Chapter 38: Mike

POV: EVE

Three days after Nonna’s visit, Eve had almost convinced herself she was ready.

Almost.

She sat cross-legged on Dimitri’s bed with her laptop open and a contract spread across her knees, pretending to work. The words kept sliding off her eyes without sticking. She’d read the same paragraph four times and retained nothing except that it had something to do with a modeling clause and a non-compete agreement, and even that she wasn’t entirely sure about.

Her phone sat face-up on the pillow beside her.

She wasn’t watching it. She was absolutely not watching it.

It had been three days since Mike’s call. Three days of silence from her brother....no texts, no follow-up, no angry voicemails. Just nothing. Which was somehow worse than the shouting. Mike’s anger she knew how to handle. Mike’s silence was a different creature entirely. It sat in her chest like something with weight, pressing down on everything beneath it.

She’d texted him once. Yesterday morning, sitting in the kitchen while Dimitri made coffee and pretended not to notice her hands shaking.

I know you’re angry. I’m not asking you to be okay with it yet. I just need you to know I love you.

He hadn’t responded.

The laptop screen blurred slightly. She blinked it back into focus.

"You’re not working."

She looked up. Dimitri stood in the doorway of the bedroom, jacket gone, sleeves rolled, a glass of water in each hand. He crossed the room without waiting for an answer and set one glass on her nightstand with the quiet authority of a man who had decided she needed hydrating and that was simply that.

"I’m working," she said.

"You’ve been on the same page for forty minutes."

"I’m a slow reader."

He looked at her.

She looked back.

"Fine," she said. "I’m not working."

He sat on the edge of the bed, close enough that his knee pressed against hers through the sheets. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t try to fix it or reframe it or tell her it would be okay. He just sat there, solid and present, and let the silence be what it was.

This was new. This version of him....the one who stayed without being asked, who understood that sometimes presence was the whole point....this was the Dimitri that lived underneath the Devil. The one that Nonna had spent two years coaxing out of a nine-year-old boy who’d decided the world didn’t deserve his trust.

Eve had decided she was going to spend as long as it took doing the same thing.

"What if he doesn’t come?" she asked quietly. "What if he just... decides it’s not worth it? That I’m not worth the conversation?"

"He’ll come."

"You don’t know that."

"I know Mike." Dimitri’s hand found hers on top of the laptop, his fingers folding over her knuckles. "He’s been my brother for fifteen years. I know exactly how he operates. He goes quiet when he’s processing. He pulls back before he comes forward." A pause. "He’ll come."

"And when he does?"

"We deal with it."

"Together?"

He turned to look at her then, and his eyes were steady. Unafraid. "Together."

She turned her hand over beneath his, lacing their fingers.

They stayed like that for a while.....her pretending to work, him pretending not to watch her.....while the city moved forty floors below them and the penthouse held its breath.

****

POV: DIMITRI

Dimitri stood at the floor-to-ceiling window in his office and watched the city without seeing it.

He had three active business problems that needed his attention. A shipment delayed in Rotterdam. A rival family testing boundaries in the south quarter. A money laundering trail that Marco had flagged as potentially compromised. Any one of them would normally command his complete focus.

Instead he was thinking about Mike.

Fifteen years. They’d been brothers for fifteen years....longer than some marriages, longer than most friendships, longer than anything else in Dimitri’s adult life that he’d chosen to keep. Mike Thorne was one of approximately four people on earth that Dimitri Valentino would take a bullet for without hesitation.

And Dimitri had looked him in the eye....metaphorically, over a video call, but still....and told him he’d broken the one promise Mike had ever asked him to keep.

Stay away from my sister.

Seven years ago. Late night, whiskey on the table between them, Mike half-drunk and suddenly serious in the way he only got when something genuinely mattered.

I see the way you look at her, D. I’m not blind. But she’s my baby sister and your world would eat her alive. So I’m asking you. Stay away.

And Dimitri had said yes. Had meant it. Had spent seven years meaning it, keeping it, building walls around the wanting until it was just a dull ache he’d learned to ignore.

Until Eve had walked into Sinners with tears on her face and whiskey in her blood and climbed into his lap like she belonged there.

He didn’t regret it. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

But he understood, with perfect clarity, what it had cost.

His phone buzzed. Marco.

He landed two hours ago. Private car from the airport. No detail, came alone.

Dimitri read the message twice.

Mike was in the city.

He typed back: Let me know when he’s close.

Three seconds later: He’s not going to call ahead, boss. You know that.

Dimitri pocketed his phone.

He looked around his office.....the clean lines of it, the controlled order, everything in its place. He’d built this space to reflect the man he was. Precise. Contained. In control of every variable.

Mike Thorne had never been a variable Dimitri could control.

He rolled his sleeves down, buttoned his cuffs, and went to find Eve.

***

POV: EVE

She’d moved to the living room by the time the afternoon light started going golden, tucking herself into the corner of the large grey sofa with a different contract....one she was actually managing to read this time and a second coffee that had gone cold twenty minutes ago.