Dimitri's Forbidden Submissive(36)

“What are you talking about? I mean, yeah, you’re not exactly an angel, I’m sure, but you’re not a bad man.”

Giving her a frustrated look, he began to pace. “Bringing you here, is selfish. I should take you back.”

Hurt pinged through her but she lifted her chin. “Why? I thought we were having a good time.”

Instead of answering her he went to where the motorcycle was parked beneath the shade of a small cluster of juniper trees. He opened the compartment and brought out two small objects.

“Rya, come here.”

Curious, and getting a little irritated by his mood swings, she walked over and stood in the shade with him. He was busy using what looked like a satellite phone, and in his other hand had her smartphone. She frowned at her pink sparkly phone in his hand. It had been packed in a separate pocket of her suitcase which meant he’d gone through her stuff.

“Umm, what the fuck are you doing with my phone?”

He glanced at her, his expression unreadable, before handing her phone to her. “You have internet through my phone. Do a search for my name, Dimitri Cheslav Novikov.”

“What?”

Instead of answering her he left her at the bike and went back to staring at the canyon while she watched him in bewilderment. With a sigh she checked her phone for missed calls, sent her mom a quick text to let her know where she was, who she was with, and that she was all right, then did a search for Dimitri’s name. A bunch of stuff came up in Russian and she frowned, then clicked the first link and read the roughly translated version. It was about the Novikov crime family, starting back in the very late seventeen hundreds and going up to today. She quickly scanned through the small biographies next to each picture, her gut churning as she read tales of murder, rape, kidnapping, theft, and enough political intrigue to write a thousand books. After the fall of the Soviet union    , the Novikov family rose to the position of the top Bratva in Moscow. Since then the once powerful house had suffered from poor management, but the article hinted that things were going to change when the new leader took over as soon as Jorg Novikov died.

With her heart beating hard in her throat, she moved over to the juniper tree and slowly sat down, bracing herself against the trunk as she got to the modern day leader of the family, Jorg Novikov. Even if she didn’t know it was Dimitri’s father, she’d have recognized the familial resemblance right away in the picture next to his bio. They had the same eyes, similar bone structure, and the same dark hair, but there were differences. Dimitri had a stronger jaw than his father, but their resemblance chilled her to see a man who was allegedly responsible for a long list of horrendous crimes and looked so much like the man she was alone with, in the middle of nowhere.

With a shaking finger, she scrolled down and came to a picture of a man she vaguely recognized from the lodge, Alexandr Novikov, eldest son of Jorg Novikov and the Obshchak of the family. She opened a window and did a quick search, discovering that the Obshchak was one of the three men who were the most powerful people in the Novikov Bratva. The Obshchak was in charge of the money and dealing with the government bribes. Jorg was the Pakhan, the pinnacle of the pyramid, Alexandr, the Obshchak, was one of the second most powerful, one of two men known as ‘The Two Spies’. The second was Dimitri.

She glanced up at the man in question, still standing with his back to her and his gaze focused on the canyon. With her heart in her throat she read about Dimitri, the Sovietnik of the Novikov family, basically the man at the right hand man of his father, the Pakhan. Or, he used to be. Almost four years ago, some kind of falling out occurred between Dimitri and his father. The website offered up a few theories, but the truth was that no one knew what happened except Dimitri and his father. Dimitri was still part of the Bratva, and still a high-ranking member, but he’d been estranged from his father for four years.

She looked over at the picture of Dimitri and her heart lurched. He was caught on camera exiting a brothel known to be owned by the Novikov family. Evidently Dimitri was in charge of the prostitution and enforcement branch of the criminal network, and was a very, very dangerous man. He was suspected of having been involved with dozens of murders and even a couple bombings. The preferred method of execution for those the Novikov family considered enemies was to skin them alive, then feed them to hogs. She’d grown up around organized crime, but nothing of this scale. This was…this was bad.

Her phone chirped and she saw that it was her mom calling. With numb fingers she held the phone to her ear. “Hi, Mom.”

She was surprised to hear her step-dad “Baby girl, it’s Rock.”