Page 71 of Ensnared
The lump shifted slightly in response.
"It's time to get up," he tried to sound gentle, but even he could hear the strain of annoyance in his tone.
There was no reply at first, just silence, but he knew to wait.
"Why? It's not like you have a job anymore."
Dominic could hear her throat tightening around the words in a fresh wave of tears.
God give him strength. He stared up at the white ceiling fan in the room and counted the blades three times before answering. "As I told you at least a hundred times now. Dimitri is not dead. Vladimir has a plan. And I do have a job, and right now it's getting out of this bed."Before I go crazy, he mentally added.
The silence stretched between them and he wondered if she would even answer.
The covers shifted revealing her swollen face and teary eyes. It was the most pathetic thing he had ever seen.
Tears glittered in her eyes as she looked up at him. "You keep saying he's alive, but we both saw…" Her words faded and she looked down.
Probably eyeing his shirt for a place to wipe her tears, Dominic thought morosely.
"We both saw what happened," she whispered.
This was a pointless argument. He'd had it countless times with her. They weren't sure what they saw. All they did know was that Dimitri fell after being shot, but that meant nothing. Dimitri was not dead; Dominic was sure of that. Now where the hell he was, was a good question. Why the man was subjecting Dominic to this endless torture and not coming to get his wife was also a good question. Looking down at Eve's sad round face, Dominic was overwhelmed with the urge to either smother her with a pillow and put them both out of their misery or just lock her in the room so she could cry herself to sleep.
Sadly, neither was an option. Sitting up in the bed, Dominic stretched with a groan. Glancing back down at the partially covered lump of a woman he thought about his other bedmate through the night.
"Don't you think it's time to let the cat breathe at least," he asked, lifting the blanket enough to see Mochi still curled up against her stomach.
At four in the morning, the little cat had begun to knead his side like a clump of dough. It was an odd sensation when one was trying to sleep. He supposed he should be grateful it hadn't been on his right side where he had been shot. Lifting his shirt, Dominic eyed the bandage to his flank. Still intact and no blood. That was good. Much better than the day he got shot. It wasn’t until he got both Eve and her brother to a car, which they had kept purposely parked around the corner for occasions like that, that Dominic noticed the extent of his bleeding.
"We can breathe just fine," Eve murmured from beside him.
Nodding, he leaned back against the headboard and stared out the window at the sea. They were only fourteen hours away from Vegas, but it felt like worlds apart. Even without being there, Dominic could sense the turmoil back home. It was like a giant black cloud in their rearview filled with lightning and destruction and it was all coming from one man—Dimitri.
Dominic reached for his phone and looked at the blank notification bar. He wasn't even sure why he reached for it. Like an idiot, he had placed his phone on the coffee table just before the shit hit the fan. It had been lost in the chaos of that night and he had been forced to drive bleeding out to one of the secret caches they had sprinkled throughout the city while checking to make sure they hadn't been followed. As soon as he called the casino and spoke to Anatoliy, his man in charge in his absence, and told him the situation, Dominic received a call ten minutes later from Vladimir's lieutenant. From there things did not go as Dominic had expected. Men were sent out to the house and to him but not to bring them back. They were shuttled off to another private hospital somewhere in the city where they spent a week before being moved again to this house in the forest somewhere at the California and Oregon edge. Under Vladimir's strict orders, they were to wait and make no contact with anyone.
Dominic glanced down at the lump of a woman at his side. That was easier said than done when dealing with an emotional wreck twenty-four-seven. Eve was inconsolable. Nothing he said could penetrate the trauma of seeing Dimitri shot. He tried to explain that the man had been shot before and survived just fine. He tried to explain that she only saw a brief second of gunfire and Dimitri might not have been hit at all. Nothing got through to her. She simply focused on the fact that she was here and Dimitri was not.
Which was a very good concern. Why wasn't Dimitri here? Dominic knew how much the man was obsessed with his newly minted wife. Why would he not reach out to them to check to see if Eve was all right?
Dominic got up from the bed and walked over to the bathroom. It was the same question that had plagued him for a month. He thought of Anatoliy and Petr who were no doubt downstairs taking shifts on walking the perimeter and checking the security footage. They had gotten orders directly from Vladimir to take them out here and to keep them out of contact with anyone. Vladimir was up to something. It was the only thing that made sense. The old bastard loved controlling his captains even halfway around the world.
Washing his hands and face, Dominic stared at himself in the mirror and sighed. Now for the hard part of his day.
Turning to the bedroom, he stopped in the bathroom doorway and glared at the lump on the bed. "Today you're going to actually eat a whole meal and go outside." The lump began to say something but he cut her off. "Let me warn you, I am in the mood to fight you if you resist," he added with a smile he knew she could hear.
Twenty minutes later, they were downstairs in the kitchen eating at the dinner table. The house was clearly out of the eighties with its A-frame design and abundance of exposed wood in the décor. He honestly kind of liked it. Located at the edge of a forest, directly on the beach, and a few miles from town it was a perfect place to stay low. Spooning oatmeal into his mouth, Dominic stared at the siblings on the other side of the table. Ricky was trying to manage Eve's wild curls, a task she had no interest in doing since their escape, while she slowly ate her eggs and toast under Dominic's watchful eye.
God bless the kid. If it weren't for Ricky, Dominic would have drugged Eve weeks ago. Ricky was the one who sat with her each day assuring her both Dimitri and Andrey were okay. Beyond his abysmal taste in men, Ricky was a lifesaver when dealing with his sister.
Managing to get her hair combed out, oiled, and into a ponytail, Ricky took her empty plate to the sink. "We're going to walk down the beach," he announced.
Dominic nodded and met his gaze, sharing a silent message.Make sure she doesn't try to kill herself in the ocean.
Ricky gave him a resigned look in return but nodded nonetheless.
Following them to the porch, Dominic leaned against the wooden railing with his coffee, his gaze fixated on their silhouettes descending the cliffside stairs toward the secluded beach below.
Some time passed before he heard a sound behind him. Dominic had the gun in his hand pointed at the man behind him before the coffee cup hit the ground below. Dimitri stood there in the open balcony doorway. He looked…different. When he first met Dimitri years ago, when he was working for Roman, he had been as he usually was, handsome and well-dressed. Everything Dimitri did had a level of effortless polished sophistication to it. But the man that stood in front of him now was different. Dressed in simple black jeans and a dark blue t-shirt, Dimitri looked like a man who had seen the edge of his humanity—and barely made it back. There was a hardness etched into his features, a rawness Dominic couldn't ignore. The veneer of sophistication was gone, leaving something that bordered on untamed lurking beneath the surface, like an animal that had been let go in the wild for too long.
