Page 99 of Brassy Bigwig

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

DIMITRIOS

I’m already sitting down in the restaurant, completely uninterested in being here and ready to get home to Chloe by the time Emilia arrives. I’m not doing her any favors by waiting out front for her like a gentleman, either. I want to make it perfectly clear to her where I stand. The waiter is already pissed because I told him we only needed one menu because I wouldn’t be eating.

“Here you are, madame.”

I look up from my phone to find a pristinely dressed, narrow-eyed, pucker-lipped Emilia standing next to the chair across from me, waiting for someone to pull it out for her to sit in.

It won’t fucking be me.

The host, having already left, leaves her standing alone amongst a sea of occupied tables. When she realizes I’m not getting up to greet her, she shoots daggers at me as she pulls her own chair out.

I lean back in my chair, trying to put as much space between us as possible while also making me appear unaffected and indifferent.

“Dimitri,” she starts, and I already have to keep my eye from twitching. “I thought we agreed you were going to pick me up.”

“You were picked up, but that doesn’t mean I needed to be in the car with you. We’re at dinner, now what the fuck do you want?”

“Everything is business with you, D. Always has been, always will be.”

“Yeah, and my time is precious, so start talking, or I’m leaving. You have ten minutes.”

“Fine,” she clears her throat. “You know it’s not easy for me to admit I was wrong, or to grovel—which I’m not doing. But I’ve been thinking about our marriage for a while and where we went wrong.”

Unbelievable. She’s deranged if she thinks I believe she feels as though she was wrong.

“You mean you’re finally ready to admit you’re a controlling, narcissistic bitch?”

Damn that felt good.

“No,” she deadpans.

“What then?”

“It’s just that I had so many hopes and dreams for us, but you were always caught up in your work. You never made me a priority.”

Her comments rile me up to the point where my blood starts to boil. For years, I stood by her side while she chaired this committee and organized that charity banquet. I tried to be with her. There was a brief period of time when I remember feeling for Emilia a fraction of what I now feel for Chloe. But every time I would disagree with her she would lash out at me. She would tell me I’m an idiot, tell me I know nothing, that I embarrass her in front of her friends.

Her fake friends. I don’t think any one of them genuinely liked the other.

“I’m not dignifying that with a response. You and I both know that’s not true. You killed our marriage, Emilia. Let’s not pretend you didn’t. You take and take and take from everyone until there’s nothing left for them to give you, then you toss them aside. Is that what happened with Grant? Did you bleed him dry already?”

I’ve shocked her. Never in the course of our marriage did I speak to her this way. I don’t miss a glimmer of something flash in her eye when I mention Grant.

“No, that’s not it.” Suddenly, I realize why she’s here. “He left you, didn’t he?”

The look on her face is priceless. She’s pissed I was able to figure out why she’s here, and especially as quickly as I did.

“That’s it, isn’t it? And now you’ve come crawling back because, what? You need money? As if I don’t give you enough every month in the disgusting amount of court-ordered alimony you were granted. No… You’re trying to make people believe you left him. That it was your decision, and you were gracious enough to let me back into your life?”

Her affronted look brings me more satisfaction than I ever thought I would feel upon seeing her again.

“You’re not capable of love, Emilia. It took me a little while to understand that. Now that I have, I realize very little of what happened during our marriage was my fault. Unlike that bullshit you just tried to feed me, I have the ability to admit when I’ve wronged someone and actually mean it.”

“Don’t try to tell me how I feel.”

I wait for her to continue, but she seems to have lost some of the gumption she had when she arrived.

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