Divorcing Her Mafia Family
Chapter 46

They were seated at the front of a cute restaurant with a huge stage in front of them and she was smirking broadly, and Miklos still looked ready to throttle her.

“Would you stop pouting? You’re like a child.” She lifted her water glass to her lips and cast him a side eye. She had arrived back to the enclave with barely ten minutes to spare to get dressed. He had cursed her for being late telling her the taxi was waiting. When she’d come out of her unit nine minutes later dressed like s*x on heels, he had gripped his chest as if in agony and had motioned for her to return back to the room to change. She’d ignored him and gotten into the waiting cab.

“You need a smack on the a*s.” He grunted near her ear.

“You threaten to do it a lot but so far, you’re a lot of talk.”

He leaned sideways and dropped his arm over the back of her chair and yanked the chair closer to him, so they were sitting thigh-to-thigh. “My little wife, you gave me a hell of a show on the water and now this dress is beyond risqué. You are going to pay up.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about. I simply didn’t want tan lines from my bikini on the boat.”

“So, this is why you got yourself off after removing the bikini top?”

“Well,” she was merrily enjoying his discomfort and turned to meet his gaze with delight and lowered her voice so only he could hear, “you promised to f**k me in the ocean. You then declined to do so because the other family kept replaceing us wherever we paddled. I had to take care of myself since you wouldn’t. Besides, they were too engrossed in the dolphins to know what I was doing.”

“The other family were fifty feet away,” he stared back at her. “The grandfather knew exactly what you were doing. He couldn’t stop staring.”

“Then you should have done what you promised to do.”

“If you were so desperate for me, why did you lock me out of your unit when we got back? You raced off from the dock to leave me to settle up at the kiosk running like a scared little girl.”

“I had to go replace a dress for my date tonight. Do you like it?” She looked down at the dress she had bought. A deep v neck, two slits high to the thigh in a deep shimmering black encased her body like a glove. She felt wickedly delicious in it.

“It and the woman wearing it are mind-bogglingly beautiful, but you now have me sitting here with the desire to throw you over my shoulder and go back to the enclave.” He looked down the deep v of the dress into her cleavage. “I want to put my c**k,” he shoved his finger between the rounded mounds of flesh, “right here.”

“That would be fun,” she commented as if his comment hadn’t made her panties instantly wet. “I wonder if you could reach my mouth from there.” She watched as he sat back at her bold words clearly thinking he was going to win a round and she chuckled as his mouth opened and closed as he tried to think. “You’re very cute when you’re sexually frustrated.”

“I need to kill someone,” he muttered as he tore a paper coaster apart with his fingers while she giggled at his antics. He whispered in her ear, “I might rip the dress off you entirely when we get back.”

“You promised me slow and gentle,” she gave him a frown. “Are you not a man of your word?”

“I am,” he sighed, “I will control myself if I must.”

“Do you think you can?” she mocked him and rested her hand against his thigh under the table. “I could just slip under the table and fix you up right here. The tablecloth seems long enough. There’s also a bathroom down the hall there. I do know you know what to do with me in a bathroom.”

He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. “You said you want out of the life but my queen, you are meant for the world of torture.”

She squeezed his leg and ran her hand up his muscles possessively, not stopping when she reached where the hard length of him started. “Hm, it seems you have a problem.” She grinned, “also, I don’t feel your boxers under these pants. Have you gone commando?”

He slapped her hand, “when did you steal my clothes?”

“While you were fantasizing about me in the shower,” she met his startled gaze with a smirk. “You really should lock your doors.”

“It seems the dress you are wearing has just opened wide and you’re exposed all the way to your h*p.” He reached his hand between them and pulled the dress upwards and slid his hand along her bare thigh, “you are wearing underwear under this, correct?”

“Mm, remember those little lace panties you once told me I’d be waving like a white flag?” She felt his fingers clench around her inner thigh. “Those ones. I won’t be waving them though.”

“What do you want? I feel suddenly you are looking to negotiate something,” he kept his hand against her thigh imitating the movements she was making under the table against his leg.

She chuckled, “how astute of you, Miklos.”

“What do you want?”

“Parlay?”

He frowned at the word and then gave a single nod.

“I want to go home.” She said simply not missing the way his hand stopped moving on her leg. “I want to go home but I want some things in return from you as well as a compromise to me returning back to LA.”

“Name it.” He was all ears now.

“One, I’m not a baby factory. I’m not going to lay on my back and push out spawn for my father’s benefit. I want a year of you to myself before I take out the IUD.” She expected him to balk.

“Six months.”

“One year, nonnegotiable.”

“Fine, one year.” His tone was obligatory, but she heard a puff of pride in there.

She could see from his smile he liked the idea of her wanting him alone and it surprised her. Maybe he too was wanting time spent with only her. “Two kids max.”

“Five.”

She almost choked on her own spittle, her eyebrows knitting incredulously at his counteroffer of five. “Are you nuts? No. Two.”

“Three.”

“Fine, three but if I have problems like my mom did, I don’t want you doing to me what Vasili did to her.”

“My love,” he moved his hand from her leg to her shoulder, “not in a million years will I put you through what he has done to her. Not ever. He deals with grief in weird ways. When your sister was born stillborn at seven months, he went on a killing and f*****g rampage lasting a year or more. Not even my father could get through to him. I was ten at the time and walked in on him with three women after he’d allegedly wiped out an entire family, he wanted control of. My mother almost castrated him. You have my word I will treat you with far more respect than any he has shown her.”

“I want them protected. I want our children sheltered and safe and with as little exposure to the violence of the Lykiaos Laskaris world as possible for as long as possible.”

“Until it is no longer safe to do so, we will shelter them from the truth. I will protect them with my life.”

She nodded feeling weepy at his words. “I don’t want to stop working on my projects.”

“I don’t want you to stop working on your projects. You’re brilliant as hell and rich. I could live the life of a sugar baby if I wanted.”

She slapped at his words, and he captured her hands and kissed them, grinning broadly and demonstrating he was enjoying her demands. She knew she had surprised him with her demands but the more she had thought in the boutique about Mrs. K’s words, the more they rang true in her soul. She had been internally debating telling him now or waiting the full two weeks. When she’d seen her divorce papers still sitting on her counter when she’d raced in to get changed and throw l*p gloss and mascara on, she had in the moment decided to wait the two weeks. Now, though, as she was sitting here with him, she wanted him to know what was on her heart. She felt it deeply she needed to tell him she wanted to take back what was hers and he was hers.

“What else, my love. What else do you need from me?”

“I want my friends. I know you don’t like how much I share but I need them. They are everything. They are my sisters, and I cannot survive without them. The last four days have been hell. They’re up to things without me and I don’t like it.”

He laughed at her words, “you can get into all the trouble you want with them, and I will bail from you out from jail as much I have to.”

His words made her lips twist. “Good. It may happen.”

“I feel you’re saving the best or worst for last,” he teased. “What are you going to ask for next?”

“As little involvement in the business as possible, especially the darker stuff of Lykiaos. I will go to the offices and work, but I don’t want the other things. Specifically, the two things we talked about this weekend. I don’t want anything, nothing to do with them. They go against the grain of who I want to be. I am not the kid I once was, and I will not be involved in those two things.” She referred to the guns and drugs conversation they’d had.

“We will cut them out completely,” he shrugged as if it were an easy promise.

“My father will not like it.” She was wide-eyed at how quickly he caved to this.

“He will have to suck it up. I’ve been thinking of it since you mentioned it Saturday and your words struck a chord in me, one I hadn’t known there. If the caveat of you coming home, is we drop those two enterprises, then they are dropped. End of discussion. If he doesn’t like it, he can give it all to Tariq, and I’ll walk away and deal with Laskaris only. My father will support me but even if he doesn’t, f**k them all. I want you and your happiness Dimitra. Nothing else is important. You come first.”

She could feel the tension oozing off him as she was capitulating to what he wanted. “I don’t want you dancing with other girls in the clubs.”

“Fine. I only want to dance with you anyway.”

She narrowed her gaze as he didn’t hesitate, “what if Vasili demands it? I know he’s ordered you to use whatever means necessary to get intel. I know you’ve seduced a few women for information.”

“Vasili is no longer running the show, my little love.”

“I have a question,” she had a thought.

“Ask anything.”

“In Crete all those years ago, you told me you slept with another woman on our honeymoon but then at the house last week you said you didn’t actually sleep with her.”

He tapped her nose, “I did not ever tell you I slept with her. You were on the beach when I was coming back in the morning. You were furious with me for leaving you by yourself in the villa overnight and you accused me of leaving you all alone to go screw someone else, I simply didn’t deny it. In my dense mind it was better you thought the worst anyway. I never screwed anyone on our boring and lackluster honeymoon. I wish I could back in time and do it over. All the time I missed,” he leaned forward and looked down her top again.

She slapped him, “quit it.”

“Not ever,” he boldly winked at her. “I have eight years to make up. You may want to invest in lube.”

She couldn’t help the giggle at his dirty words.

“What else, Dimitra?”

“I want this,” she waved around the room.

“You want me to buy you this place? Okay, I mean, it’s kind of a weird request but sure. I’ll talk to the owner –” he stopped talking as she frowned at him as if he were stupid. “What?”

“I want this,” she waved between them and then the room. “I want date nights. Even if there are kids. I don’t want to be the shrew on the other side of your wall. I can’t stop hearing her telling me run because after a year it’s s**t. I don’t want it to be shit.”

“Okay.”

“Miklos, you work a lot. Seventeen- and eighteen-hour days sometimes and often it’s six days a week.”

“Agape mou, I said okay,” he reached forward and touched her cheek softly, “I love spending time with you. We will make sure once a week we do this and,” he rubbed his thumb over her lips, “we will make it a point to go away, just the two of us at least once a year, but I would prefer more often. Just like we are doing now.”

She sighed and looked up as a server interrupted to put their drinks on the table. A pretty drink with an umbrella was set in front of her and she smiled grateful of the interruption. She took a deep breath before issuing her next demand.

“If for any reason, you feel I am not enough and you want to start f*****g around like Vasili does, you respect me enough to end our marriage and let me go.” She swallowed as she almost whispered her request. “You can’t ever f**k anyone else while we’re married if I agree to come back. I won’t negotiate on this Miklos. I need your word.”

He turned her chair completely, widening his legs so her chair was pulled between his thighs, and he gripped her chin gently, his eyes staring into hers, uncaring the entire room was watching his strange actions at the front of the restaurant, “my little wife, you are more than enough for me. I will never, not ever, touch any woman again. You are my one and only until death do us part. You have my word. You know I don’t make promises I don’t keep, Dimitra. I promise you. No other woman will have what is yours.” He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “I know it will take a long time to trust me with this, but if it takes sixty years of building this trust together, then it is what we do.”

“But what if you do? What if when we get home, and you go to the clubs and there is someone like Eve or Wren with the perfect ten body. A pipe cleaner. I’m not a pipe cleaner.”

“What the f**k is a pipe cleaner?”

“Kimmie told us you and Kostas only date pipe cleaners. Thin with no backbone, bend really easy and clean the pipes on command.” She looked down to his crotch meaningfully.

“Kimmie has a very weird way with words, but I am not interested in pipe cleaners. I want my wife. My feisty, beautiful wife who keeps me on my toes, tells me to go f**k myself when I screw up and has the best a*s and rack I’ve ever seen.” He gave a rueful shake of his head, “I still can’t believe you kept all this hidden from my view. I’d have railed you hard if I’d known that a*s existed.”

“Shut up,” she pinched his thigh. “You would not have. You thought I was your kid sister.”

“No, see,” he pointed at her, “I might have forced my mind so I would never see you for anything other than my kid sister but you helped my cause with the weird clothes you wore and the way you stared at me creepily,” he laughed at her curse, “You wore clothes a hundred sizes too big for you. You never brushed your hair. Ever. In fact, if memory serves me right, on your prom you and your mother had a kick down blow out fight over your hair. You kept it short to your chin and you wanted to buzz off the sides so you wouldn’t have to worry about brushing it. She was horrified. Then when she wanted to put a clip in your hair, you told her clips were for fashionistas and you were Vasili’s enforcer.” As she looked away, he chuckled, “you did everything you could to be one of the boys, you deliberately dressed the part. How could I ever consider shoving my d**k in one of the boys?”

“Can we change the subject now?”

“Sure. What else do you want to talk about? Anything else on your list of demands?”

“One last thing,” she said seriously. “I don’t want to go home until Thursday. You have to keep lying to Pops you haven’t found me yet.”

“Can I ask why?”

“Because the minute he knows you have me, the minute he knows I’m coming home, he’s going to be in our s**t, and I just want a quiet minute with you.” She stared at her fingertips before looking back to him, “I want the honeymoon I was robbed of.”

His smile was so wide she could see his gold-capped molar. “Done,” he lifted her fingers to his lips. “We can do this. I’m thrilled to spend the alone time with you. Anything else?”

“No, that’s it.”

“I have two of my own requests.”

She was surprised, “okay, what is it?”

“I want to renew our vows but this time, I want us both to say them, mean them, believe them and for them to be done in the church with our friends and our family present. I want the world to know you are mine and I am yours and,” he kissed her ring finger knuckle, “I want my ring right here and I want to wear yours.”

His words took her breath away, “you want to wear a ring?”

“Yes. Nothing too flashy like the crap your father likes to wear but a simple gold band which says I belong to Dimitra Lykiaos Laskaris would be perfect.” He wiped a tear off her cheek. “Do you mind wearing a ring? I would like us to go pick our own rings too. None of the s**t your father gave you to wear. He probably took it off someone as collateral.”

She giggled at his words, “it was his grandmother’s ring but considering he had never even met her, I’m content to get new matching ones.”

“So, you’ll marry me again?” his words were hesitant.

“I will,” she smiled at him unable to stop the tears seeping from the corners of her eyes noting he too appeared very emotional at her agreement. “What is the other request?”

“You call and tell that Ben guy to f**k off. I know he messaged you today. No more working for him. No more taking his calls or text messages. I don’t want to share any more than you want to share.”

She could feel he was almost embarrassed to ask her, as if ashamed of admitting he was jealous. She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “Done. I will tell him tomorrow. Tonight, I’m celebrating with my husband.”

“You’re coming home?” he asked quietly, holding his breath as she sat between his legs facing him.

“Do you agree to all my demands?”

“Yes.”

“I agree to yours.” She felt her cheeks pulling wide, “I guess I’m going home.” She paused, “oh wait, one other thing.”

“What?”

“At the beach house, you said I couldn’t be at the house alone and you locked the gate.”

“Not my finest moment but I was terrified you were ready to take your war against me to your father and I knew he would be less entertained by it as I was,” he had a chagrined expression on his face. “I apologize for my words. I said what I said to make you resort to running. I knew I could replace you, but I didn’t want your father locking you up.”

“You mentioned the gate I slipped through,” she repeated.

“Right.”

“There’s a shed about a hundred yards to the right of the shed. It gives a really great view of the house.” At his frown she chuckled, “it’s where the girls and I did recognizance on you for two weeks before I showed up on the Sunday.”

“Like hell!” he was stunned by her words.

She bit the inside of her lower l*p trying to quell her laughter, “the shed is pretty much empty except for an obscenely large television and a beautiful wooden bed you may have brought back from Greece.”

He sat back in stunned amazement, “you burned my bed.”

“I couldn’t burn the bed. It’s beautiful. The mattress needed to go. I know you put the king-sized bed from the guest room upstairs, but you could have your own California king put back, but you have to put a new mattress on it. The mattress I did have hauled away. Nasty.”

He stared at her and then shook his head, “no. It can stay in the shed or we can move it to a guest room. We will take a trip to Greece to the furniture builder I like, and we will ask him to design a new one just for us. It will be one only you and I have ever shared.”

And with that, Dimitra wondered if her smile was permanently etched on her face.