Divorcing Her Mafia Family
Chapter 33

She’d barely slept a wink. She was exhausted to the point of frustration. The man in the next room had snored all night long as if having the best sleep of his life and though she had gotten up around one in the morning to plug her headphones in to charge, they hadn’t been ready until nearly six.

She felt bleary eyed and angry, and she wanted nothing more than a long swim and a cuddle with Jinx. Jinx had always been down for a good lay-in and while she lay there missing her, she felt the tears begin to flow again.

Dimi cursed at herself. She needed to get her emotions in order. Crying was not a useful way to spend her time and it was not an activity she usually engaged in. Her father and Miklos would have mocked her ruthlessly for the number of tears she’d shed in the last twenty-four hours.

Thoughts of Miklos made her roll over and check her phone to see if he had responded to her last message demanding she leave him alone. Nothing. She lay there listening to the rhythmic snoring of the man in the next room and found herself wondering if Miklos had slept like the man next door, snoring without a care in the world or was he out looking for her to drag her back against her will.

The sudden abrupt ceasing of the snores from the man in the next room, coughing and waking up made her sigh in relief. He was finally awake. She miserably pulled her pillow tight over her face and screamed into it when he began to whistle. What was with this man, and two-thousands pop tunes? She could hear it as clearly as if he were in the bed with her, Uptown Funk. She heard him roll out of the bed and his feet hit the floor with a thud.

The whistling moved away, and she gave an exhausted whimper burrowing deep into her pillows. Her phone buzzed on her nightstand, and she lifted it to see it was her mother again. She answered it this time, sleep deprivation making her careless.

“Good morning, Mama.”

“Where are you?” her mother demanded. “Your father and I want to have dinner with you to celebrate your accomplishments.”

“Pops doesn’t want to celebrate anything until a baby is pushed out my hoo-ha.”

“Don’t be rude, Dimitra. You’ve been home all this time and you’ve seen me once. I miss you. Come have breakfast with me at least. I will have your favorites here. I will even make you a cake.”

Nerida’s words about cake floated around her head. “Mama, did you prohibit Nerida from speaking to me until I moved back home?”

Her mother went quiet at her sudden question.

“Mama? Did you?”

“She stole my baby away from me!” her mother hissed furiously. “She did what I could not do and gave her husband a boy, the least she could then, was to leave me in peace with my girl. Instead, they all stole you from me, she pushing more than anyone else, and sent you to live a world away and what did it do? It made you into a harlot who works in brothels and disappears from her family and dresses provocatively with all your bits on display. You should have stayed home. You didn’t have to live in Miklos house. You could have moved back here if he were such a bad man but no, you moved away because she encouraged you to. You came back a completely different person.”

Her mother’s outburst had her sitting up in the bed in surprise. She spoke gently, “mama, I was leaving whether or not Miklos and Nerida asked on my behalf. I already had my tickets and had arranged living quarters and a payment plan for tuition in the event I didn’t get my scholarship. I was smart enough for scholarships and I knew I could get in. Nerida is not at fault. It was my decision. Mine.”

“Why could you not just stay home?” her mother whined angrily.

“Mama, I’m not you!” she tried to censor her words but struggled. “I am not content to be a housewife who turns a blind eye to the things happening in her own home. I will never be capable of staying home to make a man who disrespects me and a child my sole purposes in life.”

“Do you forget who you are speaking to Dimitra? I am your mother, and you will remember it.”

“Or what mama? Will you make me a cake and have a serious discussion with me about what it means to be the daughter of Vasili and to remember I must exhibit respect and gratitude to my parents regardless of how much pain they cause me?”

“What pain have I caused you?”

“Mama! You want me to forgo my own hopes and dreams and the opportunity for a real love and real commitment from a good man just to follow your footsteps and be vovoi. I don’t want to be in the kitchen making meals while my husband disrespects me in the next room.”

“Miklos would never,” her mother whispered into the phone. “He would never do it to you. If your marriage had been a real one, I am convinced he would have been faithful to you.”

“You base this on what?” she rolled her eyes.

“On the number of times he offered to help me leave Vasili. Behind his back of course. More than once he offered to replace me a place of my own where Vasili couldn’t humiliate me any longer. The day Vasili had his heart attack, Miklos was so angry with him he left the hospital and didn’t go visit him once. You heard him, he went to Greece. He begged me to leave. He said I was his second mother and he loved me, and he could not sit by and watch me be denigrated by Vasili’s actions. He even said he hoped he didn’t make it out of surgery. I told him I would pray for his angry soul.”

Dimitra was dumbfounded by this information. Miklos had said nothing to her. “Why didn’t you go?”

“Dimitra, do you think I didn’t know what I was getting into when I married into this family? Giving away my own name? I never wanted to be married. I wanted to be a woman of faith, but it was not what my family wanted for me. I came from a family who lived the life and had always worked with the Lykiaos family. I was promised to Vasili when just a young teenager. Vasili was not much older and never wanted a wife, but he did want children. When his father was murdered, he took the family over and ruthlessly did what it took to make sure his people were safe and protected. He told me we would have no children until he could guarantee their safety. Dimitra, your father, and I didn’t consummate our marriage until about six months before you were conceived.”

“Wait what?” her eyes were huge as she listened to her mother’s words. Her parents had been together nearly fourteen years when she’d been born. She was torn between wanting to know more and being disgusted at thinking of her parents doing it.

“I spent most of my time in church and doing God’s will. He ran the family and worked on his education. I spoke my vows to your father, but I do not believe in contraception and since your father did not feel we were ready for children, he took lovers, and I went to church. I made it clear to him for me s*x was about having children and it became a stalemate. Eventually we had you and we tried several more times, but it was not God’s will for me to have children and I didn’t want to try any more. Your father wanted a real marriage with the intimate s****l parts, but I never enjoyed being touched by a man and I have flat out refused since we lost our last baby. I wasn’t going to continue trying to like something for it to only cause me grief later. I was done. He said I would have to accept he had needs and would take his pleasure elsewhere and I told him to have at it. He was very bitter for a long time.”

She’d barely slept a wink. She was exhausted to the point of frustration. The man in the next room had snored all night long as if having the best sleep of his life and though she had gotten up around one in the morning to plug her headphones in to charge, they hadn’t been ready until nearly six.

Her mother’s words were shocking. “Are you gay?”

“No. I talked to a counsellor once who said it was called being asexual. I simply have no s****l desire in my body or soul. I remember once Nerida suggested I should just try to get in the mood on my own and even touching myself I could not achieve o****m. I replace it boring.”

She was in stunned disbelief and thoroughly disgusted all at once, “no. I heard you fighting with Pops when I was a kid how he would sleep with other women while you were home waiting on him.”

“Because he would come home with the marks of a floozy on him. The least he could do was shower and clean up before bringing it into our home. I didn’t care he slept around Dimitra because it saved me having to pretend to like it. I cared he did it in my home. I pray in my home. I treat our home as reverently as I do the church. God is present there. Yet, in his mind, he feels because I am not sexually attracted to him it is an affront to him. He is so self-centred he cannot fathom my s****l identity has nothing to do with him. He thinks because he replaces me beautiful and attractive, I should want his p***s. It doesn’t work this way.”

Her mother’s words made sense. Vasili was a narcissistic bastard.

“Dimitra, the only reason I ever had s*x was to have children. It was in my heart my true purpose and I love you with my soul. You were and are such a gift to me so yes, I was angry at Nerida for pushing you away from me. I had two things in my life which gave me purpose, God, and you. Your father, when we take the s*x out of it, is a great companion and a wonderful friend and I love him with all my heart. He makes me laugh and when we are sitting quietly doing nothing, there is nobody else I would want to do it with. He is my best friend. I just never wanted him physically.”

She exhaled loudly and flopped back in the bed and grimaced when the whistling in the next room grew louder. She had hoped he slipped in the shower and broke his jaw, and his whistling was forever stopped.

“Dimitra, come have dinner with me. Please. I miss you.”

“I can’t mama. I left the country.”

Her mother’s silence spoke volumes.

“Mama, I need to be divorced. Miklos refused.”

Her mother whispered, “your father will kill him, Dimitra. He told me flat out yesterday if Miklos cannot bring you back into the fold, he is a dead man.”

“Mama, do you know how insane it sounds to know if I don’t bend to Pops’ will, he will kill a man who has no control over me?”

“Your father has it in his head it was Miklos who drove you away and therefore it he who will pay.”

“He drove me away, mama. Vasili drove me away by forcing me to marry a man who didn’t want to bone his kid sister.”

“Don’t be crass, Dimitra.” Her mother chastised. “You do what you must. I love you and I know you are going to do what you want anyway but remember this please. Your actions have consequences. Your life and your world aren’t the same as the ones your friends have led, and you have special circumstances. You can choose your own path but if it is one the fates do not agree upon, you must be ready to accept the ramifications. If Miklos loses everything, including his life, do not think you are clean in this.”

Her words were eerily similar to Mrs. K’s words. Ugh. “Mama, are you suggesting if my father murders my husband, it’s my fault?”

“No. Vasili’s actions will be his. Your actions however, those of not having actual conversation, listening to the man you married, giving him an opportunity to prove he is not the man you believe him to be, are the catalyst for you making decisions which put him in a difficult position. While he made mistakes and incredible errors in judgement, you are so much like your father you forget to look at the big picture and think only of how you are being impacted. You are not considering the impact your actions will have on others.”

“I am not taking the blame for this bullshit.” Her own mother was gaslighting her. Unbelievable

“I will pray for you. I do hope to see you again soon, Dimitra. I do miss you an awful lot.” She gave a loud sigh, “I will go now because your father is getting up. He will want to talk to you if he knows I have you on the line and if you tell him you are gone, he will put a hit on Miklos. I cannot have it.”

Her mother hung up and she pulled her pillow over her face. “f**k!” she screamed into it furiously. She rolled out of the bed and stomped angrily to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. Her own mother suggesting this was her fault was too much. She needed a swim.

She shrugged into a one-piece bathing-suit and slipped her flipflops on and stormed out of her unit. Marching down the stairs to the pool area she noted another couple already sitting on loungers there and she turned towards the gate leading to the beach. The ocean was better anyway.

She kicked sand all the way down the beach, mumbling and cursing under her breath at the audacity of her mother. None of this was her fault. She was a victim. Not a helpless one by any stretch but a victim. She kicked her flipflops off at the waters’ edge and waded waist deep before diving. The water was warm, and she swam out quite a distance, rising and diving multiple times to calm her furious rage. She surfaced and turned her face back to the building and noted in the distance the seagull sitting on the balcony adjoining hers and found a smug sense of satisfaction when a man in a ballcap, aviators and a Hawaiian shirt stepped onto the balcony and shooed the bird away. She would have to pick up more fish to bait the birds to his private seating area though admitted she was disappointed Draco the wizard didn’t have a cape on but was dressed like a tourist.

The notion was a good distraction, and she dove deep into the water and began swimming the length of the beach to where the markers were ending the private beach area and then she swam back to the other side. By the time she drew herself to the shore, landing on her knees she was exhausted, less angry though still irritated with her mother.

How she wished she could call Darya and Magda and get their perspective. They would reassure her. She lay back in the sand uncaring it stuck to her skin and hair and closed her eyes, letting the early suns rays warm and dry her skin.

Her mother’s words echoed in her mind. “You think only of how you are being impacted.”

She let her fingers clench the sand at her sides and dug into the white softness. Her mother suggesting, she was being as selfish as her father stung. Was she suggesting Miklos was too a victim in this?

Sure, he knew when she had only been eleven years old, he’d have to marry her and have children with her, but he had infinitely more time to process it. She grimaced though at the thought of being told as a young teenage man to take great care not to get another girl pregnant because he would have to marry a child, one he’d always considered his sister

She tried to imagine how it must have felt watching her get older and having her puppy dog eyes following his every move when the families were together. Had he looked at her in disgust and she not notice?

Yet, she admitted, for all the disgust and irritation he should have felt, not once from the time he had learned of being betrothed until her eighteenth birthday had he treated her any differently than he always had. He had still acted as her big brother. He had still trained her like one of the men. He had protected her, sheltered her from the worst of her father’s violence and made her laugh and giggle with his teasing. He took all of her pranks in stride and never once until she was older had he treated her like the enemy.

She considered it must have been when the reality hit, when their parents told him just shy of her birthday, they would be married had he changed. It was only then had he been cruel.

She could remember the day as if it were happening now. She had been at her heaviest weight, struggling with the fact she had graduated school the year before but her parents insisting she take a gap year. She’d spent the year with Vasili in his offices and warehouses and then with mama in church and the seniors home. All the time in between her mother fed her boredom. She’d been sitting near the pool, with one of her father’s t-shirts over her swimsuit, dangling her feet and eating an ice cream cone.

The memories flooded her. Miklos had come to sit beside her.

“You are almost eighteen.”

“Yes,” she had laughed, “according to Pops, a woman. According to mama, a child. I’m a Brittney Spears song.”

He gave a sad shake of her head, “you are getting married.”

“Like f**k.” She had met his gaze head on. “Says who?”

“Our parents. Your father and mine have made an arrangement since your birth.”

“Who the hell am I supposed to be marrying?” her childish dreams of him noticing her as more than a kid sister vanishing.

“Me.” He met her gaze directly. As if seeing the light which had lit there in relief at her thoughts, he quashed it quickly, “but don’t think for one minute this will be a real marriage. You are a child. You have no experience in the real world. This is a contract marriage meant to join our family names and it will be a union as such but do not fool yourself into thinking this is some kind of romantic wedding proposal, I’m giving you. This is a job. It is a job just like when Vasili orders a hit, and you have to carry it out.”

“You’re comparing marrying me to shooting someone in the head?” she had scoffed at him.

“Dimitra, I am simply telling you, for me this is a duty. It is a job, an assignment and it not one I relish. You are as close to me as a kid sister, and I love you as a sister, but it will never be more. The wedding is a formality. We will never consummate the marriage. Reign your emotions in and do as you’ve been trained to do. Follow the family orders and bite the bullet.”

“This is a joke.”

“No, it is no joke. I have purchased a home already. It will become the base of operations for our family. You will be expected to move there as soon as the wedding happens. You will have your own office on site, and you will manage the household and the staff. We will live separate lives. You will have the second floor of the house. I will take the third.”

“You’re telling me, I’m supposed to marry you, out of duty and then live in your house with you but not live with you.” She leaned sideways looking at her parents on the patio. “You think, I’m going to have a marriage like they have?”

“You have no choice. I have no choice. Suck it up and stop pouting. Life isn’t rainbows and unicorns with prince charming and happily ever after. We are not the Hollywood fairy tale come to life. We are Lykiaos and Laskaris. You will do your job and you will not complain. Understood?”

His words were cold and harsh and any warmth he’d ever shown her in the past was gone as he regarded her with contempt. She nodded meekly at his change in demeanor. He was suddenly behaving as if he were her boss. He was treating her the way Vasili treated his minions. “Of course, Miklos. I will do as I’m told.”

“Good. So long as you understand, we will not be a couple, Dimitra. We will rule this family together someday as your father continues your training over the next several years, but it will always be a business merger, not a love match. Keep it in mind.”

He stood up and walked away then, not returning to the patio where their families had sat but straight out the back garden gate and moments later the roar of his motorcycle springing to life and tearing down the street, taking her big brother and her heart along with it.

A loud splash made her sit up in surprise, erasing her memories and jolting her from her near dreamscape. She looked around in confusion when at first, she saw nothing but then noted the Hawaiian shirt, hat, and glasses with a pair of men’s sandals not five feet from where she had been laying, neatly piled up.

She hadn’t even heard Draco approach and she searched the water for his old man head. She wondered if he wore the ballcap to hide a bald head. She looked back to his pile of clothing and contemplated how he had twice now disrupted her rest. She heard the water break and looked to see if she could see him, but he must have dived as quickly as he’d surfaced because all she saw were a few seabirds.

Sliding sideways she reached a hand sideways and grabbed one sandal. He didn’t need two. She quickly slipped her own flipflops on and made her way back up the beach and towards her unit. She kept his sandal tucked neatly to her side hoping nobody would see it. Once inside she tucked it under her bed giggling.

She noted her laptop and phone on her nightstand. She checked the phone for messages and noted a couple from Darya. Magda had gone out with Ares the night before and had come home incensed and had punched a hole in the wall. Magda had sent a message asking if Dimi wanted to do a hit for her. Her father sent one asking her to call. Miklos had sent nothing. No response to her last message.

She frowned and pulled her computer closer to her as she sat on the edge of the bed, forgetting momentarily she was covered in sand and still damp from her swim. She stared at the computer screen and considered enacting her plan to hold Laskaris companies’ hostage until he released her.

A sudden buzzing on her phone distracted her from her thoughts. It was Trip inviting her to dinner. She pursed her lips as she looked back to the computer. Taking Miklos hostage could wait a bit longer. Perhaps she needed a different distraction for a while.