wasn’t an arrangement. At least not one that our father made.” He rubs a hand over his chin. “It’s a long story, and I can see you’re losing patience. But I married her to get out of the marriage our fatherdidarrange for me. And he took it poorly.”

A dark suspicion worms its way through me. “Poorly?”

Dimitri’s jaw tightens. “He tried to have Evelyn murdered. The Crows wanted some of our territory. They had her marked from the start, and our father encouraged it. Promised them a bit of what they wanted if they would kill her, so I’d be widowed and able to marry who my father wanted me to.”

A sound like a bark erupts from my mouth, the closest thing to a laugh I’ve heard from myself in over five years, but darker. “You can’t expect me to fucking believe that.” My hands slide from my pockets as I see Vik and Pyotr’s hands shift again. “The fuckingCrows, brother? They’re nothing. A street gang?—”

“You’ve been gone a long time.” Dimtri lets out another sharp breath through his nose. “Barca Valenti took over. One of the sons of Gallo’s formercapo, the one he executed. Although you weren’t here for that, either.”

“No.” The word comes out hard. “I wasn’t.”

Dimitri swallows, looking away, and I can see raw pain in his eyes.For me? Or because he’s guilty over leaving me to die?When he looks back at me, that same heavy look is still onhis face. “The Crows grew after Barca took over. Without our father’s backing, they were still nothing. But with his help, they came close to getting Evelyn. They nearly killed her and our—” He breaks off, his jaw working, and my stomach clenches as I fill in the gaps.

So Dimitri is going to be a father, too.

“I killed Barca,” Dimitri says flatly. His gaze rises, meeting mine. “And I killed our father, for his betrayal. He died in his own bedroom, in private. As much honor as I felt like I could give him, considering what he did. But I wouldn’t bury him in the family plot. He tried to kill my wife, to turn half our men against me. Hebetrayedus, Alek.”

There’s a plea in his voice, begging me to understand. To not blame him for our father’s death, to understand why he did what he did. And there’s a part of me, buried somewhere beneath layers of scar tissue and remembered pain, that does. That can remember when I would have killed anyone to protect the woman I loved most in the world. Even my own father.

But all I feel is a hollow emptiness inside, the wind whistling past my ears echoing through me. “How?” I ask, and Dimitri’s face shutters for a moment, as if he’s trying to reconcile my disinterest.

“A bullet to the head,” Dimitri says finally. “It was quick.”

“What’s in the urn, then?”

Dimitri shrugs. “I told Vik to go to the shelter’s crematorium. I didn’t care what went in there as long as it wasn’t a person.”

I look back down at the grave. A dog’s ashes in my father’s final resting place. I understand the insult, and the depths of Dimitri’s fury, then. I try to feelsomething. Some grief for our father, some anger with my brother, or some sympathy for him. Some anger for what our father tried to do to the woman who is now my sister-in-law. A sense of betrayal that he tried to tear our family apart further.

There’s nothing. I’ve been hollowed out too thoroughly.

I felt something with her.

I shove the thought of Dahlia away before it can take root. Now, of all times, I don’t need to think of the woman I fucked the night before last. And I don’t need to think of her at all. I’ll never see her again. I need to be finished with her, and my fantasies of her, so I can focus on what I’m going to do next.

“Alek.” Dimitri’s voice is calm, weighted with grief, with emotion, with the disbelief of still seeing me standing here, but calm all the same. “Come home. Meet Evelyn. Come stay with us. We’re living at the mansion now. If you don’t want to be so close, I can put you up in my old penthouse. Give you security to make sure you’re safe, while you work things out. Whatever you need?—”

He trails off again, and I can see so many emotions working across his face. Grief and guilt and longing, all at once. Jealousy writhes in my gut, wishing I could still remember what those felt like. What it was like to not be so empty.

“I have a hotel room,” I say abruptly. “I’ll be in touch, if I want to speak with you again.”

“Alek. You’re my heir, for now, until the baby is born. And even then, you’re my brother. You have a place in the family still?—”

“I don’t want any part of it.” I cut my brother off, taking one last look at him. “I’ll call you if I want to speak.”

I turn on my heel, stalking towards the waiting cab. Dimitri calls after me, but the wind tears his words away, and I’m glad. I don’t want to hear them.

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