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Was it twisted that my lady bits did a little dance at how fucking hot he looked with all that blood dripping over him? Probably. Oh well.
“Oh, I’m sorry, am I annoying you?” Her head rolled to the side lazily, and she flashed me a big, beaming smile. “Good.”
“Get…the fuck…off me,” I rasped, thrashing. She came nose-to-nose with me, this dark, evil look glittering in her eyes. “I think I’d rather watch the life drain from your eyes.”
Autumn crossed her legs elegantly like a well-mannered woman from the upper class, tilted her head to the side and said, “Woof, woof.” A chuffing laugh burst out of me before I even knew what was happening. My eyes widened in shock. What. The. Fuck?
Begrudgingly, I had to give Autumn my respect. Despite being an annoying, chatty, massive pain in the ass, I had to give respect where respect was due.
Unwanted sexual advances were one of my triggers. I’d prefer the bite of a blade than to ever experience that again.
“Odnazhdy ya pererezhu tebe gorlo i iskupayus’ v tvoyey krov,” he spat harshly before spinning around, giving me his back, effectively ending our conversation. A smirk curled my lips. Autumn: 1 Dimitri: 0
I grasped a chicken drumstick and smacked Dimitri across the face with it. It made this very satisfying splat sound, thanks to all the gravy. His eyes bulged wide in shock, mouth dropping open as if he couldn’t believe I had the audacity to slap him in the face with a piece of chicken.
“Anybody ever tell you that you’re the most infuriating person on the fucking planet?” I hissed. “Yes, actually.” She turned, flashing her teeth in a proud smile. “I think it’s a wonderful compliment. “Figures. Psychotic people always do have grand delusions.” “Do not call me psychotic!” “Or what? You going to slap me in the face with another piece of chicken?” I scoffed. “I’ll break every goddamn bone in your body before I disembowl you and make you eat your own fucking intestines.”
Fed up and full of anger, I unlocked that dark, evil side of me. The one that felt nothing. No pain. No remorse. No mercy. The Butcher.
It didn’t scare me, though. It made me…excited. What would it feel like to be hunted by the Bratva Butcher? To finally be the hunted instead of the hunter? The thought intrigued me far more than it should have.
The more time I spent around her… The more I got to know her… The more I hated her. And it was because I didn’t hate it at all. She had qualities I respected and admired. She was tough as shit. Had no problem saying whatever was on her mind, even if it offended someone bigger and stronger than she was. Strength was something I respected. I despised weakness, and it was becoming clearer with each passing day that there wasn’t a weak bone in Autumn’s body.
But Autumn said nothing like that, surprising me for the umpteenth time when she softly murmured, “What does love feel like?”
There was something unbelievably freeing about talking to him in the dark. I could see him and not see him at the same time. Being surrounded by nothing but darkness just made me want to blurt out all my secrets. Or was that just Dimitri?
“There’s nothing quite like the sting of betrayal from someone who is supposed to be your family,” he whispered softly.
Autumn smiled. She fucking smiled. Why had she smiled at him? He’d barely fucking said anything.
“Whatever you’re thinking is wrong,” I hissed. “I wouldn’t touch you if you were the last woman on Earth. Even then, it would be a fucking chore.” She tutted. “Lying is bad for the soul, Butcher.” “I don’t have a soul.”
She was fucking everywhere. All the time. There was no escape from her.
I would have never thought a man’s laughter could be a beautiful thing. But staring at Dimitri with his head thrown back and body shaking convinced me otherwise. He should definitely have laughed more.
Instead, I looked up at Dimitri and couldn’t help but smile brightly at the look of complete and utter shock on his face.
The Butcher, ladies and gentlemen, had entered the building, and I was all fucking for it.
We were just too evenly matched for one of us to truly get the upper hand.
I gripped her roughly by the chin and forced her to look at me. “Don’t talk to him. Talk to me.”
It was pretty much a guarantee that no matter what the circumstances were, my children would find a way to fight with each other, either physically or with their words. It didn’t matter if we were at a family dinner, a black-tie event or a life and death situation, like the one we were all currently in. Aleksandr, Nikolai, Lukyan and Illayana would end up arguing about something.
Very rarely would I find myself in a position where I was forced to fight that many people at once. That didn’t make me nervous, though. It made me excited. Exhilarated.
“If we don’t make it out of this, Your Royal Grouchiness, it has not been nice working with you.” What a bold-faced lie. Those last few weeks… I’d never felt so alive. But I would take that secret to my grave. Dimitri grunted. “Same to you, devil woman.” Our gazes clashed. He could see I was full of shit. I could see he was full of shit. Neither of us acknowledged it.
He pointed to me. “She coming?” That bastard actually had the audacity to hesitate. My mouth dropped open in outrage. “Yes, I’m coming!” I snapped. Mikhail didn’t take my word for it. He waited for Dimitri to give the all-clear, which he still hadn’t done! I marched over to him and kicked him in the shin. “Ow! Fuck!” Dimitri hobbled, holding his shin. “Yes, she’s coming!” I crossed my arms over my chest and nodded. Damn straight I’m fucking coming.
“Little piece of advice,” he whispered. “My father is a bit of a hardass, but he has the biggest heart out of all of us. I watched you guys interact. I haven’t seen him smile in over ten years, and yet, he smiled at you. There was this light in his eyes whenever he looked at you. Whenever he spoke to you. If you do anything to hurt him, I’ll gut you from throat to pelvis and let rats eat you from the inside out. We clear?”
Fiery green eyes locked with mine, and I couldn’t help but smile as she whispered in a soft, silky voice, “Hello, Butcher.”
My smile morphed into a playful smirk. “Hello, malen’kaya d’yavolitsa, little devil.”
The fucking power that man wielded. All it took was one glance from Dimitri Volkov to send Ian running for his life.
Dimitri and I locked eyes. Maybe it was because I knew him so well that I was able to decipher that look on his face. It seemed to say, “Only I can insult you. Only I can fuck with you.”
“Shut. The. Fuck. Up,” I mouthed to him, enunciating every word slowly so there would be no mistaking what it was I was saying. He pointed a finger at me. “You shut up,” he mouthed back. Somehow, we started arguing without actually saying a word, gesturing violently with our hands and cursing each other out while everyone else at the table had their heads turned. The only one watching what was going on was Mikhail, and he just seemed to find the whole thing humorous, leaning back in his chair and eating his food with an amused smile on his face.
My fingers were still wrapped around the handle of my butter knife. I gripped it tight and hurled it right at him. He lurched right, narrowly missing it all while staying seated in his chair. Without missing a beat, he grabbed his own knife from the table and threw it at me. I quickly picked up my clutch and used it like a shield to block the knife, the blade sinking deep into the fabric.
I had an addictive personality, and Dimitri was the kind of man I could very easily become addicted to. If I wasn’t already. I already craved those rare smiles he would sometimes give. That deep, baritone laugh of his. The sound of his voice. I feared that if I didn’t get away from him when the opportunity first presented itself, I never would.
“You!” he snarled, full of anger and fire. “Then fucking take me!” His chest rose and fell with deep, heavy breaths, his jaw clenched so hard that I feared he would shatter his teeth. He stared deep into my eyes and I stared right back into his, refusing to look away. Some internal struggle waged within him. I could see it, and I saw the exact moment he finally beat whatever it was. “Fuck it.” He grabbed my face with both hands and slammed his lips onto mine.
“You’re fucking perfection,” he whispered huskily into my ear.
“You have two weeks, Miss DeValos, or the next contract I take out will be on you.” He patted me twice. “I look forward to hearing from you.”
Love was the only thing that made sense, that could rationalise that agonsing pressure smothering my chest. The only thing that could rationalise this ache in my soul for him. To be near him.
“Are you going to kill me or not, malen’kaya d’yavolitsa?”
“I don’t kill people who hurt my children, Talon. I take them home.”
“Everything that happened between us was a mistake. A big, fat, giant fucking mistake that I regret more than anything else in my life.”
“My heart does, and always will belong to Yekaterina. My wife. Not some random woman who doesn’t even know what it means to love someone.”
“This isn’t Lukyan’s fault. It’s yours!” he snarled at me. “You said those words. Not me. Not Lukyan. You! You did this. You cut that woman down. Insulted her. Made her feel worthless. All because you’re too much of a goddamn coward to admit what we all already know!”
“I told you not to do this. I warned you not to throw away your chance at happiness, but you did it anyway,” he scoffed, shaking his head. “If you want someone to blame, Father, look in the fucking mirror.”
There was something different about him. About his voice. That usual boyish, carefree charm he always had was gone, the light in his eyes all but diminished.
“Your mother and Autumn are nothing alike. Nothing. Yekaterina was elegant. Poised. When she stepped into a room, the whole place brightened. Lit up like the sun. When Autumn walks into a room, she lights it on fire. She’s rude. Rough around the edges. A complete and total smartass who says whatever the fuck she wants to say, no matter the consequences. She eats like a goddamn barbarian. You’d think the woman had never seen a knife and fork in her life. She talks in her sleep, and nine times out of ten, it doesn’t even make sense. She—”
He was simply just listing things about Autumn as if all those things were plaguing his mind. I’d never seen him so animated before.
“He’s just a bit protective.” “A bit?” I scoffed. “Hate to think what would happen to someone if they really hurt you.” “Death,” my brother said with a completely straight face. Sounds about right.
If Dimitri didn’t want to be with me, that was his fucking loss.
