The Player (The Game Maker #3)(70)

Those lifeline looks? Might really be lifelines! Did he comprehend how much pressure he was putting on me?

He faced me with a frown. “That’s one of those things I shouldn’t have said out loud, isn’t it?”

This was too much responsibility for another human’s happiness. What if our marriage didn’t work out?

I was just a freaking grifter!

We stared into each other’s eyes until I felt calm enough to say, “Will you explain what pushed you to try to take your own life?”

He scrubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “Maksim told me I would have to reveal everything from my past for us to move forward. Do you believe that?” Dmitri was genuinely asking for my advice.

“I think it can be very helpful.” I remembered Benji, struggling, in so much pain. “My adopted brother had a traumatic childhood. If he’d kept everything bottled up, I believe it would have destroyed him.”

Dmitri rose to pace. “And he is better now?”

“It’s taken years. But, yeah.” I didn’t get the sense Dmitri truly wanted to talk, more like he was checking off something unpleasant in order to solidify our marriage. “Don’t talk to me just to tick a box.”

“Perhaps if I shared my past, you would tell me more about yours. I want you to. I want us . . .” He eased his pacing to face me. “Are we getting closer?”

“Do you want to know if we’re bonding?”

“Precisely.”

“I think so. Do you?”

He nodded. “Each minute I spend with you, I crave a thousand more. I wake and see your head on my chest, and I feel as if I live within a fantasy.”

Heart thud. “My toes curl whenever you say things like that. But then I wonder how you can feel so strongly when we still don’t know a lot about each other.”

He opened his mouth to say something, then must’ve rethought it. “When I suspected you might be pregnant, part of me welcomed the idea, because a child would bond us.”

It hadn’t with Walker and Karin. “Dmitri, there are other ways for us to get closer.”

Gazing away again, he said, “I will . . . I’m ready to talk about my past.” He settled onto the bed and drew back against the headboard once more. “What do you think happened to me?”

I wouldn’t flinch from this. “After your father died, you were sent to live with someone who sexually abused you.”

He blew out a breath. “You are very perceptive. But actually, he was sent to us.”





CHAPTER 32

“I . . . it was very long ago.” Dmitri seemed to be losing his nerve.

“How old were you when it started?”

He cleared his throat. “Seven years old. From seven to nine.”

So young, an innocent little boy. My protectiveness for Dmitri burned like an inferno. “Was the man supposed to be a guardian?” Someone in a position of trust.

“Yes. His name was . . . Orloff.” Dmitri’s fists clenched. “He . . . molested me, and many other children before me. Both boys and girls. He physically abused Maksim, beating him and locking him in a dark cellar for months.”

I eased closer to him. “I’m so sorry, Dmitri.”

“I don’t know if I want to tell you these things yet. I cannot tolerate pity.”

“You don’t have to talk to me before you’re ready, but you should know I could never pity the man you’ve become.”

Placated, he said, “Orloff wasn’t the first to abuse us. My father was a violent drunk. My earliest memories are of him beating me and my brothers and my mother. Especially at night. In the winter, night was unending.”

My God. No wonder he and his brothers rarely drank.

“When I was almost six, I woke to a horrific argument. My father had taken issue with something trivial Aleks and Maksim had done, was bent on punishing them. He sounded more enraged than I’d ever heard him. Desperate to protect them, my mother fought back. He shoved her down the stairs.” Voice gone thick, Dmitri said, “I will never forget the sudden quiet. I sensed she was gone, but terror of my father kept me from going to her. He left my mother for me to find the next morning.”

I would give anything to have spared him that! When I thought of Dmitri as a terrified boy, I wanted to hold him, but he looked like he might bolt at any second.

In a lower tone, he said, “I only recently told my brothers she died to protect us.”

Dmitri’s words: provide infinite patience, love unconditionally, and safeguard with your life. His mother had given her life to safeguard her sons. “You must have missed her so much.”

His expression turned fierce. “I need you to understand: there was nothing she could do. There were no shelters. If she’d run with us, my powerful father would have found her. Even if she somehow managed to escape him in the winter with three young sons, she had nowhere to go.”

He thought I would judge his beloved mother. “Dmitri, it was a different time and place, a world away from what I know. I would never question her actions.” But I would judge her abuser.

Seeming satisfied with my vehement answer, Dmitri continued, “When Aleks was only thirteen, our father would’ve done the same to him. Aleks defended himself, accidentally killing the man instead. Fearing he’d go to jail, my brother fled, leaving me and Maksim behind. Orloff arrived shortly after.”