Chapter 39: Mike’s Wrath

Dimitri was in the kitchen. She could hear him moving around, the quiet sounds of him making food that she hadn’t asked for and he wouldn’t announce until it was ready. Another new thing. Another layer of the man she was still mapping.

She was thinking about Nonna’s words.

There will be people who want to use you to get to him.

There will be enemies you cannot see coming.

There is no leaving the Valentino world cleanly once you are truly in it.

She’d meant every word she’d said in response. She wasn’t running. She’d chosen this with open eyes and she’d choose it again tomorrow and the day after that.

But Nonna was right that choosing it and living it were different things. And Eve was still learning the distance between them.

The elevator chimed.

Eve looked up from pure reflex....the elevator didn’t chime unless someone was coming up, and the only people with access to this floor were...

The doors opened.

Mike walked out.

For one suspended second, nobody moved.

He looked exactly like her brother....same dark hair, same build, same eyes that she’d known her entire life....but the expression on his face was something she’d never seen on him before. Not quite anger. Not quite hurt. Something harder than both, and more complicated.

His eyes found her immediately. Then moved, just as fast, to somewhere behind her left shoulder.

She turned.

Dimitri stood in the kitchen doorway, a dish towel over his shoulder, completely still. His face had gone unreadable....that mask she’d learned to see past....but his eyes were locked on Mike with an intensity that made the air in the room feel different.

The silence lasted four seconds.

It felt like four years.

"Mike...." Eve started.

"Don’t." His voice wasn’t loud. That was the thing about Mike’s real anger....it never needed to be loud. "Don’t, Eve. I need a minute."

His eyes hadn’t left Dimitri.

Dimitri hadn’t moved. Hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t reached for the dish towel or shifted his weight or done anything except stand there and take whatever Mike needed to throw at him first.

Mike crossed the living room.

Eve’s heart was in her throat.

He stopped two feet from Dimitri, and for a moment they just looked at each other....fifteen years of brotherhood and one broken promise hanging in the air between them, too heavy to speak around.

Then Mike’s fist connected with Dimitri’s jaw. 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

The sound of it was awful. Solid. Final.

Eve’s hand flew to her mouth.

Dimitri’s head snapped to the side. He took one step back....just one, to absorb the impact....and then he straightened. Slowly. Deliberately.

He didn’t raise his hands.

Didn’t move to defend himself.

Didn’t do anything except turn his head back to face Mike and stand there, jaw already darkening, and wait.

Mike stared at him. Breathing hard. His fist still raised.

"That’s it?" Mike’s voice cracked slightly on the words. "You’re not going to..."

"No," Dimitri said quietly. "I’m not."

"You broke your word to me."

"I know."

"Fifteen years, D. Fifteen years I trusted you with everything. My business. My life. My family." Mike’s voice was raw now, the anger burning down to something underneath it. "And you looked me in the eye and promised me the one thing I asked for...."

"I know." Dimitri’s voice didn’t waver. "You want to hit me again, hit me again. I mean that."

Mike let out a breath that sounded like it had been compressed for days.

"I’ve been in love with her for seven years," Dimitri said. The words landed in the room like stones dropped into still water. "Since she was eighteen. I told you that. I kept my word for seven years, Mike. And then she walked into my club and she was falling apart and I....." He stopped. "I couldn’t stay away anymore. I tried. I can’t."

The raised fist slowly lowered.

Mike turned to Eve.

She was already on her feet. She didn’t know when she’d stood up.

"Tell me you’re okay," he said. His voice had changed entirely.....the anger still there, but underneath it now, the brother. The one who’d held her hand at their father’s funeral and taught her to drive and called her baby sister since she was born. "Look me in the eye and tell me you’re okay."

Eve crossed the room and took his face in her hands the way she had when they were children and he’d come home with a split lip from some fight she hadn’t witnessed.

"I’m okay," she said. "More than okay." She held his gaze, steady and certain. "I love him, Mike. I know how that sounds. I know it’s complicated and messy and I know you’re furious and you have every right to be. But I need you to hear me." She pressed her forehead briefly to his. "I love him. And I’m not going anywhere."

Mike closed his eyes.

His hands came up and gripped her wrists.....not to remove them, just to hold on.

When he opened his eyes again, he looked past her at Dimitri.

The two men looked at each other over Eve’s shoulder.

Something passed between them....too old and too layered for words, fifteen years of shared history trying to find its footing in a landscape that had shifted.

"If you hurt her," Mike said. Low. Absolute.

"I know," Dimitri said.

"I’m not finished." Mike’s eyes were hard. "If you hurt her, I won’t just come for you. I’ll burn everything you’ve built. You understand me? Everything."

A beat.

"I know," Dimitri said again. And then, quieter: "So would I."

The room breathed.

Mike looked at his best friend for a long moment.....at the darkening bruise along his jaw, at the dish towel still over his shoulder, at the careful stillness of a man who had stood there and taken a punch and hadn’t flinched because he’d decided he owed it.

Something shifted in Mike’s expression.

Not forgiveness. Not yet.

But the first crack of it.

"You’re cooking?" he said finally.

A beat of silence.

"Pasta," Dimitri said.

Mike let out a long, slow breath.

"It better be good," he said.