Divorcing Her Mafia Family
Chapter 54

Miklos kept Dimitra tight to his frame as they snuggled on the sofa and despite her saying she wanted to sleep, he knew from her breathing she was wide awake. She was angry. She had every right to be angry. He was working through his own rage, and he needed to get through his apology before addressing his fury with her.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” she asked curiously, as if testing whether he was genuinely apologetic or just paying l*p service to stop the fight.

“For violating your privacy. It won’t happen again. Moving forward, any concerns I have regarding your safety I will address directly with you. You frequently travel without security Dimitra and once you returned home, you continued this practice. You’ve been toying with danger, and it makes me nervous so I had your car tagged to make sure if something happened you disappeared, I could replace you.”

“This is the reason?” her tone told him she was doubting his words.

“It is.” He knew she had reason to doubt him, and he had to make her understand the depths of his fears, “I knew if you were going to leave me and disappear, it wouldn’t be via your little car. I wasn’t tracking your car to keep you from running way. I was genuinely concerned one of our enemies would see you coming and going from the compound, the club, the office, anywhere our names are associated and know you were of value to the family and hurt you. It was not to make sure you didn’t run away.”

“No?”

“No. When we are home, you will have protection assigned to you twenty-four seven. Before you argue, even I keep protection, my love. Vasili has protection. Dad has protection. Our mothers always have protection.” He curled his hand over her abdomen, “our children someday, will have protection. The world, our world, is too dangerous. Add to this already dangerous world of ours, there was also a huge front-page story on multiple news channels and finance magazines Friday how Ares Winter purchased your app for three billion dollars. With this kind of wealth comes a lot of security risks. I had to quadruple the security at the beach house for the girls. None of you saw fit to think of the ramifications of the creeps who come out of the woodwork when someone has such a bank balance. Do you know how many journalists, reporters and creeps my men have dealt with this past week?”

She shook her head as if admitting she hadn’t considered any of this.

He sighed quietly, “the tag in your car was to reassure me even before I knew of the app and the sale you were safe because of your name. Now, it is even more needed. I do not want you to take it out. Please, I need to know, if you are going to continue to drive yourself around like a common person then you keep the tracker and you will always have a tail.”

“What is the alternative?”

He realized perhaps she was hearing his fears, “the alternative is I assign a specific team for your protection who drives you everywhere you want to go. It is the tracker and a tail or a team to drive you. Those the options. I’m sorry my love but your safety is paramount.”

“Miklos, our home is so far near the edge of the city it will take me an hour every day to get to and from our offices without traffic and this is if we can replace one you or Kostas don’t interfere with. Mags will never want to be away from the beach, so we need something central.”

“We can sell the house and replace something closer to the beach if you want.”

“You have all the land you have with the outpost houses and the proximity to the two warehouses and not to mention fifteen minutes from both of our families and you’d sell it?” She turned on the sofa in his arms and leaned her head back to look at him.

“I do not want to sell the compound,” he admitted quietly. “I like the house, I like the land and I like the privacy in our little town. It allows Mrs. K to have her own space but if you want to be right in the city or close to the beach then we can do what we need to do.”

“No,” she pouted with annoyance. “I don’t want to sell either.”

“Work with me Dimitra. How can I keep you safe if you fight me?”

“I wouldn’t be fighting you if you hadn’t been so f*****g sneaky,” she glared at him “Don’t try to make me forget I’m pissed off at you by turning this on me. I’m not the one who shoved a tracking device in my car and then violated my friend’s privacy for your buddy. A man she made clear to you the night we called her from the warehouse, she hates.”

“You’re right,” he said seriously. “I will personally offer an apology to Darya for what I did. I have enough with one angry Greek woman without adding her friend as an enemy.”

“Good.”

“I am sorry to you for violating your privacy and I promise it won’t happen again.”

“Also, good.” She glared at him.

“What?”

“Is that all?” she asked him.

Miklos knew what she was wanting to hear from him, and he struggled to get the words out of his mouth. He felt as if someone had shoved a bag of marbles into his mouth and considered the words were as cumbersome. “I apologize for the comments I made about Ben’s,” he paused, “junk.”

“Just about his junk?”

“I apologize for asking you if you put it in your mouth.” She was making him grovel. He could see the glitter of victory in her eyes. He had to fight his internal conflict in order to win the war and he knew it. “I apologize for making comments about the s*x life you had before you and I were officially a married couple. It is none of my business who you were intimate with and what you did with them while you were intimate. I promise to be more discerning in the future of my double-standards where you are concerned. Jealousy is a new emotion for me and I am not handling it well. I apologize.”

“And?”

Miklos could see the way she was fighting her smirk. He wanted to paddle her a*s. “I agree the method you used to interrogate Ben was appropriate and highly successful and I commend you for the resolve you showed.”

“Thank you.”

“I do have something I want to ask. Jonas sent me a couple of other clips, one running a bit long and I listened to it while I was getting dressed after my swim. If you don’t want to answer, it’s fine and I respect your right to privacy but I’m quite curious over something you said to Ben.”

She made a face as if she were unsure of allowing him to answer.

“While Big Ben was howling, crying, and sobbing about his burning d**k and a*s, he also was quite clearly distraught over losing you. He appeared quite heartbroken. You said you were with him two years ago, correct?”

“Yes, I stayed with him near the end of my year in London, the last six weeks actually.”

“You mentioned he was the one who encouraged you to go to Dubai. You resented him for it. Why?” at her hesitation he held his hand up, “if you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to. I’m simply curious.”

“I told you before I dated a few guys in college but nothing really serious but there was one who had potential. A guy I met during winter semester my fourth year before I got arrested and I liked him, and he said he liked me. He was in a couple of Magda’s classes, and he joined our study groups a few times. We started dating. We dated for about three months.”

“Three months?”

“Yes, but with my work schedule and my courseload and so close to graduation we saw each other maybe once a week. I had agreed once we graduated, I’d go back to Vermont with him to meet his friends.” She sighed, “I didn’t tell him I was married.”

“You didn’t,” he lifted his eyebrows. “Three months and you didn’t tell him?”

“We never got past heavy petting and some make-out sessions. He’d never heard of Lykiaos or Laskaris. I didn’t want to open the can of worms needlessly. I figured I’d cross the bridge when I got to it.”

“It’s kind of a huge thing to hide.”

“Is it?” she looked at him pointedly. “How many women did you tell you were married?”

“Touché,” Miklos couldn’t help but admire her fire. It made him want her when she was so feisty.

“Then I got detained. The agents approached him the day of my release and asked him to spy on me. They told him all about me being a mafia princess, which by the way is a term I despise, and married to a mafia kingpin, also a word I despise. He ghosted me. The only reason I know Frye approached him is because Frye told me two days after I was released when he came back to return my laptop they couldn’t crack.”

“I hate that guy.”

“Me too. Pops had called me same day and told me not to bother you anymore with my petty games. There I was desperately needing someone, anyone to make me feel I wasn’t alone in the world and Anders bailed on me. Didn’t even have the balls to tell me to my face. Just completely vanished.”

“I should have been there,” Miklos touched his forehead to hers. “My love I will forever regret not taking the girls’ call.”

“You should,” she smirked at him. “To make a long story short, after I had the nightmare and Ben and I started getting closer I told him I couldn’t sleep with him because he was my boss but also,” she took a deep breath, “I have a problems trusting anyone because everyone I care about abandons me and pushes me away. In order for me to trust he wasn’t going to just push me to the side I needed time and to get to know him better than just as my employer and to know he wasn’t going to shove me aside.”

“It makes sense.”

“Two days after we have this big heart to heart conversation, a visiting professor offered me the opportunity to study three months in Dubai at a private university. He made the offer on behalf of the Dean after he had been talking with him. They were impressed with a program I had been working on for a project for the class I was taking in London. Here I was, for the first time in my life, finally feeling heard and as if I were starting to settle somewhere and belong somewhere, with someone who wanted to be with me. I laughingly told Ben about the offer while we were making dinner together and how I had flatly refused the offer and he told me I should take it and go.”

“He was being supportive,” Miklos wondered why the f**k he was defending the giant dicked man’s actions.

“Was he? Perhaps. I told him I wasn’t really interested in going to Dubai. I’d have to conform to the dress code of the school and the girls couldn’t come with me. I’d be on my own. It was safe enough but I just,” she rubbed her head, “I just wanted to stay there with Ben.” She g*****d, “Since I said to him, I wanted to stay with him, he filled out my application for me and accepted on my behalf. Told me he would feel guilty if I gave up such an opportunity for him. It wasn’t his decision to make, and I was angry but since he’d emailed my acceptance and the school was offering free everything, including lodging, if I rescinded, I looked like a fool and I knew it would impact all my hard work on my education. It got me closer to my master’s degree as again the course would be transferrable.”

“You must have been upset,” he could see the pain in her eyes as she considered the actions of the other man. Suddenly Ben seemed less of a threat to him. He was glad the man was as much a fool around her as he was.

She continued speaking, “I felt he was pushing me away. He said he loved me and only wanted what was best for me. I was so sick and tired of people doing for me what they thought best for me without considering my wants and needs. Shouldn’t I get to choose what is best for me? He made me promise to go back to him. I had the intention I would but while I was in Dubai, I changed my mind. Though I missed the girls, the three months away from everyone really helped me firm my resolve I wanted to get divorced and meet someone who wasn’t going to treat me like some simpleton who couldn’t make her own decisions. I never went back. I told him over the phone the night I landed in Boston I wasn’t going back. He asked why and I said I didn’t feel it was in my best interests. I loved him but I knew if I went back, he’d replace a way to convince me his actions were for my best and I’d end up staying with him. How many more decisions would he make on my behalf? How many times would I get pushed away and pulled back like a yo-yo. Then with my luck I’d have ended up pregnant and Pops would have put a bullet in both our heads.”

Miklos lay there absorbing her words and then sighed loudly, “I’m sorry Dimitra. You’re absolutely right of course. You’re smarter than the lot of us lumped together and yet we continue to make your decisions for you and expect you to just do what we want under the guise of our knowing better what is best for you.”

She rested her head against his chest and sighed, “it’s what happens when you’re the daughter of vovoi.”

“I will need your help, Dimitra.” Miklos exhaled as he rubbed his thumb into his eye grimacing.

“With what?”

“Taking charge is in my b***d. I am in control and command all the time. I am desperately working to cede some of this control to you and it is difficult for me. I need you to be patient with me and when I’m acting the a*s I was today or pushing you to do something you don’t want, I need you to make me listen, but I also need you to stay.”

“Where would I go you won’t replace me?” she commented dryly.

“Agape mou, you must understand, this, all of this,” he waved between them, “is new for me and I am going to f**k this up on a daily basis. I guestimate it will take me fifty years not to make you want to kill me at least once a week. You’re going to get frustrated with me and I admit to being quite concerned with your bank balances and your ingenuity the next time you run away, you will be much harder to replace. It would be easier, for me specifically, if you just don’t run and we talk instead. Can you promise you won’t run?”

She met his concerned gaze and nodded.

He stroked her cheek and let out a relieved sigh, “I don’t have a f*****g clue what I’m doing.”

“Before you came in here, I was wondering if our life is going to be constantly one fight away from catastrophic war and violence. You have the need to yell at me and demand obedience and I have the need to f**k the patriarchy up the a*s.”

He laughed at her words, “I am game for many things, this will not be one of them.” He tickled her ribs at her pouting expression. “Not ever happening.”

“Party pooper.”

He caressed her cheek softly, “I have something else I need to talk to you about and it’s serious and I need you to listen to me and I am worried this is going to start another one of these war-like battles we get into but it’s something we need to discuss.” He sighed, “I am hearing Mrs. K in my head telling me to stop yelling and just talk and here I am trying, so please, can we talk about this?”

“Are you going to demand I stop my pranks? I don’t think I can.”

He rolled completely onto his back and tugged her, so she was laying stretched over him, and he cupped her cheeks, “no, I do not want you to change who you are. I do ask you refrain from poisoning me, but I enjoy the excitement you bring me to me. I’m always wondering what is next and it makes me laugh. I have not felt so alive in years and it is solely because of you and your verve for life.”

“Then what is it?”

He would never tire of this woman and her direct forward approach to solving their issues. Why he thought communication would be a problem for them was beyond him. All he needed to do was talk to her as a person and not as some clueless little girl. He commended himself for learning to listen to his housekeeper when he’d called her from his office phone after his swim. “It is about Vasili.”

She met his eyes, “what about him?”

“We need to be a united front to your father, my love. Actions like the show you put on earlier drive a wedge between your father and me. He becomes more belligerent and impossible to deal with. He is going to be difficult enough to deal with when we push back on giving him the heir, he thinks, will ultimately join our two families.” He fought the rise of his temper at what she’d caused with her shenanigans earlier and swallowed it and reminded himself to talk. “Today, you interrupted me telling him I cut all ties with three business associates without consulting him first. I am cutting ties with two more when we get to LA.”

“I knew I had interrupted a business call. I knew you were talking to him.” She admitted meekly.

“I know you did, Dimitra and this is why I am so angry about what you did.”

“What would you have me do?” she started to pull away and he held her to him firmly.

“Dimitra, we need to talk this out. Please.”

“Fine.” She settled back against him

“I meant what I said about cutting the drugs and guns. We will, with you and I at the helm of our enterprises, do our very best to legitimize our businesses. Will I still launder money? Yes, because it’s easy money and with my wife’s fingers running my keyboards now it will be even easier. Will I help Kostas and a few of my associates like Ares Winter hide their shell companies? Absolutely. Will I continue to operate as a bank for our community? Always. But the drugs, the guns, the things that have the feds breathing down our neck over, I will have completely ended by your birthday next week. I will make large payoffs to soothe some hurt feelings but like you, I don’t want to be contributing to a world where my son or daughter could be shot with a gun I brought into the country or killed by an overdose of a drug at party supplied by smuggled by someone I helped.”

“Do you mean this?”

He wiped the tear from the corner of her eye, “yes, my little wife. I gave you my word and I meant it”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome but your father was losing his f*****g mind over it when you interupted. One of our associates is the great grandson of his great-grandfather’s best friend. He was already ballistic with me, and you threw a pair of bikini briefs over his face on screen using a voice I didn’t even know you could project.”

“You should hear my Brooklyn accent. We had a girl in our apartment complex who we couldn’t stand so I would fake her voice and order pizza for her all the time and then when it would get delivered, she would try to refuse to pay for it, but they insisted it was her voice calling. It was awesome.”

His chest rumbled with laughter at her words, “devious.” He tugged her upwards, so they were almost face to face, “your father told my father I am a dead man. My father is quite panicked. Your actions have consequence. I will ask you stop driving that wedge between us. I need us to be a team against him but if you keep fanning the flames of his rage with me, it not only divides him and I, but it divides you and I because we aren’t working jointly as we must.”

She looked away from him and he tipped her chin back to him, “Dimitra, my love, if you want to fight with me, if you are angry with me, if you want to flay me alive and throw me in the ocean for the fishes to feed on, then keep it with us. Do not take our problems and make them something our families need deal with. Poor Ajax has all his guys asking whether or not I’m going to kill them because they’ve all seen you in your birthday suit.”

“You’re saying I went too far?”

“I’m saying walking stark naked into the middle of a meeting where I was telling your father I cut out a billion-dollar smuggling operation from our books while I had my lead enforcer and advisor with three of his best men sitting there was probably not a wise move.”

“I was angry,” she flicked her eyes to his.

“I too was angry, but I didn’t come to you with my d**k out in front of your friends, while you were in a meeting with Ares Winter, did I?”

“When you put it like that!” she frowned with annoyance.

“I’m putting it like that. Keep this body for my view only please. I don’t really care if you’re sunbathing naked on the top of the yacht. The men know to stay away but please don’t make them think they need to shoot themselves in the head to avoid being taken to the warehouse by me or Ajax.”

She nodded and rested her head against his shoulder, “Pops was really angry?”

“f*****g furious. Your mother was concerned he was going to have another heart attack and called my father to go to the house.”

“I’m sorry. I will work harder to consider the ramifications of my actions before I react in anger.”

“Thank you.” He rubbed her back enjoying very much the feel of having her laying on him. “Look at us, behaving like adults having conversation and solving problems using communication.”

“Oh, s**t, are we in love or something?” Dimitra chuckled against his chest.

Miklos lay holding his wife in his arms and cuddled her with a smile on his face. Their first huge fight since reconciling and neither of them were dead. Perhaps this would work after all.