Divorcing Her Mafia Family
Chapter 24

Miklos entered the house and found it strangely quiet. “Mrs. Kyriakos?”

She poked her head from the kitchen. “I’m in here. Just tidying up.”

“Where’s Dimitra?” he frowned as he walked in her direction.

“Home, I imagine?” she paused, “I mean at her beach house. She had a meeting with the bank today. She said you knew.”

“I told her to get her clothes brought here and we would leave together,” he gave an exasperated sigh. “She is fighting me tooth and nail and to what end? She won’t refuse her father or family orders.” He sat on the stool Dimitra had occupied earlier in the morning. “I owe you an apology for earlier. I had expected she would confess to what she did.”

“You do remember she is Vasili’s daughter?” Mrs. K gave him a quizzical glance over her shoulder. “He raised her like a son, like you,” she nodded at him. “Do not expect her to give in without calling your bluff. She knew you wouldn’t fire me because we all knew I did nothing wrong.”

“She is bloody stubborn,” he g*****d, “just like her old man. You can’t tell him anything.”

“If you ask me, you’re all stubborn and nobody is listening to each other,” she sat on the other stool and regarded him seriously. “You’re going about this the wrong way Miklos and you’re going to lose her. Though, if you ask her, you can’t lose what you never had.”

“She was a child. It would have been highly inappropriate for me at twenty-five to take her and make the marriage real.”

“Miklos, I agree with you but you’re also lying to yourself. You resented her because Vasili put you both in a situation neither of you wanted nor expected. You spoke to her in a way you knew you couldn’t speak to either of your fathers. You intentionally crushed her heart and her spirit. I heard you this morning, you know. Blaming her for leaving.”

He looked away at her accusatory tone.

“You left her first,” she said gently. “You brought her home from Crete and you dumped her here in the guest bedroom she likes so much now, and you went to the clubs every night and the offices every day and you flew all over the world saying you had to work. You barely spoke a word to her. For eighteen years of her life, you were the constant. The one who always patted her on the head, smiled at her, made her feel a bit normal and then you put a gold band on her hand, and you treated her like she was public enemy number one.”

“I felt dirty,” he said simply. “I felt like a dirty old man. Vasili insisted when we go to Crete, I consummate the marriage and I couldn’t do it. It was easier to make her hate me than to go through with what he demanded of me. If he’d had his way, she would have been pushing out an heir before her nineteenth birthday.” He stared at the marble of the countertops, “I considered it. The entire flight to Crete I considered it. It would have been an easy sell for her. She had never ever attempted to hide her crush. I just knew there was no way I could look myself in the face after stealing her innocence when I didn’t feel the same for her as she did me.”

Mrs. K made a face, “you’ve never had s*x with a woman you didn’t feel the same about? I have a funny feeling the way you felt for Eve wasn’t the same as she felt for you.”

He c****d his head in acknowledgement. “True but she is not Dimitra. I loved Dimitra. I just didn’t love her the way she deserved to be loved. I had never permitted myself to consider her anything more than a kid sister. It was sordid and nasty.”

“And do you love her now? You haven’t seen her in eight years aside from three or four times. You don’t know her from a hole in the wall and I’m confident, had you passed her on the street last week in LA, you wouldn’t have known who she was.”

He shook his head, “you are wrong. I would know those eyes anywhere,” he grinned, “and the mouth. Admittedly it’s a lot fouler now than I remember.”

The woman laughed at his words, “you have missed out on a lot staying away from home so much when she was here. There was one weekend she had come home from London with the girls, and they got very drunk on the floor of the living room. It was wintertime, so must have been around Christmas maybe. The conversation made me blush and I’m a grown woman.”

He looked to her curiously, “you knew she was in London.”

“I did. I knew when she was in London. She did a few months in Dubai before she went back to Boston for a bit to start her master’s degree.before they relocated to Santa Monica for the last eighteen months. She finished her masters about nine months ago and they’ve been all in on their app development.”

He sat back, “you said nothing.”

“It wasn’t my place. You never even once asked how she was when she was here. If you asked, I might have told you, but you never even questioned it. I’ve watched her grow and become a strong resilient woman who is focused and driven with clear goals for her future.”

“She is Dimitra,” he made a face.

“She is not the Dimitra you knew. Yes, she is still a Lykiaos. I believe she could still walk into a situation with guns blazing and be the only one to come out alive, just the way you and her father taught her to do but she is smarter than the two of you put together and it is saying something because you are a brilliant man.”

“How smart?” he narrowed his gaze on his housekeeper.

“In all the time you had her security agent follow her did you ever once check her grades? Did you ever check her employment history? You’ve not done your homework Miklos. You are treating her still as the child you once knew. She is a formidable ally but an even more dangerous enemy.”

“How so?”

“The time she was here with the girls, and I told you they all got drunk and were risqué with their chatter, she’d had an issue with work. The project she was working on started to go sideways because she wasn’t right there supervising it. Her boss called her and gave her hell because it was her project, and she left the wrong person in charge while she was gone. The person who was supposed to be covering her while she was gone screwed up bad and made it look like Dimitra made the mistake before leaving London. Made it look like she messed up and ran away to hide from her error.”

“s**t. What did she do?”

“She not only cleared her name with her boss, but she also exposed the guy and then,” she gave a sad shake of her head, “she made it so the man who screwed her over lost everything. She exposed an affair he’d been having to his wife and his entire family. While they were having a family holiday party, she did something with her computer which started playing explicit emails between him and his lover, coupled with sound clips of them having s*x onto their home television systems. She remotely turned on their televisions in, I think it was the wife’s grandmother’s house, and on every single television, had this on a loop. The only way they could stop it was to unplug the televisions.”

Miklos mouth hung open in shock, “how did she do it?”

“I didn’t ask. All I know is the girls thought it was hilarious and were rolling on the floor drinking a lot and when her boss called her to apologize, she demanded a raise before she went back to London to fix the mistakes the other guy made. She made a huge fan in the boss. I believe he offered to make her his VP.”

“She’s brilliant at what she does.”

“She is. At the risk of betraying her and later I may be angry at myself for telling you this, she has one weakness Miklos.” She sighed loudly, “Miklos, I have been here every time she has arrived to this house, and you are not here. While she masks it well, it still hurts, even after all this time, the lengths you will go through to avoid her. Her pain at your rejection makes her think irrationally. If you won’t give her what she’s asking for, the chance to be free and away from all this family has put her through, she will undoubtedly be unreasonable, and her decision making will be compromised. Someone is going to get hurt.” She met his eyes seriously, “and I’m very concerned it isn’t the person sitting at this counter. Please tread lightly.”

“There hasn’t been a divorce in either of our families ever. We will not be getting one. While I appreciate the candor, Mrs. K, I believe your loyalty is compromised.” He had to insist lest she tell Dimitra otherwise.

“Perhaps. I am the one who held her many nights while she sobbed in the bed you had pulled upstairs earlier today. I am the one who comforted her and reassured her. I’m the one who more than once called the girls to help me get her out of bed when she would get so low all she would do is work on her computer and not come up for air. Albeit those days have been far less over the last three years than they were the first five and the first three were the absolute worst, but I know what she went through each time she walked through those doors and felt the sting of rejection again and again and again. She knew you would refuse the divorce on principal. She never imagined you would want to make the marriage real. It’s messing with her head and she’s going to do something stupid.”

“Why can she just not accept it and stay?” he said with frustration.

“Why should she trust, you won’t do to her what her father does to her mother? Your own parents have not had a monogamous relationship. You have flaunted lover after lover in her face. Is she supposed to trust and believe you when you say you won’t take a lover the minute, she’s given you an heir?”

“Yes.” He said simply. “She is supposed to believe and trust me.”

“Why because you’re her husband?” she asked mockingly.

“No. Because all I may have ever done, the one thing I have never done to Dimitra is lied to her. Not once. I have been honest with her to the point it has broken her heart, but I would never lie. If I give her my word, she should trust my word. She should know better.”

“Love doesn’t work that way, Miklos,” Mrs. K said standing up from the stool and patting his shoulder gently. “When you’ve hurt someone who loves you, it destroys all the love, including the trust part. You need to earn it back and until you figure out a way to make it happen, you’re fighting a losing battle.”

“There is too much at stake,” he shook his head.

“I agree.” She said sadly as she left the kitchen.

He pushed away from the counter and made his way up the three flights of stairs to his bedroom. He found the new clothes he had his PA deliver to the house a short while ago, hanging in his closet and sighed. He couldn’t believe it when all of his clothes started falling apart. He had ordered his PA to collect all of his shirts and suits and get them fixed but the tailor, who said they could fix the shirts, told him the pants were not salvageable. They had actually cut them when hemming them inches too short. He would laugh if it weren’t so bloody ridiculous.

He checked his watch and sighed. He had less than forty minutes to meet his parents and Dimitra at the restaurant. Why his mother had insisted they have dinner tonight was beyond him, but he wasn’t going to shoot a gift horse in the mouth. Time spent with Dimitra was one step closer to convincing her to stay.

He took the quickest shower he’d had in a while and then got ready. He was racing through the house knowing he was going to be late and his mother abhorred tardiness. It would be a rough start.

He was almost to the garage when a voice calling his name made him look over his shoulder. It was the young man who had pulled a gun on Dimitra a few nights back. How Ajax had convinced him to let the man stay was beyond him. “What is it? I’m already late.”

“I just,” the man scratched his head nervously, “Mrs. Laskaris had a delivery early this afternoon and she took it into the garage. She had a funny look on her face, and she told us to stay out of the garage or we’d spoil your surprise. I don’t know. Something tells me she was doing something worse than the bonfire the guys spoke of.”

Miklos felt a moment of panic. “What kind of delivery?”

“It looked like a machine. A girl dropped it off and they were talking really excitedly but I couldn’t hear them, and she kept telling me to get lost.”

“Get lost?”

“She used stronger words.” He appeared embarrassed. “I only wanted to warn you she was in there a long time. At least an hour or more and she threatened to shoot me in the head if I opened the doors.”

He shook his head at the man and wondered what kind of machine Dimitra would have had brought into garage. He pressed the garage door opener on his key fob and watched as the three doors all rolled up in unison. All three cars appeared to be intact, and his bike was also sitting there unharmed. Then the doors reached the top and a grinding noise started.

He started to step closer to the garage when screeching metal shot past his head, and he ducked in terror just as it exploded in a cascade of bright green color. “Was that a firework?”

Panic set into his chest as he verbalized his thought. “f**k no.” he raced towards the garage ducking and weaving as the high-pitched screams of crackling and popping mixed with sizzling and snapping of what had to be hundreds of fireworks going off in his garage. They were everywhere, smashing into the ceiling of the garage, landing on the cars. One lodged into the windshield of the Maserati and he winced as if it lodged into his very own chest. His Porsche took one to the side panel and it caused the rocket to spin in circles in the garage. Most of them didn’t even reach enough height for the colors to erupt and others cascaded colors over the house if they managed to shoot past the doors of the garage or went off early.

He yelled at the security agents who were running to try to replace a way to stop the chaos, but it was no use. For ten minutes, the loud bangs of fireworks exploding echoed through his garage with the odd one escaping through the opened doors and all he could do was stand there and watch in horror as his cars all took a brutal beating.

Then there was silence. Black smoke billowed from the garage and the strong smell of sulfur and gunpowder filtered out. Miklos stood with his hands at his sides and wondered whether he was in a nightmare. The garage was totaled. His cars were damaged, tens of thousands of dollars worth the damage if he had to guess off the top of his head and the various things, he’d had stored in his garage were in disarray.

A single whistling of one last rocket blew past him and he ducked just as the men behind him did.

He heard the titter of laughter behind him, and he turned on his heel. “Who laughed?”

Immediately everyone was silent and looking anywhere but at him. He caught one of the guys looking towards the garage and fighting a smile. “You think this is funny?” He grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him towards him.

“No sir. No Mr. Laskaris. It’s not funny at all.” The man swallowed in terror.

He threw the man to the ground and turned back to the mess and rubbed his hand over his face. He saw Ajax running up the driveway. “You’re late.”

“I’m not even supposed to be here. What the hell happened?” he stared at the opened garage.

“My wife rigged it with fireworks.”

“Why?”

“She wants a divorce. I won’t give her one.”

“I bet you give her one now,” the kid who had initially approached him quipped.

“No but I could be a god-damned widower by the end of the night.” He looked to Ajax. “I need a ride to dinner. Get someone in here to clean this f*****g mess up.”

“On it,” Ajax was on his phone as he and a couple of the guys cautiously made their way into the garage. As if they’d triggered a bobby trap, as soon as they passed the door, a series of five or six more rockets launched inside the garage sending them all running back out, covering their heads and squealing.

“I’m going to kill her,” he punched the air in frustration as he walked down the long driveway to meet whatever car Ajax was sending for him.

His phone rang and he noted it was his mother. “Mother, I am on my way.”

“Where are you? You should be here.”

“I had a situation at the house but I’m on my way. Is Dimitra there yet?”

“No. She hasn’t shown up yet either.” She paused, “never mind. She is here now. I,” her mother gave a low whisper, “Miklos, you should get here as fast as you can. She’s um, well, just hurry.”

His mother hung up on him and he almost ran to the end of the driveway. Now what had she done? He tried dialing his mother back as he slid into the backseat of the car but there was no answer. He tried calling his father, but he too was ignoring his phone.

Thirty minutes later the car pulled up to the curb and he hopped out of the car without waiting for the security agent to open his door. He was going to kill her. He couldn’t wait to get his mitts on her. He entered the restaurant, and the hostess stopped him obviously forgetting her place, “I’m having dinner with my wife and parents.”

He looked around the room and spotted his mother seated at her favorite table and he beelined. There were only two people at the table, and they were his parents. Where was Dimitra? Both of his parents stood up when they saw him, and he placed k****s to their cheeks. “Where is she?”

“She said she needed the ladies room.” His mother was shaking her head, “her outfit.”

“What about her outfit?”

“Miklos, everyone was staring. I suggested perhaps she go change it somehow because I know you won’t like it and she refused. Said she wasn’t going to let either of us give her body issues and I’d have to suck it up.”

“What the hell was she wearing?”

Her father coughed and nodded behind Miklos. Miklos turned and wondered into what dimension he’d been pulled. Every single set of eyes in the restaurant were on his wife and he wanted to throw his jacket around her shoulders and carry her out caveman style.

“What –” he couldn’t replace the words. She had a leather pencil skirt on so tight he it was unclear how she was going to sit in it. She had thigh high black leather boots on disappearing under the hem of the skirt. Her shirt, if he could call it a shirt, was b***d red and it barely covered her n*****s. If he had to guess it was one of those bodysuit things which snapped at the crotch, but it was two pieces of the twisting shimmering silk which came up from under the skirt, over her breasts and shoulders and then disappearing into the backside of her skirt. Two strips of the material. One false move and her n*****s would be on full view. “What are you wearing?”

“Clothes?” she didn’t skip a beat with the sarcasm

He grabbed her by the arm and started pulling her through the restaurant, through the kitchen and shoved her into the office of the restaurant manager. “Get out!” he told the man furiously.

The man, evidently aware of Miklos’ temper, moved fast not even hesitating to vacate his office for him.

Miklos slammed the door and shoved her against it, pinning her against it, a hand on either side of her head and his knee shoved hard against her thigh. “Are you out of your f*****g mind?”