I took another deep breath and tried to calm my heart rate again, but it was no use. I was of no use. This was the last thing I could have done for her, and I couldn’t even do it. She already hated me because of how I’d killed her father; I couldn’t stand to see her continue to hate me.
“She doesn’t hate you,” Dimitri said from the corner of the room. He’d been watching me, silently, for a while now, letting me work through my shit in my head.
I snorted. “Yeah, okay.”
“She tried to come see you in the hospital. She came to you at the docks.”
I whirled around. “You let her come to the docks?”
Dimitri’s hands were shoved into his pockets, and he looked more boyish than he had in years. His hair was flopped to the side and uncombed. He wore a pair of designer sweats and tennis shoes. He looked like the boy before the politics. It was such an odd sight, I had to do a double-take.
“She didn’t give us a choice,” he finally said. “She launched herself out of the SUV like a rabid ferret. She fought tooth and nail against Roman and Carter.”
I blinked in surprise. They were some big dudes, some of the biggest in my mother’s employ.
I shook my head, jaw clenching. “She could’ve gotten herself killed.”
Dimitri huffed a humorless laugh. “You think she cared? You think any force on this planet was going to stop her from getting to you? She’d have run into a burning building if she thought you were in it.”
His words hit me like a punch to the sternum. I turned away from him, pulse hammering and fingers twitching again. I wanted to believe him. God, I wanted to so badly. But every time I looked down at my hands—wrapped, stiff, trembling—I was reminded of one thing:
I was a failure.
“She deserves someone who can protect her,” I muttered. “Not someone who can’t even pull a fucking trigger.”
Dimitri’s footsteps padded closer.
“I can’t risk missing,” I said hoarsely. “I can’t risk hurting someone else. I can’t risk her watching me fail.”
“Then don’t shoot him.” Dimitri shrugged like it was obvious. “There are other ways to kill a man.”
A bitter smile tugged at my mouth. “And you’d know all of them.”
“Damn right I do.” He crossed his arms. “But this—” he gestured to the weapon in my hand, “—isn’t why I’m here.”
My brows pulled together. “Then why are you here?”
Dimitri’s expression sobered, every trace of humor draining out of him. “I know you’re planning on leaving. You can’t just leave us all again without a trace.”
I sucked in a breath. He was right, I was planning on leaving. I had all of my bags packed, and all of my guns sent home besides this one. I was ready; it was time. There was nothing left for me here, especially since I couldn’t even pull the trigger on this stupid fucking gun.
“She’s better off without me,” I shrugged as if it didn’t matter, as if I’d moved on, but Lord knew that would neverhappen. I would live with the ghost of her haunting me for the rest of my days, and I had to be okay with that.
“But what if we aren’t?”
I shook my head. “Don’t do that. You’re all better off without me.”
“I don’t know where you heard that from, but it’s bullshit. Gemma deserves all of her uncles around. My future kids deserve to know you. You can’t disappear again. Promise me that when you leave, you’ll at least try to be present as much as you can be. I understand what it’s like to need to escape, especially in this hellhole, but I have to work here.”
I huffed out a humorless laugh. “You don’t need to do anything. You, Ace, and Alexei have more money set aside than anyone else in our family—besides maybe the grannies.”
“I enjoy it. It gives me a purpose.”
“I’ll think about it.”
Chapter Sixty-One
Poppy
