Dimitri

It’s the weekend now, and while I was happy that she could stay here a few nights to be close with me, I’m a little perturbed by her admission.

The shower water is running, something she does a lot of, but I don’t mind. She woke up in bed while I stayed awake on the couch all night, tracing through the system Alek has built and yet—I’m not capable of breaking into this damn system.

How did she do it so easily?

Who the f**k hurt her in the past and how can I make them pay?

My mind Ping-Pong’s back and forth from the issue on hand to the issues resting under the rock of a woman that is taking yet another shower in my ensuite. I want to be able to break his system without her help, but I also want to know what she was thinking last night.

We had amazing, sensual s*x with some real passion, and she looked despondent and rejected when it was over. I hadn’t given her that impression—at least, I don’t think I did. She was this sexy, obedient Kitten in bed, and then all the sudden she shifted, and she was this stoic, wounded doe in the wounds.

I never aimed my rifle at her, and yet she limps like I pulled the trigger.

What did I do, if anything, to make her this way?

It’s not my fault, I remind myself.

Setting down my laptop, I stalk into the bedroom and find the computer still open to the search engine with her name plastered over the auction sight. Her information is pouring out of the seams here, and I shouldn’t be snooping, but I am.

The shower water continues to run as I scroll through the identity I bought—her identity—and try not to think about how Alek is selling user information to unknown buyers online. I will have plenty of time and money to throw at the cause of taking him down for this stunt later.

For now, I need answers, and I’m not getting them from her.

“Father’s name… Mother’s name…” I mutter, confused more on why she mentioned that she was in a group home when I clearly read an article that said her parents were successful in their little town, and then how business fell through and they went broke, dying in a horrific car crash outside of stateliness. “Wait a minute,” I sigh. “This can’t be right.”

Reading further into the information, I’m shocked to find out that she was put up for an open adoption that never came through. She has six siblings, which makes sense why the article online mentioned they had six kids, but the math still doesn’t add up.

They had seven kids, and gave up one?

They only gave up Izzy.

My stomach knots with these news. It doesn’t even make any sense! Why would a family with seven kids only give up the last one? Why would they abandon Izzy, and why hadn’t I seen this sooner?

She is used to love and then loss.

I fight back the innate anger that wants to strike a fist through my computer screen. None of this makes any sense, and yet all I can think about is her instant thought to get up and leave me in bed after s*x. Typically, when I’m with a woman I couldn’t give a damn about, I’m the first to leave the bed and the first to show them the elevator.

Last night, dare I say it, I was actually looking forward to holding her.

She couldn’t have been colder to the idea if she tried.

“What are you looking at?”

I jump back in my seat, closing out the popup box of information while Izzy comes out wearing nothing but a towel around her perfect body. I picture ripping that towel off and bending her over my footboard, but I digress past that idea and force that temptation out of my mind at once.

“Sorry, I was just playing with the code, and—”

“You were looking at my information, weren’t you?”

I don’t have the heart, or the energy left, to lie to her, “Yeah, I was, but I’m not anymore. I just want to know how to handle you, Kitten. That’s all.”

“What is there to handle with me, Dimitri?”

My name against her sharp tone is almost enough to make my skin crawl, “Well, what you said last night. I thought we were having a great time, and it was emotional and physically fulfilling, and you had this blank stare in your eyes like it was nothing.”

She shrugs in my cotton towel, “It was a distraction, that’s all.”

I nearly wince at her words, “What did you just say?”

“It was nothing more than a distraction. I was upset, you wanted to change my train of thought, and it worked.”

I stand out of my chair so fast that it hits the ground. Coming to face her, she doesn’t budge, instead staring up at me with wide, tired, and expectant eyes. Only now do I hear my voice in my head, the words clear as day.

“Anything to keep you from crying again, Kitten.”

She nods as I repeat the same words that I had muttered last night in a frenzy of s****l fire.

“Yeah, it’s okay. I get it. It was nothing for you; nothing more than a distraction for me. I’m thankful for it, Dimitri, I really am. There are no hard feelings or anything, I promise.”

“Don’t say that,” I bite, “I wasn’t f*****g you in a distraction, Izzy. I wanted you. In fact, I thought about f*****g you before you were even upset—since the moment I laid eyes on you.”

She doesn’t even seem to be taking in my words right now. Her face is pale, her body is ridged and unsettled, and she wavers where she stands. I instantly take her into my arms, her weight light while I pick her off the floor, the towel falling in a puddle around her ankles until she’s fully laid over my forearms.

“What are you doing?” she grumbles, naked and antsy in my arms.

I put her back in bed and throw the covers over her body at once, “You’re going to rest, and I’m going to have some food either delivered or call my chef to make us something good for brunch.”

Her brows pinch in angst, “I’m fine, Dimitri.”

“No, you’re not. You look exhausted mentally. I want you to lay in bed until it’s time to eat. You need to rest, and get better soon, so we can take Alek down once and for all. Until then, I need you to tell me what happened to make you this way.”

She gives me an unsteady look, “And what way would that be?”

Glancing at the screen, I recall what it said about her parents and the confusing article that came up when I searched for her out of general curiosity. It seems touchy for sure, but I have to admit that it’s something that has my mind engulfed in thought.

“You said you lived in a group home,” I remark. “But I see your parents are listed online, so obviously if you were adopted, their names wouldn’t show up.”

She balls herself tighter into a cocoon of silk sheets and bad memories, “Yeah, so what? I wasn’t adopted. Big deal. They sent me to get adopted, but I aged out of the system. Right before I was about to be kicked into the world with all the shillings of an unadopted pariah, I got a call from the police department.”

I sink into the chair at the desk, engulfed with her even more than before “Yeah, and what did they say?”

“I don’t really see how this is significant to taking down Alek.”

“It’s not, I guess. But it’s important to me, Izzy.”

“Why is that exactly?”

“Because you are important to me, okay?”

Although understandably taken aback, she simply turns her back to me in bed, hiking the covers up over her bare back where I can see the faintest hints of tiny scars. The light, almost luminescent sight of her scars is enough to make my stomach hurt, and while I want nothing more than to rip her out of bed, hold her caringly, and demand she tell me what tragedy in her life has made her so standoffish, I don’t.

Instead, I take a moment to relax and call my chef, making it a point to put the call on speakerphone.

“Hey, man. Can you swing by soon? I’m thinking of having lunch with a guest and could use your help.”

“Sure, boss. What are you in the mood for.”

I purse my lips to one side, wondering what I could get away with, “Maybe some old anchovies, if you have them laying around.”

Karl, my Michelin Star chef, seems perturbed by such a request, “Wait, you want anchovies, boss?”

“Yeah, will banana peppers. Just something you can throw in a pot with some broth—oh, maybe add a pig’s nose in the mix with—”

“I like burgers,” Izzy grumbles at last, annoyed with my antics.

Speaking into the phone, I dim down the sound of my chortle, “Never mind, Karl. Burgers will work just fine. Maybe some fries too.”

“Sweet potato fries,” she utters to herself.

“Sweet potato fries, Karl. I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, okay, boss. A-are you okay?”

“Just fine. I’ll see you here in a bit.”

The line ends, and I toss the phone into the mess of covers nearby. Leaning forward, I feel like a tacky cop in an old detective movie with my elbows planted firmly against my kneecaps, while my hands are connected before me. At first, I slide them together to hopefully create enough friction to get the words out of my mouth, but instead, I interlace my fingers and take a long, deep breath.

“I’m not going to push you to say anything you don’t want to, Kitten,” I breathe.

“Good, because you can’t—and I won’t.”

“Will you at least clear this up for me, then?”

She shakes her head, still using her back covered in blankets as a wall to the ammunition of questions I’m firing towards her delicate body, “No, I won’t. I moved to get away from that life, Dimitri. I don’t need it following me here.”

“It already has,” I bite. “Alek is selling your information to the highest bidder and by all accounts, we can assume that he’s doing it to everyone in the system of his software. If you tell me this now, I’ll never ask another personal question about you again, and we can move on to Alek, okay?”

She perks up, leaning on her arm while the covers slide over the helm of her shoulders and down to her back. She looks like Venus, draped in white cloth while her lightly tanned skin dazzles under the lights of my apartment that don’t nearly do her enough justice. Her eyes are light, the soft cracks of a frown prevalent on a face that doesn’t deserve such heinous markings.

Then there are the scars.

I can see them now, whipped up and down her spine like a carless branch in the wind has licked her more than once. She carries pain and pride like no woman I’ve ever met; other women are either too willing to spread their trauma on this world and seek redemption, or never encounter trouble in their life and expect the world to bow to their feet.

“I was given up as the seventh child of my parents. They were reaping government benefits until I came along. The oldest has aged out of benefits, and they lost a lot of money in welfare over it. So, they found out that they could seek more services for families with five or less minors. They gave me to the fire department, and I didn’t know my parents, or my siblings until I was sixteen.”

My heart is knocking on hollow trees that sprout roots into my stomach, and tower logs through my chest. Still, I remain unphased, and try to keep my curt opinions to myself.

“When I was sixteen, they came to see me in the group home. They seemed normal enough, happy enough without me, and I was okay with their choices. I had some really good foster parents, and I had a nice education through middle school. I wasn’t upset.”

Her voice says otherwise, and her tone droves near the edge of agony, but I digress.

“When I aged out at eighteen, they gave me a box of my things, and I was supposed to get setup downtown in my own apartment. You know, because we don’t actually own anything. I got all the files from when I was a baby, and when they gave me up, but they pulled me into the city hall office before I even made it downtown. Apparently, my parents died in a car accident, and they left me the beneficiary of all their things.”

My heart warms slightly. “Maybe to make up for the fact that they abandoned you.”

“Hardly,” she says, venom in her words. “Because of that, I didn’t qualify for the apartment downtown, and I was given the house and car that was in my parents’ names. Only problem? I got their surmounting debt, as well. Everything had a damn lien on it. Everything. And I didn’t have a choice but to work the debt off. One of my teachers that was teaching me coding set up a petition to help me raise money to pay off the debt, and further my degree in technology, and it worked.”

“That’s a plus side at least.”

“It’s pity, Dimitri. Four-thousand, five-hundred and six people pitied me. That’s it. And what did it get me? I’m hardly two weeks into my dream coding job, and I’m already in on a coo with my boss’ rival to take him down. I’m a fraud, and I’m too broke to be anything but a fraud.”

I bite my tongue, wanting to throw honest grenades into the trenches of war this woman has built around her heart. Her body was more than willing to be vulnerable to me, and her brain is something I can never understand, not with the complexities of code and system hardwired into her mind.

It’s her soul that’s broken, her heart that’s bleeding, and I’m doing her no favors by adding insult to injury and creating this new problem for her to handle.

And man, is it a f*****g problem.

“We don’t have to handle Alek,” I say, blurting the thoughts in my mind as they come, “We can hand over what we have so far to the authorities and leave it at that.”

She turns fully, clinging to the blanket around her chest where only the side of her breast is visible. “And say what? We don’t have enough proof to build a solid case, Dimitri. We can’t stop now.”

I smile, glad that at least for now, I have my little coding firecracker back, “Well, let’s get to it, Kitten.”