Divorcing Her Mafia Family
Chapter 55

They were laying comfortably on the sofa when Dimi realized she needed to call home. “Miklos, can you reach my phone on the table near your head?”

She lifted her head as he reached beyond him and fumbled for the device before passing it to her. She smiled at him, “you look sleepy.”

“I look comfortable,” he corrected. “I have discovered I like laying with my wife and doing nothing late in the afternoon.”

“I don’t sit still very well,” she admitted quietly. “I’m usually always doing an activity, but I also like laying in your arms like this.”

“Then why are you wiggling and squiggling?”

“Because my father has put a hit on you and it’s bothering me.” She gave a deep g***n of frustration and turned her phone back on. Immediately it began beeping and pinging with missed calls and text messages.

She scrolled and read the ones from Darya first and giggled.

Miklos reading over her shoulder frowned, “does that say it was fun watching Kostas chase his tail the way Jinx does?”

“It does. You know the little video clip I showed you the other night?”

“Yes.” He frowned not sure he liked where the story was going.

“Darya knew he was tailing her, so she signed up to do a stint at our favorite local b**m parlor. He followed her and got a damn good look at her in full gear while she crushed his tracking device under her platform boots and then went to work.”

“No,” he g*****d loudly. “She did not.” He paused, “wait, your favorite b**m parlor?”

“I like to watch,” she grinned at him. “There are people who like to be seen. I pay to watch them. It makes me hot and bothered to see someone get smacked around.”

“Jesus Christ,” he muffled his mouth and blinked incredulously.

“Anyway, Magda and Sienna watched him pounding on the door of the club, but they didn’t let him in.”

He chuckled at her words, “I bet he was ready to kick the door in.”

“Mistress Kala protects her girls. The guards are armed with assault rifles, and they made sure Kostas saw them.”

“Poor Kostas.”

“Poor Kostas my a*s. He deserves it. Following her around and interfering in our business. He’s lucky I wasn’t home and only provided the idea for her to go the club. I might have kidnapped him and let her whip him.”

“I’ll ask you not kidnap my best friend, please,” Miklos begged.

“Mm,” she didn’t agree to his request as she scrolled messages and then turned her camera on and took a selfie of her and Miklos.

“Jesus, what was that?” He reached for her phone. “If you’re going to take a selfie of us, make it a good one. My eyes are half shut.”

He tugged her backwards and took her phone from her and took a better photo of them.

She smiled, “I like this. I think I’ll make it my screensaver.” Dimitra grinned. “Now let me get one of you kissing my cheek.”

He chuckled, “which cheeks?”

She pointed to her face, “this one. There will never be a camera around my other ones.”

“I’d love to photograph you naked. I’ll take the television off the wall in our bedroom if I can put a seventy-two-inch canvas of your naked body on the wall.”

“No,” she frowned in disgust, “Mrs. K cleans our house.”

“We’ll make it a tasteful photo. It will be art.”

“Until you spray it with jizz,” she made a jerking motion with her hand, and he tickled her sides at her words.

He kissed her cheek, and she snapped the photo and smiled as she saved it and then cropped everything but his lips out of it and saved the second adjusted photo.

“Why’d you cut me out?”

“Let’s have some fun,” she grinned wickedly and sent the cropped photo to her father.

“You want me dead, don’t you?”

“No. It’s time we tell him. I just want to f**k with him a bit first.”

“We’re going to tell him. I thought you didn’t want to tell him until we got to LA?”

“It will be no fun if while we’re docking the yacht a sniper takes you out,” she pulled a face.

“I can’t argue with you,” he chuckled. “Though I feel your father will want it to be far more personal than a long-distance shot.”

“There’s truth to your statement,” her phone started ringing and she sat up away from Miklos and answered it with a wide smile. “Hey Pops. How’s the weather in LA? Cloudy and miserable like you?”

“Dimitra Dionisia Leonora Lykiaos where the hell are you?”

“You forgot part of my name there,” she made a face at him. “You forgot the Laskaris part.”

“I forgot the Laskaris part? I did?” he bellowed at her. “You have forgotten everything!”

“Hey, don’t yell at me or I’ll hang up this phone and my new man and I will disappear forever, and you’ll never meet children we’ve been practicing making.”

“Your new man? Your new man? Does he know you’re married? What do you mean practicing making?”

“Yes. He doesn’t care. Besides, Miklos signed my divorce papers. If I file them, then I’m free to remarry. This guy wants to marry me, Pops. Wants to marry me and raise a family with me –” she stopped speaking as her father erupted in a flurry of Greek and English and she made wide laughing eyes in Miklos direction.

He shook his head at her and ran his finger along his throat. “He’ll kill you,” he mouthed the words.

She hung up the phone and grinned at Miklos. “I warned him to stop yelling or I’d hang up.”

“Sweet Jesus, he’s going to blow up the yacht. He’s going to replace it and blow it up.” Miklos deadpanned. “I will personally be held responsible for this.”

“I’ll let you spank me later,” she grinned when he sat upright at her words.

“Really?”

“Yes. I think we should try new things and keep it interesting. You get to spank, and I get to f**k the patriarchy.”

He folded his arms over his chest and shook his head, “not in a million f*****g years.”

Her phone rang again, and her father’s face filled her screen. She considered he had to be inches from his camera. “Are you done yelling at me or am I hanging up again?”

“You have forgotten your place, Dimitra,” he glowered at her furiously.

“My place? If I am supposed to be the head of this family along with Miklos, then you should be paying me respect,” she kept her face straight while Miklos’ mouth dropped open and his eyes bugged.

“Dimitra,” her mother’s placating voice echoed from behind her father, “perhaps you could come home, and we could discuss things.”

“Why? What’s in it for me?” she held her father’s blazing blue eyes with a tenacity he himself had taught her.

“What do you want? Do not say a divorce. It is not going to happen. I will not permit it.”

“You know Miklos signed the papers for me, Pops. I can file them the minute I set foot in California.” She felt her husband shift uncomfortably beside her.

“I’m going to kill him,” Vasili hissed at Leonora. “What do you want Dimitra?” He asked again.

“To bargain,” she leaned back and held her phone in her hand.

He sighed, “ours is not a democracy, Dimitra. You know the pecking order. You come home, today! There will be no –”

She hung up the phone and giggled.

“He’s going to let me live,” Miklos said suddenly. “He’s going to let me live and assign me the task of just replaceing you and putting a bullet between your eyes.”

He got off the sofa and moved to where he’d thrown his phone before going for a swim and turned his on. Just as Dimitra’s had, his phone was chirping with unread messages and notifications. He grinned at his wife, “Kostas is pissed. How is it he doesn’t have Darya’s direct phone number?”

“I don’t know. His best friend isn’t devious enough to sneak into his wife’s phone and replace it?”

“b***h,” he laughed as he moved to sit on the sofa beside her again, just out of sight of camera of her phone. “My father called eight times. I think he’s still at the house with your parents.” He chuckled, “my mother just sent a text message which said you’re giving them hell and she’s there for it.”

“How did I doubt her?” Dimi asked with a smile as her video call rang again. She answered with an unsmiling face. “Are we going to continue this foolishness or are you ready to talk to me like an adult?”

“You are being disrespectful.”

“You disrespect me first,” she stared him down. “You married me off to a man without considering either of our hearts or our minds. It was cruel and unkind.”

“Dimitra, it was for the greater good. Besides, the minute you hit puberty the boy couldn’t keep his eyes off you. It was a good match.”

Miklos turned to face her completely now, a look of utter shock on his features.

“Excuse me?” she questioned.

“Miklos had it bad. The minute you got boobs and an a*s, he wanted you. He just was too dumb to see it for himself. Giorgio and I made fun of him behind his back all the time. It wasn’t me who talked to the boys following you around the warehouses. He smacked more of our men up the back of the head for checking you out than I did. I never had any need to reign anyone in. Your first date when you were fourteen and went for ice cream, it wasn’t me who warned the boy to have you home on time. When you were sixteen and went to junior prom, he was the one who played chauffeur to make sure the young guy’s hands were where he could see them all the time. When you went to senior prom, he’s the one who told the boy to have you home before midnight if he wanted to live to see the dawn.”

“He did not. He felt sorry for me because I got home so early. Told me nobody should be home before dawn on prom night.” She flicked an annoyed glance at the man suddenly studying his phone far too intently.

Vasili laughed lowly, “right. Is this what he told you? He might have told himself he was being brotherly, but he had it bad. Always did.”

She c****d her head to the side and regarded her husband who had looked back up with a frown at her father’s words with a smirk and he was, for lack of a better word, gobsmacked at her father’s story telling. Vasili might be an a*****e, but he was an observant brilliant one. They had both forgotten.

“You need to come home Dimitra and take your place with your husband and run our family.”

“I’m quite content to live the rest of my days on a beach somewhere tropical unless I get what I want.”

“What do you want?” he rolled his eyes.

“No drugs. No guns.” She noted Miklos frowning aware he’d already cut it out and then saw him smile. He realized she was making it so Vasili would be able to tell everyone it was for her and making it seem like it was going to be on Vasili’s command the association stopped. She was giving Miklos an out.

“Fine, I will talk to Miklos myself and have him end the relationships. You come home.”

“Not yet,” she wagged her finger at the screen. “I’m not done.”

“What else?”

“You don’t get a say in training of any child I might have.” She saw her father’s eyes flash in fury. “I mean it Pops. If I have a kid, you do not get to initiate any training without my express permission and if we decide it’s at the age of fifteen, then you respect it. It is not something I’ll bend on.”

“Thirteen,” he argued. “Thirteen you start his training. He cannot go to school as a teenager and not know his lineage.”

“You can teach him self defence starting at,” Miklos held up six fingers to her, “six but no knives, no guns. You can teach him to punch and kick until he’s thirteen. At thirteen, depending on the maturity of the child, Miklos and I will determine what next steps are.”

“I don’t agree.”

“Then I am not having a child for you to ruin.”

“Fine!” he yelled angrily.

“If any of my children, including the eldest one decides they are not cut out for this life, you let them walk.” She saw Miklos eyes widen. They had not discussed this.

“Dimitra it is not,”

“Pops, you stole my right to live my life as I chose it by forcing me to marry Miklos. If my son or daughter decides they cannot deal with the violence, the horror, or the insanity, then you let them go and you still love them for whoever they choose to be.”

“What could they choose to be?”

“What if they want to be florist like Nerida and run her flower shops? Or an artist or maybe they want to be like Mama and devote their life to God,” she could barely spit out the last line without laughing.

“They cannot make a final decision before the age of twenty-one and if at any time they decide they want to come back and be part of the family, you cannot fight them on it,” he countered. Vasili wasn’t a stupid man and negotiated as quickly as she was.

She saw Miklos wide smirk. “Deal.”

“Now will you come home?”

“No. You messed up forcing me to marry Miklos at eighteen. I don’t care what your excuses were. You handled it incorrectly. You and Giorgio both owe Miklos an apology. I want you to apologize to him for playing with his life and making him sign a marriage contract which threatened to take everything away from him if he couldn’t manipulate me into staying. You essentially threatened to destroy him, if he didn’t screw me before I turned thirty and force me to stay with him.” At her father’s surprised expression she continued, “did you think I hadn’t seen the contract? I’ve read it. What it boils down to was I held all the cards. If I bailed before my thirtieth, he got screwed.” She paused, “speaking of screwed how do you propose to tell whether or not we consummate our marriage before I turn thirty?”

Her father scratched the side of his head, “I hadn’t really considered how to verify such a thing. I presumed you would eventually just tell us you’re pregnant. You have loved each other too long to be able to live in the same house and not be grabbing at each other.”

“You’re a sick man, Vasili Lykiaos,” Dimitra told her father with a shake of her head.

“Hey, Giorgio helped me write it,” Vasili protested and threw his oldest and closest friend under the bus. “He was the one who said to add the part about taking all of Laskaris.”

“You will both apologize to Miklos for manipulating him and making us sign the contract. Is this understood.”

Her father stared her down, but she didn’t back away. Finally, he threw an arm up in the air, “okay, I will personally apologize to Miklos for the wording of the contract.”

“You will also apologize for threatening to put a hit on him for not bringing me home and for suggesting you would put the simpleton Tariq in charge. He has the brain cells of a flea.”

“Is this all Dimitra?”

“Agree to my demands and I will come home.”

“I want a grandchild.”

“I will try but I cannot promise what my body won’t deliver,” she made a face. “It could take time for it to take.”

“She is not wrong Vasili. It took us six months of trying to get pregnant with Dimitra. If she is like me, it could take a lot of time.” Her mother’s whispered words from where she sat next to Vasili carried to her.

Vasili looked to Dimitra, “your poor mother went through hell. I pray you don’t have to go through all of it.”

She tried to keep a straight face at her father’s words. Knowing her mother had been shutting him down and refusing his advances was not helping Dimitra understand his treatment of her during her most vulnerable times. However, as Miklos pointed out many times, it was their relationship and not hers. She needed to focus on her relationship and not his.

“Do I have your word as my father, as the head of my family and as Vasili Lykiaos you will uphold all the promises you made to me today?”

“You have my word. If you were here, I’d make a b***d oath with you.”

“Giorgio is there?”

“Yes.”

“Then make one with him in honor of Miklos. You will both represent our families and swear the oath to each other.”

Miklos mouth dropped open in stunned amazement.

“Do you not trust my word?”

“You are the one who suggested the b***d oath.” Dimitra eyed him, “were you not serious?”

“Leonora, go get me my knife from the top drawer of my desk,” he waved at her mother.

Dimitra fought the giggle.

Her father looked to the camera at the noise, “are you enjoying yourself, my little one?”

“Perhaps. It is nice to not be the one jumping through hoops for once.”

“You will remember this and name your son after his grandfather.”

“I will. Giorgio is a perfect name for a boy.” Giorgio snorted in the background.

Leonora appeared on the screen over Vasili’s shoulder, “is this necessary, Dimitra. B***d being spilled seems excessive.”

“It is fine, Leonora.” Her father shooed her away.

She watched as her father and Giorgio both made cuts to their hands and then shook vowing to uphold the agreements made during today’s negotiations to solidify their family union.

The pomp and circumstance of it all made Dimitra almost bust out laughing and Miklos was shaking his head at her antics.

“Now then,” Vasili said as he settled back into his recliner. “Come home. I expect you here by morning.”

“Friday. I’ll be there Friday.”

“No. You are to come now. You book a flight and come now.”

“Wait,” Nerida said suddenly. “How did Dimitra know we were here?”

Dimi’s lips twisted as Nerida posed a very intelligent question the other three in the room, two of whom had doctorates, one in accounting and the other in business management, failed to pick up.

“A very good question,” Giorgio was suddenly in the screen. “Your mother called us earlier because your father was looking quite red from nearly killing my son. We had to talk him down and make him take one of those pills you put under your tongue. We thought he’d have a stroke. How did you know we were here?”

“Aren’t you always there on Wednesday afternoons?” she frowned at the camera. “Isn’t it the day-old people get together and eat dinner at four and play cards?”

Her father frowned at her, “I was working in my office, you little s**t. I had a meeting with Miklos and he –” he stopped talking when Giorgio shoved him.

“He what Pops?”

“Nothing, nothing, he got called away on a more important matter.”

“You’re lying. You don’t often lie to me Vasili,” she eyed her father directly, “and when you do, the corner of your l*p pulls to the right just a fraction like it just did. What was Miklos doing when you were talking to him. What did he do to make you need to take pills?”

“I was merely upset he is supposed to be out looking for you and it appears he’s throwing a party on his boat. He assured me, the girl I overheard was playing a prank.”

“So, he has a girl on the yacht? The yacht he named after me?” she asked her father who was turning red again and her mother instantly was rubbing his shoulders.

“I will have a conversation with him, my little one. Do not worry yourself.” Giorgio spoke up. “He promised us at dinner last week he would respect his vows now and I am sure there is a reasonable explanation as to why there is a girl with him.”

“One throwing her bikini bottoms?” Nerida hissed out suddenly. “My son needs a kick in the a*s. Do not worry, Dimitra. I will personally deal with him.”

She laughed, “I am not worried for him. I would like you all to meet the man I met when I was away. I’m bringing him home with me. He’ll be there on Friday.”

Miklos was waving his hand in his face as if to say no but she was grinning too widely now.

“You have a man with you now?” her mother sounded horrified.

“Yes. He’s very handsome. I think we’ll make beautiful babies together one day.”

“Dimitra!” her father bellowed as Giorgio, Nerida and her mother all spoke over each other in protest of her words.

Then there was silence as she flipped her camera and focused it on Miklos. “What do you think Nerida. What was it you said? Chubby ones with my nose and his eyes?”

Miklos gave a single shake of his head at the stunned expression on the four faces all squeezed into the frame of the phone. “Don’t blame me. You raised her. I simply married her.”