Page 12 of Demitri

“For you, I’d do anything.”

It’s not until the words are out there that I realize how true they are. I love this woman. And if I could ever rid myself of the shackles of my last name, I’d throw all pretense out the window and swear my life to her. But I can’t do that, and I guess she finally needs to know the full story why.

She’s staring at me, not talking, chewing her bottom lip. I reach over and pull it free. “Don’t hurt yourself because of me,Krasotka. I’m not worth it.”

“Fuck that, Demitri.”

“Mia, you don’t understand. All my life, I was a tool. A pawn. A chess piece in a game I never wanted to play. People treated me special because of my last name, because of my dad. They didn’t understand why I had issues with what I saw going on around me. And then they tried to destroy me to keep me in my place.”

“What happened?”

Closing my eyes to try to shield myself from the pain, I blow out a breath and begin. “I don’t know how much you know about my family, but my father was Ivan Pavlov, the leader of the Russian Bratva on the east coast. He was not a good man. Drugs, guns, women. That was his life, and he bought and sold everything with the blood of others. One of my first memories is my father hitting my mother because she told him no. She had just given birth to my sister and ended up with a c-section. The woman couldn’t even stand up straight and he thought he owned her and could use her as he wanted.”

“Oh.”

One word, said with so much meaning behind it, I can feel her pain.

“If this becomes too much for you, tell me to stop. Please.”

“No. Keep going.”

“After that, they lived as a married couple only. I know my dad regretted what he did, but not enough to do the right thing. Mom stayed because she knew he’d never let her take me with her. I was a boy. My dick guaranteed I’d never do anything of my own free will.” I can’t help the bitterness in my voice, but I continue. If I don’t get it out now, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to. “Mom died a little every day. He slowly killed her by flaunting whatever side piece he was fucking that week in front of her. By the end, she was a shell of the mother I knew when I was little.”

“How old were you?” Mia asks, whispering. Like speaking loudly would change the way this tragedy ends.

“I was fourteen. My sister was eleven. But where I wanted nothing more than to run away from that place and that life, she craved the attention my father didn’t initially give her. She paid attention and soon became his right hand. If it were up to my father, he would have found somewhere to hide my body, but some of my uncles didn’t believe in women running the show. And none of the other men working in the‘business’did anything more than treat women as their property.”

“I’m sorry.”

I give her a small smile before continuing. “I tried to run away when I turned fifteen. I thought I was a man then. Ivan beat me to the point of hospitalization when they found me. It was while I was healing that I met Mika and fell in love. With her and cars.”

I pause to take a breather. This is the hard part, the part that reminds me why I’m okay with the parts of Mia that she’s willing to share with me and don’t push her for more. More would put her in danger. More would put a timeline on her life, and I can’t do that to her. Or me. Because I know I’d never survive.

“Tell me,” she quietly demands.

“Mika’s dad was on the payroll. Vasili worked on all the cars the family owned. Turns out, the garage he worked out of was afront for my father. All he ever wanted to do was work on cars and not get sent back to Russia. His wife was born here, and he was afraid, as were some of the others who had been here a long time. Anyway, he started taking me to the garage and showing me how to do some basic stuff. Mainly, I handed him tools while he did the work. But I started picking up things, and before too long I was doing oil changes and basic mechanical tasks. I started learning about custom rebuilds and my first car was a sixty-nine Dodge Dart Custom. It was this hideous baby poop brown, but that thing was a fucking tank Ivan had lying around the property, so Vasili helped me restore it and paint it.”

“Sounds like he really cared about you, Dem.”

“Yeah, he did.”

“What happened?”

“I was working with Vasili one day in the garage and this girl came in wearing a school uniform. You know the one—plaid skirt and white button up blouse. Her socks went to her knees, and she had brown penny loafers on. Her hair was dark, dark brown, long and straight, and that day she had it pulled up in a ponytail that bounced when she talked. She stopped by to tell her dad about a test she aced that day, and I was hooked. After that, she would stop by almost every day, and eventually I gathered up the balls to ask her out.”

“That’s sweet.” Mia has a wistful smile on her face, like she’s reliving her own first love story. Only I know how that one ends, and it’s almost as tragic as mine.

“It was. Until my father got wind of it. Her ‘Russian stock’ wasn’t Russian enough for the heir of the Pavlov family. He demanded I break it off with her before I did something stupid like ‘fall for the girl.’ He threatened me, he threatened Vasili. He beat the maids to let me know how serious he was, but I didn’t care. I loved her. We were going to get out and never come back. Until she didn’t.”

Mia reaches over and silently grabs my hand. She knows the sweet is about to become scary.

“We had plans to go to the movies one Friday night, and she never showed up. Vasili disappeared from the garage and some other guy, one of Ivan’s stooges, started coming in and keeping an eye on me. I had more guards around me at all times. Fuck, I couldn’t even piss in peace. But I found ways around them. I had lived in that house and hidden from my father more than they knew, and I snuck out every night trying to find Mika.”

“Did you find her?”

I shake my head slowly, the pain resurfacing in my stomach. “No. And it wasn’t until my father started making these passive comments about my future and any future women I would be with that I knew he had done something to her. As punishment.”

“What did he do, Demitri?”

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