Paid Justice (Croft Family Mob Series Book 3) Read online

  He was staggered by that.

  Dimitri didn’t understand why, and it embarrassed him, so he tried to cover it with a joke.

  “Want to run away and get married?” he teased.

  She took his hand in hers. “If I wasn’t happily married, you’d be one hell of a catch, Max.”

  Emotion filled his eyes. He got up to move away from her.

  “Please don’t,” she said. “Please don’t run anymore.”

  He stopped.

  “I don’t know how to deal with how you treat me. I’m not accustomed to it, Emma. I feel wrong for enjoying it, like I don’t deserve it.”

  “So what you’re saying is you want me to treat you and your sisters like shit?”

  “No. They don’t deserve to hurt. This is on me, and only me.”

  “Why?”

  He turned and moved at her so fast it was startling, but she’d been a cop, and she was braced for it.

  “Because I’ve done things that would make you hate me. I’m not this,” he said, slapping himself on the chest. “I’m not the good man you’ve pictured me as. I’ve killed, I’ve lied, and I’ve done horrible things. Maximillian is dead because he was a monster. His father made him one.”

  Emma didn’t give up.

  She knew what was on the line with him. If they let him fall, they’d lose him forever. He was family.

  He was theirs.

  “Maximillian isn’t a monster. He’s my friend. He’s my brother, and I love him. You can scare the world, Dimitri, but you won’t scare me away from loving you.”

  He was frustrated.

  He threw the coffee mug at the wall, and it left an ugly brown stain.

  “You don’t know me. I buy women for sex, and I’m an asshole. I don’t deserve your kindness and love. It’s only a matter of time…”

  He stopped.

  Already, he’d said too much.

  She didn’t deserve to carry his burden. That was on him, and him alone.

  Instead, he went to the wall and picked up the broken shards of mug, and of course, she was right beside him. Emma kneeled and helped.

  As he reached for the biggest chunk of ceramic, her hand covered his. Dimitri glanced over at her, meeting her gaze.

  “I won’t ever stop loving you. Why can’t you just accept that? Why can’t you just say ‘I love you too’, and know that in ten years, I’ll still be here? Greyson will still be here. We are your family. You can’t carry this all on your own. You have to let someone in. Let it be me.”

  He stared down at the cut on his finger, and he’d never even felt the pain. That’s how filled with it his life had become.

  Then, as usual, she took care of him.

  Emma took his hand in hers, and she put pressure on it with her own hand to stop the bleeding.

  That spoke volumes.

  Finally, she broke the silence.

  “You have me when you need me. I won’t force you to feel anything for us. When you’re ready, you have a family who will support and help you. This loneliness, Dimitri…it’s self-imposed. You have a chance. If you push it away, that’s on you.”

  She went back to the kitchen and tossed the shards of mug. Then she went and cleaned up the coffee from the wall. When she stood, he was standing there.

  “I don’t know how to be that man. I don’t know how to be part of a family. I watch all of you, and it’s so foreign to me. I’ve never been given that love, Emma. I don’t know why I’m worthy.”

  She saw him struggling.

  “You’re worthy because you are. Every child is worthy of that protection. I can’t go back and fix that, Dimitri, but I can fix the now. Kat needed a role model to help her be a wife. Natasha needed to see that she deserved to be safe, and she found that too.”

  “I don’t know what I need,” he admitted. “I’m so far gone that I don’t know how to get back.”

  “You need love.”

  He couldn’t believe he was worth it. No one had ever loved him in all of his life.

  “You can fight me, you can throw coffee mugs at your walls, and you can say you don’t deserve it, but that is NOT going to stop me. I battle stubborn every day. Look at my caveman. I’m going to love you whether you think you deserve it or not.”

  “You’re insane.”

  She laughed. “This mother gig is a bitch. There should be a handbook.”

  He relaxed.

  “I don’t know how to ask for anything. I’m the provider, not the one given anything.”

  She stared into his eyes.

  He was getting frustrated.

  “Ask for a hug,” she said.

  Dimitri trusted her.

  “I need a hug.”

  She went into his arms, and held him.

  For the longest time, he didn’t move. Dimitri soaked in that feeling. It wasn’t lust. It wasn’t about their bodies pressed together. It was about how she held him. Her hand moved slowly up and down his back, ignoring the telltale bumps of his scars.

  She accepted him.

  ALL of him.

  Finally, she spoke, “Ask for what you need. You are worthy, and for once, let me provide for you—not the other way around.”

  He didn’t know how to do that, but he’d try.

  “I need to know that you’ll forgive me for what I’ve yet to do. The killing, it never stops. I am that monster.”

  That was the problem.

  From a young age, he was never protected. He’d built the walls, and he’d hidden behind them. Now she was asking he take them down.

  It scared him.

  Well, that was about to change.

  “Then let me do it for you. If you can’t carry the weight anymore, tag me in. Let me handle it.”

  That astounded him. She didn’t even ask what he was taking on, but she was willing to do it.

  It was selfless.

  It was unselfish.

  It was so much like a mother that he couldn’t fathom it. Instead, he buried his face in her hair and just breathed.

  “Who do you need to kill?” she asked.

  He couldn’t tell her that he planned to execute Thomas Christ in the most painful way for taking her brother away from her.

  Then he was secretly glad it all happened. The selfish part of him wanted her to always care about him like this. She was the only one who ever had.

  “I was going to off your husband so I can steal you away as my own.”

  She snorted. “Well, he’s not going to make that easy, now is he?” she teased back.

  Dimitri laughed. “He’d be an idiot to let you go.”

  “Keep telling him that so he appreciates me,” Emma added, winking at him.

  Dimitri’s eyes were clearer, and some of the demons were pushed back.

  It was a start.

  “Now, tell me what you need,” she asked. “It’s a new day. Help me help you.”

  What didn’t he need?

  A therapist.

  A padded cell.

  Prison.

  “Can I have a kiss?” he asked.

  She gave him one, and Dimitri cherished it in case it was the only one he ever received.

  “Thank you for that,” he said, when she smiled up at him. “I will hold that in my heart.”

  She patted his chest above his heart.

  “That’s why I know you have the ability to be whoever you want. You’re not a monster, and you aren’t too far gone. Your father did not make you one.”

  He only wished.

  “Now what do you want?” Emma asked.

  “Well, since this is so easy. Can I have some breakfast? I don’t remember when I ate last.”

  That she could do.

  Emma led him into the kitchen. “Well, I wasn’t sure what you like to eat. I don’t ever see you eat breakfast. So, I went with eggs.”

  “I like eggs. We’re friends.”

  Then it occurred to him.

  “Wait, how did you get eggs? I don’t keep food here. I hope you did
n’t go out alone,” he said.

  “Down boy. I’m taking care of you for the next hour. Baby steps.”

  He laughed. “Yes, Mom.”

  “I called the big man, and he handled it. Greyson can deliver a plane if I need one, so why not breakfast foods?”

  It figured.

  “Of course this was him. It’s not fair when you both team up against me.”

  The idea that both of them were trying to heal him gave Dimitri hope. Two people found him redeemable.

  That had to mean something.

  Emma handed him a plate and there was bacon. She knew why it was there. Greyson was making sure his friend was fed and he knew everything about Dimitri. They spent all their time together.

  Greyson must have seen a storm brewing too. He was a smart man who missed nothing. He, too, knew it was coming their way.

  Dimitri was the center of it.

  He carried her plate with him, so they could eat at the table. She brought him more coffee.

  Together, they ate.

  “Ask,” he said.

  “Are you going to be okay to work this case? If not, you can pass, Dimitri.”

  He stared at her. “That wasn’t what I expected.”

  “Yeah, you thought I was going to ask about your back or the nightmares. Well, they aren’t my business. I figure if you want to tell me, you will. If not, then I don’t bring it up. Now, this case—that’s my business—since Greyson opted to take it.”

  She was giving him an out.

  “I wish he didn’t.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Uh, because she stabbed me?” he offered. “That’s never a good sign when the client has tried that,” he teased.

  She wasn’t buying it.

  “Good answer. Now try the truth.”

  “I’m sexually attracted to her. There.”

  She laughed. “Well, she is beautiful. I’d do her if I was into babes.”

  He stared at her. “The pictures in my head.”

  She snorted.

  She gave him her bacon.

  “You don’t like bacon? Who doesn’t?”

  She knew with him, she had to give a little to get a little. “When my brother was killed, I held him in my arms. I stared down at his body, and all I saw was the way the knife cut him to pieces. There was meat, human meat, and it makes me squeamish. I can pull it off when Greyson is around, but not often.”

  He didn’t know that.

  Her explanation changed everything. Now he wanted to protect her even more, and let her help him.

  She knew damage. Her past held it too.

  Dimitri shared a little more.

  “I dislike that I want Marissa and hate her at the same time. She lied to me, and I didn’t see it. Why? Did I let her attractiveness blind me? Am I slipping? Can we trust her?”

  They were all good questions, and Emma understood why he was so worried.

  She was too.

  Marissa had stuck a knife through their head of security’s body. That didn’t bode well.

  “I think she’s desperate to find her sister, and we can’t judge her based on last night’s actions. We need a little more. What would you do to find Kat or Nat?”

  He laughed.

  What didn’t he do?

  His nightmares proved it.

  As he ate, he noticed she was waiting. There was no pressure, and for the first time, he wanted to get the burden off his chest.

  “I killed my father.”

  She didn’t flinch.

  “Yes, I’ve been told.”

  He knew he needed to tell someone. Why not trust Emma? She comforted him.

  Dimitri told her everything. “He was raping her when I arrived. I killed him and took her away.”

  Emma listened to the gruesome details, and tears filled her eyes.

  He didn’t stop. “When I saved Natasha, she was a mess. She was dirty, starving, and going bald from the lack of any light. She was basically an animal, locked in a room.”

  As he described it, tears slipped from Emma’s eyes, and he wasn’t surprised. It had been terrible.

  He’d cried over it too.

  “What no one knows is I went back in and slaughtered her mother. For years, I carried that.”

  Emma refused to look away. It caught him off guard as she gazed into his aqua eyes. “I’m sorry that you had to do that.”

  It staggered him.

  She was shedding tears for him, not his sisters. He didn’t get it.

  “Why me?”

  “You had to do it.”

  “They are the ones who suffered.”

  “But you saved them. Who saved you?”

  When she turned her head, he was staggered. Emma got it. She saw what no one ever had. Yes, his sisters were broken, but he’d had to do horrible things to save them.

  He was broken too.

  “What?” she asked, seeing the look on his face.

  “Nothing. I was thinking. Anyway, I had to kill her.”

  “I would have too.”

  He laughed.

  “I would have. I would have killed her for trying to break someone beautiful. I would have killed her for starving and neglecting a child. I would have killed her for making you face and handle that.”

  He ate his bacon.

  “I kill a lot,” he admitted. Dimitri thought about being held prisoner and tortured, and how he’d killed the woman who betrayed him.

  And the child.

  It weighed on him.

  “Sometimes, Dimitri, you have to do it. Before, I thought it was black and white. Now I see there’s a shitload of gray. We live in that gray. There are times in our lives when we have to break the law.”

  “And if I had to break it and kill someone else?”

  “I told you. I’d do it for you.”

  Her hand was there.

  He took it.

  It was the first time he’d touched her first.

  “Emma, stay who you are. Some of us, your husband included, need that purity. Don’t let it taint you too. If you do, then we don’t have that one beacon to hold onto in life.”

  She got up and went to his side. He hugged her, resting his head on her chest. As he closed his eyes, there was that peace.

  “If you need this, Dimitri, you call me. I’ll come. No matter what, where, or when, I’ll be there. I’ll show up and be that person for you.”

  “I don’t know why.”

  She lifted his chin. “Because love doesn’t judge. It’s free, and it’s never given with restraints. You have my love. There’s nothing you can do to change that.”

  “Your husband…”

  “If you kill him, I can’t love you,” she teased.

  He laughed. Finally, that light met his eyes. “You have a point. I guess I’ll have to behave.”

  “That’s probably for the best. Now, I have to finish eating. We have to be at ‘Aquarius’ soon.”

  She sat.

  “Thank you, Emma.”

  “You’re welcome, Maximillian.”

  His heart skipped. “I hate that name.”

  “Then I won’t use it. I don’t want to bring you pain, only peace.”

  He thought about it.

  “You can use it.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re the only person I’ve loved in my life. You give me that peace. You can use it.”

  She patted his hand. “He’s a good man.”

  Dimitri said nothing.

  He couldn’t.

  He knew that was not the truth.

  He’d lived as him, and it had been hell.

  Maximillian Marchenko was evil to his core.

  * * * G r e y s o n C r o f t * * *

  Outside Sky Villa

  Following Dimitri Gideon wasn’t easy.

  It was a challenge to say the least.

  In order to stalk a killer, you needed to be a killer yourself. It was a good thing he was a rising star in that world and could compete with the best of
them—him included.

  One mistake, and a killer like him would be on to you. Dimitri Gideon, or as his past life knew him, Maximillian Marchenko, was the best at one time.

  The KGB had trained him, and then he went private to make money. The US government utilized him, and gave him a new identity to set him free in the public sector.

  He was highly sought after.

  Now the Crofts employed him as their head of security, and so many wanted him to protect them too.

  He was wasting his skill.

  My, he’d given up the high life for something so mundane. Maybe that’s why it had been so hard to find him. He’d gone and done something unpredictable.

  He hid in plain sight.

  Now that he had turned up, watching him was so very important.

  The man, who once worked for two countries, could smell a tail a mile away. One error, and all of his hard work would be for naught. He couldn’t risk a mistake.

  With a man like Dimitri, if he suspected you were there, he’d turn and bite you when you least expected it.

  So space mattered.

  For now, he’d watch from a distance until the perfect opportunity came up.

  When he could, he’d take a shot, and then it would be over.

  One by one, he would dismantle Maximillian Marchenko’s family.

  Why?

  Because he could.

  Vengeance was best served cold.

  Like the soon-to-be dead man’s heart.

  Chapter Five

  Club Aquarius

  Eight A.M

  A s they stood outside the business, Greyson could feel eyes on them. He knew it was likely someone a cop had sicced on them. As of late, Commissioner Raye was being silent. It wasn’t like the douchebag to hide his intent, and that made Greyson nervous.

  If anything, the man was predictable, except for lately, and that was worrisome.

  When the scourge of the city was backing off, that meant trouble was coming their way.

  What kind?

  Oh, if his shitty luck held out, it would be something they’d never see coming.

  Basically, he knew it was the calm before the shit storm. That was never a promising thing. While he was at the top of the world in Vegas, that didn’t mean he was safe. There were so many snakes waiting to take his place, and Greyson wasn’t having it.