CHAPTER ONE
DIMITRI
The room was poorly lit when he entered and he didn’t like it. Immediately his senses were piqued, there was something wrong.
He was here to meet somebody he’d never seen, only heard about. He was trying to settle an old debt and clear his conscience.
He had lied to Columbia and let her believe he had important business to attend in Prague. It was mostly true, but the business he had was not in Prague, but Bucharest.
He felt guilty lying to her about it, but his affairs in Bucharest were somewhat shameful to Dimitri. He didn’t know how to admit to Columbia his reason for going, and he was afraid she would see him differently if she knew how dark his past truly was.
He had been in a particularly cruel phase in his life almost a decade ago, a young man brash with power and lacking temperance. He had settled in Bucharest for a year, taking over the local operations of Sergei’s Eastern European sex network. It hadn’t occurred to him back then that the victims were people, terrified and desperate and most likely would end up dead.
He’d been drunk with power, abusing men and women like they were nothing better than dollar signs and achievement points to win favour with his boss.
Until one woman had set him straight years ago, and changed his path forever. Looking back, her intervention in his life had been the thing that precipitated the pulling away from Sergei. Her kindness and humanity had set him on a course much different than the one he’d been on at the time.
It still took years for him to realize how much of a brute he had been, and how killing with indifference would eventually take its toll on his spirit. It hadn’t been until his own brush with becoming less than human that he had been able to comprehend how valuable human life actually was.
Her name had been Sanda, and she’d been the head of a house they kept girls at. He knew Sergei’s enterprise had included boys, girls, men and women, but his assignment had been with women and older girls. Sergei had been testing his moral limits.
Looking back on it, he realized that Sergei had pegged him for a killer from early on, but had thrust this assignment on him in an attempt to curb Dimitri’s growing power inside the bratva.
Nobody really liked a man who got off on selling women and girls for profit. Sergei had attempted to undermine Dimitri’s growing popularity by setting him up as a surrogate pimp, trading flesh like business stock.
It might have worked had he not met Sanda, the woman who got into his head and stayed with him until he was almost broken and half mad through his own pain and humiliation.
He was here to meet her son; he knew it was time to pay restitution. It had taken Nico the last three years to find him, searching through Romania’s records had proven impossible so he’d turned to the massive underground network to hunt them down.
A single boy had survived her; he’d been in his teens when his mother had died.
Dimitri was here to see him, to pay for not saving his mother’s life.
But something wasn’t right, the room was too dark and the hotel too quiet. He sensed an ambush and almost felt as though he deserved what he had coming to him.
If it weren’t for his little dove, most likely pacing the hallways back home and nibbling on her thumb when she was terrified, he might have given into their attack.
But he had to make it home, he had lied to her about where he was going, but he wouldn’t lie to her about going back to her.
“You can come out,” he said into the silent room. It was a standard suite in a mid-level hotel in the middle of Bucharest’s tourist district. “I know you’re here.” The son had chosen it, and Dimitri had agreed, against his better judgment.
A movement from the short corridor between the main room and the bathroom caught his eye. A single figure stepped forward into the shared light of the table lamp.
Dimitri eyed the man up. He was younger than himself, leaner, but just as tall and just as tough looking. He was well muscled, with short dark hair and tattoos winding around his arms and peeking out the top of his shirt. Dimitri hoped he wouldn’t have to fight this young man; he didn’t want to have to kill him.
“So, we finally meet,” the young man said in heavily accented English. He stopped and sized Dimitri up, looking at him from dark, hooded eyes. The resemblance was unmistakable though, this was Sanda’s son.
“We finally do,” Dimitri replied and straightened up. He couldn’t show a moment of weakness or the young man would attack.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Only to repay a debt,” Dimitri said in a calm, even voice, “something I owe you from long ago.”
“Did you kill her?” he asked with his lip curled in a sneer.