Page 16 of Tangled Decadence
He sighs and turns his head away pointedly while still offering me his hands. I pull off my clothes quickly, take his hands and keep my eyes on his face to make sure he’s not looking as I lower myself down into the tub. Once I’m submerged, I pull my feet up and wrap my arms around them so that my belly disappears altogether.
“Can I look now?”
“If you must.”
He turns around and lowers himself down on the edge of the tub. Then he picks up a bright green loofah, dunks it in the lukewarm water and starts stroking it down my back. I can’t even bring myself to protest; it feels so damn good.
Despite my best efforts, my gaze slides to Dmitri’s face. God, I’ve missed it. I just can’t bring myself to say that to him. We left things so… unfinished. We were in the middle of a standoff that seemed to have no resolution.
And now?
Everything feels different.
“Is it true?” I ask softly. “Is she really dead?”
I refused to believe Cian when he first broke the news to me. Even as I held onto denial, though, I spent the first few days in a fog, losing time to tears and grief. A part of me clung onto the hope that maybe Cian didn’t have all the information. Maybe he was just playing games with me.
Part of me still hopes that.
Dmitri’s eyes betray nothing. His perfect façade never cracks, but he stiffens imperceptibly. “Yes. Bee is dead.”
“God…” I whisper, looking down at the ripples of water skating around my body. “I was hoping—” I break off with a half-choked sob and cover my face with my hands. “What happened?”
Dmitri sighs. “We don’t have to talk about this now.”
“I want to know.”
“Wren—”
“Please, Dmitri. She was my friend, too.”
He hesitates, his jaw softening ever so slightly. “She took a bullet right underneath her heart. She went into cardiac arrest before we could get her to a doctor. It was quick and painless for her.”
I close my eyes so the tears don’t spill over. “Cian told me you had a funeral for her?”
“It was a small affair. Just the Bratva.” His voice wavers and wobbles, but it doesn’t crack.
I peek out of one eye. “What about her family? Why weren’t they there?”
“Because the bullet didn’t just take Bee out. It also outed her pregnancy… or lack thereof.”
I gasp. “Oh my God. So Vittorio knows that she was faking it?”
“He knows everything,” Dmitri says with a grimace. He stares off into space for a moment. “At least in death, she’s safe from that bastard.”
I don’t know what to say. Neither does he, apparently. He just keeps running the loofah over my pink skin. I expected to see his unhinged wrath at Bee’s death, but to my surprise, there’s none of that. He almost seems… detached? Like he can’t quite believe she’s gone, either.
That’s the thing about people like Bee. How can death claim someone who’s larger than life? Impossible. There’s just no way.
“You can’t blame yourself for her death, Dmitri. You know that, right?”
He holds my gaze for only a moment before it dances away again. “I was her best friend, Wren. I’m the pakhan of the Egorov Bratva. This is all happening because of who I am. It’s most definitely my fucking fault.”
“Dmitri.” I place my hand on his arm and the loofah drops. My self-consciousness dissipates underneath a much-needed injection of perspective. What does it matter that I’m big and bloated right now? At least I have blood in my veins and air in my lungs.
I’m alive.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.