Divorcing Her Mafia Family
Chapter 10

Dimi had been surprised to see her father accompanying her mother to breakfast. They sat around the outdoor dining table with Magda and Darya offering moral support as she struggled with the emotions she was feeling. Miklos was in his home office taking reports from the weekend of his clubs. He said he’d be out to join for breakfast as soon as he could. She didn’t foresee him joining anytime soon.

“Dimitra, have you and Miklos patched your differences? When can I expect a grandson?” her father stared at her from the end of the table, his blue eyes piercing her to the core. She assumed his dark hair and blue eyes along with his cocky swagger was what made the women run at him, along with his power and bank balance she supposed. To her however, he was simply her dad. Too much weight on his middle now and his hair starting to thin, he was starting to look old and if she were honest, still a little grey following his surgery two months ago. His stupid comment about a grandson made her want to slap him.

“No, we have not. There are no plans for a grandson or daughter for that matter,” she speared a strawberry angrily. He invited them and thus it was her opinion Miklos should be here to field these questions.

“Dimitra, you need to put your petty differences aside,” he chastised her.

“Petty differences? Having a husband who can’t keep his d**k in his pants and can’t be bothered to hide it from the entire world, photographed on every tabloid page, is hardly a petty difference.”

“You have been gone for eight years. Did you expect him to live like a monk?”

“I have come home several times a year only for him to disappear each time. The fault is not mine.”

“You share it equally,” her father waved his fork at her.

“Perhaps you can share it equally with him since it was you who forced the marriage,” Dimi stared at her father noting the flare in his nostrils as she dared insult him.

“You have spent too much time away from our family and have forgotten respect, my daughter.”

“I have not forgotten. Respect is earned not demanded, Papa. I’ve been treated like a commodity, and I want my freedom. You want my respect, then undo the confines of my marriage agreement. Leave Miklos in charge of everything. I want nothing in return. Just let me go live my own life.”

Vasili looked to his wife who stared at her plate uncomfortably, “do you hear the way your daughter speaks to me? Sending her for an education has made her forget her place.”

“My place?” she grunted as she shoved a forkful of scrambled eggs into her mouth. “You mean on my back pushing out brats for you to turn into minions?”

“Dimitra!” he gave a curt warning glance. “Your husband needs to reign you in.”

“My husband wouldn’t dare try,” she didn’t back down. “You did not raise me to be a doormat so why are you expecting me to simply be one now you want progeny.”

“You should be in the office with your husband running our business. Instead, I hear you set bonfires and destroyed your husband’s bedroom.”

“She also dyed me blue,” Miklos entered the patio with an irritated scowl.

“You got most of it off,” she fought the smirk twisting her lips as he still had a tinge to his features.

“Mrs. K thought perhaps her make-up remover might work. It was helpful.”

“You dyed him blue?”

“She put an additive into my pool knowing full well I would swim this morning. The pool guys are coming this afternoon to fix it.” He set his phone beside his plate face down and added fruit and a pastry to his plate along with a rasher of bacon.

Dimi stared at him. Something was off. He was calm. Too calm. In fact, as she regarded the way he hadn’t even glanced her way, she considered perhaps he was doing the thing where he compartmentalized before torturing and killing an enemy. He lifted his fork and then set it back down again, a frown forming on his lips as he picked up his phone, studied it and then set it down again.

“Expecting a call?”

“No.” he answered curtly. He didn’t even look her way.

She exchanged looks with Darya and Magda who both shrugged. They watched as he broke a piece of the bacon off and whistled for the dog. He gave Jinx the bacon, scratched her ears and sent her on her way. Darya made rounded eyes in her direction at his actions.

Magda mouthed, “what the hell?”

“I see you,” he flicked a glance at Magda. “You three are in trouble. I suggest you sit there and keep your mouths shut until I figure out how much trouble you are in. If I replace either of you,” he waved a finger between Magda and Darya, “are the instigator in this mess, there will be hell to pay.”

“They have done nothing wrong,” Dimi spat at him.

He lifted a finger in her direction, “my little wife, you need to sit there quietly while I regain control of my temper. Otherwise, I will likely say or do something I will regret in front of your friends and your family.”

“If it ends in you signing divorce papers, please, lose control.”

“Dimi,” Magda kicked her under the table and shook her head.

Even Darya could feel the waves of fury rolling off him and she also shook her head warningly at Dimi. Something was really wrong and everyone at the table felt it.

Dimi sipped her coffee and then her phone pinged, and she noted Sienna’s name. She went to reach for it, but long bronzed fingers reached out and took her phone away. “Hey, give me my phone.”

“No.”

“You say the word a lot.”

“Clearly its not one you heard often enough as a child,” he gave a scowl at her mother.

“Hey,” Dimi hissed. “Leave her alone. Give me my phone. It could be my work.”

“Your work?” he half turned in his chair to face her. “You mean at the library?”

She shrugged, “what about it?”

“See, Dimitra, every Monday I get a report on my desk from all of my security teams all over the world. Here in California, Miami, Crete, London, New York and,” his eyes glittered with anger, “Boston.”

“You get a report from Boston? I didn’t know you had a club in Boston.”

“I don’t have a club in Boston. I have a wife in Boston. A wife who was working on her Bachelor of Computer Sciences and then a Masters, for the last eight years. A wife who was assigned a security agent to ensure her safety while she was away from her family studying.”

She felt the tension from her friends at the table, knowing exactly where the conversation was going. He had found out. It was why Sienna was texting her at seven thirty on a Monday morning. It had only been a matter of time, but she’d done well to get away with it for near on eight years.

“Now, imagine my surprise this morning when my man in Boston sent me an update to tell me, my wife was well and had done a bit of shopping Saturday, had gone to the museum Saturday night, attended church Sunday morning and then worked all day Sunday in the library.” He leaned back in his chair and popped a grape into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “Now I wondered, was this another prank of my wife? Was she sending me a false report through her security? Do you know what I did? I called him. Imagine my surprise when he tells me he is looking right at you from across a coffee shop as you are reading in your favorite little café.”

“Miklos, how can her security be watching her this morning if she is right here?” Vasili was staring at her in confusion.

“I too would very much like the answer to this question. Tell me Dimitra, who is this woman?” He held up a photo on his phone. “The likeness is uncanny, but she is definitely not you. According to my agent in Boston, this woman,” he wiggled the phone, “is the one he’s been following for eight years.”

She looked to the girls, “Sienna.”

“Who is Sienna?” her father asked.

“My double,” Her mother hissed in surprise, and she scratched her temple. “I paid her to pretend to be me. After the first Christmas break you changed out my security agent to one, I’d never met before. I had Sienna walk up to him, introduce herself and tell him to stay the f**k away from her. He bought it and always followed from a distance. It allowed me to do the things I wanted to do.”

“You paid her?” her father’s grip on the edge of the table demonstrated he was barely containing his rage at her actions. “To do what exactly?”

“Live my life?” She shrugged.

“For eight years this woman has pretended to be you?”

“Only in front of him,” she shrugged. “She’s incredibly shy. We,” she waved between her and the girls, “are her only friends if we’re honest. She was working on her masters but now she’s working on her doctorate so she’s always in the library.” She made a face as she sipped her coffee, wishing her hand didn’t tremble just the little bit it had when she set the cup back down. “I paid her with my monthly spousal support payment. I just transferred the money to her. It covered her tuition and living expenses. Her mother is elderly and needs medical care. Really it was a win-win. Whenever I went home, she went home. Whenever I had to be somewhere, she laid low.”

“What did you do for money?” her mother asked in horror.

“This and that,” Dimi shrugged after exchanging looks with the girls.

“What the f**k have you been doing for the last eight years!” finally Miklos’ patience snapped as he crumpled the pastry in his hand.

“Like I said already, this and that. I mean not the things you were doing, f*****g everybody who would part their knees, but you know, I lived.”

“Details now, Dimitra or so help me God you will be sorry.”

“Oh what are you going to do, Miklos? Spank me? Whatever. I’ve had worse done to me when I ran the b**m parlor.”

“You did what?”

At his hiss of surprise, she shrugged. “We opened up a club where we beat rich fat men with whips while we were dressed in leather.”

Her mother gasped. “You did no such thing.”

“I was transferring all my money to my double,” she shrugged. “It costs a lot for a woman to agree to give up her freedom as Sienna had. I needed a job and the only experience I had was torture. I went with what I know.”

“I cannot believe I am hearing this,” her mother g*****d as if in pain.

“Hey, MIT is expensive. Harvard is even more expensive. Many of the girls we employed in our club weren’t on scholarships like I was. One girl was able to graduate Harvard law without a single dollar of debt. We started it in year two and it’s still going strong. We sold it off last year. Made a hefty profit. Paid off all three of our tuition for our masters.”

“You ran a bordello?” her mother asked incredulously. “Dimitra.”

“No! It’s a parlor. No s*x is exchanged in the club. Not ever. It’s a hard and fast rule. Whip, tie up, slap, punch, hey we even have one guy who likes to be set on fire and then extinguished.”

“Jake,” the other two girls said in unison before giggling.

“If o****m happens, it’s not from intercourse. If the girls pick someone up and he decides he wants to play sugar daddy for a bit outside of the club, it’s their choice. Their body, their choice.”

“I do not believe I am hearing this!” her father’s hand covered his mouth in an attempt to control his anger.

“I personally only worked the rooms one semester when we were trying to get enough money to get new equipment. Usually, I just ran the business and schedules. Found new marks. I tended to take things too far and the johns didn’t like it.” She didn’t look away from Miklos’ eyes as she shoved a strawberry between her lips. Rage flushed his cheeks. She c****d her head and studied the way he was struggling to keep cool.

“She didn’t last long because she kept making people bleed.” Magda offered over a giggle bubbling from her chest.

The three girls exchanged glances and smiled naughtily.

“What else did you do? You had all this freedom. What did you do with it, Dimitra?” Miklos’ mouth was a taut straight line as he stared her down, desperately wanting to change the topic.

She smirked as she considered he didn’t like knowing she had worked in such a place. “I studied a lot. My grades were perfect all along.”

“She is really smart,” Darya piped up. “Brilliant. She’s been working on so many projects. She has half the country chasing her to work for them.”

“We were in London while you worked on the banking thing,” Magda tossed out. “We were there a year.”

“I told him last night. He didn’t believe me. Said I was lying.”

“Considering I had biweekly reports saying you were in Boston, forgive me for being confused!” he yelled at her. A thought occurred to him, “the FBI thing is real?”

Magda whispered across the table, “we tried to call you for help. You would have known then. It was in our fourth year. You ignored us. You called her security agent instead of returning our calls and passed along the message we shouldn’t bother you anymore.”

He rubbed his face with his hand and looked over his shoulder at his father-in-law. “She was in holding at the FBI.”

Vasili blanched, “for what?”

“Espionage, treason, refusing to suck c**k,” she waved her arms as if were nothing. “A guy I went to school with f****d me over, so I got him back, but I went too far. He pointed the finger at me, and the government came knocking. Locked me up for a couple of days but they were never able to really pin anything on me, so they had to let me go. It was nothing.”

“They threatened to put her in Guantanamo Bay for treason.” Darya argued, “it was hardly nothing.”

“Why?” her mother was horrified.

“My program revealed the names of all the agents undercover in the FBI. It got downloaded to a program on my arch nemesis laptop but considering he couldn’t figure out his way into the dark web let alone through it, they knew right away he hadn’t done it. He said it was probably me. He was right, it was me but there was no way they could prove it. I had the program out of there before they even arrested me.” She grinned at Magda and Darya, “still have the intel though. Motherfuckers.”

“I don’t believe this,” her father stood up from the table and walked away, pacing. “Dimitra, you put the feds on our doorstep?”

“No, you put them on mine. They wouldn’t have even come after me if it weren’t for my stupid last name,” she grumbled angrily. “I considered changing my name but by then it was too late.”

“And they’re gone now? Done with you?” Her father leaned on the table staring at her down the length of it.

“Jesus no,” Darya laughed a cackle contradicting the pretty blonde’s serene disposition. “They want her bad. They want her to come in and head up a division. She’s so good, the feds are willing to look past her name and let her run cyber-ops.”

She made a face, “I’d rather blow Agent Frye.” The three women all shuddered exaggeratedly. She looked to her mother, “he’s as wide as he is tall and smells of pastrami all the time. I mean all the time. Every time he comes at me, I gag. It’s turned me off deli meat.” She sighed, “I can’t even walk past a Subway now.”

Her mother turned her head to one side incredulously, “this is not a laughing matter Dimitra.”

“I’m not kidding. He has ruined me for cured meats.”

“What else,” Miklos interrupted her complaints. “What else have you been doing?”

“Dancing, partying.” She made a face as if thinking about it, “had my appendix out third year. That was weird.”

“You had surgery?” Her mother asked her eyes widening in disbelief, “you had surgery and didn’t tell us?”

“I was only in the hospital two days, and they let me go home. I still managed to get all my assignments done and pass all my courses,” she nodded proudly. “Made the Deans’ list every year.”

“Dating?” Miklos asked. “All this freedom? Were you dating?”

“What do you care? You were dating. Why shouldn’t I have dated?” She watched him close his eyes in frustration. “Double-f*****g-standards,” she looked to the girls and shook her head. “The misogyny is strong in this one.”

“Dimitra,” he placed his hand flat on the table as if struggling to keep it from forming into a fist. “Were you involved with anyone serious?”

“Maybe. Or maybe I just f****d around a bit.” She reached for a croissant and bit it. “Who has time for serious? I’m running a global empire trying to take over the world, one bank at a time.”

“We did finish our degrees,” Magda threw out. “It’s not like we partied constantly and just ditched security. We were actually pursuing our education and our careers.”

Darya nodded, “and Dimi really kept us on track. Reminded us of our goals.”

“Your goals?”

“Yes. Emancipation,” Dimi didn’t back away from his look.

“What?” Her mother was confused.

“Freedom,” Miklos explained to her mother reaching sideways and taking grapes off the table and eating them, “she’s been plotting her freedom for eight years.”

“I’ll get it too.”

He made a face, waving his hand at her as if she were nothing more than a silly child, “I want the rest of what you have been doing over the last eight years.”

“I told you. Studying, working and occasionally we go dancing.”

“Funny,” he leaned forward as if ready to pounce, “the security agent tells me up to just a little over three years ago, my wife was surrounded all the time by her three friends and then suddenly they were only around on occasion. I know you said you were in London for a year. Where were you the rest of the time.”

She shifted uncomfortably, aware her mother would be hurt to know she’d been so close and had rarely come to see her. “Working on my masters.”

“See, you can actually do much of it online.” He held up his phone again, “I looked it up. Dimitra, where have you been the last eighteen to twenty-four months.”

Dimitra exchanged glances with the girls and then took a breath, shooting an apologetic look to her mother. “We rented a house and have been working on a project. We needed a couple of smaller companies to beta test with so we relocated to an area where we could run our tests on a decent sized sample.”

“Where. Have. You. Been?” he lifted his coffee cup up and glowered. “Where have you been hiding for the last eighteen months.”

“I wasn’t hiding,” she made a face. He slammed the coffee cup down and she jumped, “fine, I was in Santa Monica. We’re renting a house in Santa Monica.”

“You’ve been home all this time,” her mother gripped her chest as if it ached. “All this time and you didn’t come home to us?”

“I’ve been working and studying mama, not on vacation.” She tried to cushion the blow to her mother’s already fragile ego.

“Why didn’t you just move in here?” her father demanded. “You could have worked from here.”

“With him?” she waved at Miklos. “I’d rather be homeless. The only reason I’m here now is because you ordered it. I’m hoping the pair of you will see sense and set me free. Surely you both can see I am not the right match for Miklos. He needs a wife who is capable of turning a blind eye to his,” she grasped for the word, “shenanigans. I am not her.”

“Actually,” Magda spoke up with a smirk, “we could have worked from here. The minute he’d have thought you were here; he would have left the country.”

The three girls giggled at the suggestion while he cast them all dirty looks which had no bearing on their laughter.

“I am so very disappointed in you Dimitra,” her mother stared at her sadly. “I feel like I don’t know you at all.”

She lifted a shoulder, “and maybe you don’t. You sold me off to a man who resented me for stealing his freedom from him so I could live the same life as you.” She flicked a glance between her parents. “I’d rather die than spend my life tied to a bastard who has no respect for me. You raised me to be strong and proud and to take no s**t off anyone. Yet, you both stand here like he’s some kind of prize I should be grateful to have. There will be no baby. I will get my divorce.”

Without another word she pushed away from the table and left the room. Time for the next stage of her plan.