I shook my head. “I just want to go home.”
“Of course. But first, do you want to be the one to hand Sokolov over to the police with a pile of evidence? We can swing by the station on the way home if you feel up to it.”
“Nah. Call my dad for that one if you want to. It’d make his day.”
“I need to get Jamie out of here. Can you clear a path?” Dmitri said to Dante, who in turn called a couple orders to his men. Immediately the SUVs were pulled out into the street and the big warehouse door was dragged out of the way. While that happened, Dmitri went over to where his uncle was tied up. He said something to one of the men pointing a gun at Sokolov, and the man reached in Sokolov’s pocket and fished out a big key ring. Dmitri flipped through the ring quickly and removed a single key, then dropped the ring back on top of Sokolov, walking away from him without a parting word.
Dmitri said, “Mel over there is going to drive your van home for us when they have everything wrapped up here.” He got behind the wheel and fired up the Packard, which started with a smooth purr, and as we pulled out of the warehouse he asked, “Can you give me my phone, Jamie?”
I pulled it out of the pocket of my cargo shorts and handed it to him, and he dialed a number and put it on speaker. Catherine answered on the second ring, and Dmitri said, “Hey. Are you still out with Joe?”
“Yup. We’re getting a nightcap or six before heading home.” She sounded buzzed and happy.
“We’re calling off Project Rope-a-Dope,” Dmitri said.
“For real? Damn, that sounded fun.”
“You can still tie Joe to your bed for fun if you want to. But now you don’t have to blackmail him. Your father’s on his way to jail. I have a million things to tell you, but they’re gonna have to wait for morning.”
“Holy shit. Ok.”
“One thing though. Guess what I’m driving?” Dmitri smiled ear to ear, and hit the horn. It sounded like a lighthouse signal.
“No fucking way!” Catherine yelled into the phone. “I call the Green Hornet!”
“Oh no, Cat. I got the car back. I get to be the Green Hornet for life,” he told her.
“Actually,” I said, “Since you’re the one that’s driving, that makes me the Green Hornet.” I shot him a big smile. “Take me home, Kato.”
Chapter Seventeen
When we got back to Dmitri’s house he bathed me so carefully, like I was liable to shatter at any moment. And afterwards he disinfected the cut on my forehead and applied a couple butterfly bandages, then took me to bed and tucked me under the covers. I turned down his offer of stronger pain meds and swallowed three Advil, and then he stripped himself and turned down the lights and got in bed beside me.
I gingerly rolled onto my side and put my head on his chest, wrapping an arm around him. And I said quietly, “Hi.”
He reached up and ran a palm over my damp hair, and I could feel that his hand was shaking. “Jamie, I–”
I interrupted him. “You’re about to apologize, aren’t you? Well, don’t. What happened tonight wasn’t your fault.”
“Of course it was.” His voice was a jagged whisper. “It was all my fault. If you’d never met me –”
“If I’d never met you,” I interrupted again, “I would have missed out on the greatest love of my life.”
I felt his chest heave as a silent sob shook him. “I love you so much,” he whispered. “When I realized my uncle had taken you, my whole world totally crashed down around me. If you hadn’t had my phone in your pocket – ”
I tilted my head back to look at him. Tears were streaming down his beautiful face, agony in his eyes. And I told him, “But you found me. And now for the rest of our lives, we’re going to be together.”
He met my eyes. “But you know what I am. Or what I was, since I handed the family business over to Dante tonight. How could you possibly still want to be with me, knowing all you do?”
“I love you, Dmitri. I always will. It’s that simple.”
“I love you too.”
He was quiet for a while, and eventually he said, “A lot of changes are going to come from this deal I struck with Dante. I’m going to need to look for an apartment. I’ll need to help out Catherine, too, since this house was half hers, and she’ll need a place to live when she graduates. And…well, I actually have no idea how I’ll be earning an income from this point forward.”
“What about the club? That’ll still generate an income, right?”