Beautiful Revenge (A Good Wife #1) - Sienna Blake Page 0,2

gaze, hoping he doesn’t see what I’ve left unsaid.

“You gave him all of your sandwiches?”

I don’t answer him. I don’t have to. I can never hide from him. He can read the guilty look on my face. He can see everything inside of me.

“Alena,” he says, his voice rising in volume, “I know you want to help him, you want to help everyone, but you’re not helping yourself.”

“I’m fine, Dimi.”

“You are not fine,” he bellows. “You’re starving to death and you’re giving away your fucking food.” His hands shake by my face as if he’s ready to choke me. I don’t flinch. Not at all. Dimitri’s anger is like a flare, bursting out in a mad rush of colour and noise, lighting up the room. But he would never hurt me. Never. I’m as sure of that as I am that the spring will follow winter.

I touch his cheek with my palm. He softens at my touch. His fingers tangle in my hair as he pulls my head into his chest. He lets out a half-groan, half-sigh against my hair. “What am I going to do with you, little lamb?” His soft lips press against my forehead. I feel his kiss all the way down to my toes.

“Love me?” I whisper.

He presses me closer. “I already do. So much.”

My heart tumbles and spins, a glorious dance in my chest. “You worked late,” I say, changing the subject. He wasn’t home when I buried myself in the bed.

“I had to. I think I’m close, Alena,” he says in a hushed tone, his voice vibrating with excitement. “I think I’m really close.”

I glance up at him. “Really?”

He nods, his eyes sparkling like sapphires. “The talk is that they’re letting go of the junior accounts officer. They’re grooming me to fill in.”

I force a smile bigger than I feel to hide my anxiousness. Dimitri isn’t just good with his hands, he’s good with numbers too. He can add up large sums in his head. He can look at a sheet of numbers and make sense of them. The same way that words speak to me, numbers speak to him. He amazes me with his affinity with them. He’s been really close to a promotion and a pay raise for months now. I think his boss—the fat, greedy bastard—just dangles these promises over Dimitri’s head to get him to take on accounting duties without being paid extra for them. Dimitri never sees it like that. He wants this promotion so badly he’s blinded to being used. He’s not the only one of us who dreams of something better.

“Dimitri Volkov, Junior Accounts Officer,” he says in a reverent tone. “I’ll be a somebody. Just think what we can do with this place when I get the pay rise.” He leaps out of bed, flinging back the blankets. I let out a cry as the cold air swirls around my torso. He slaps the on button for the single lamp we own. The bulb flickers before sending its weak glow throughout our tiny shelter. “I will make us a home.”

I sit up, blinking, pulling the blankets up around me. “Dimi, what are you—?”

“A proper fireplace.” He runs over to the crumbling, decrepit fireplace that is never lit, the chimney stuffed full of newspaper to battle against the cold seeping in. “I’ll build you a huge fireplace, one that works, with a thick mantle and a stack of firewood taller than you, so you’ll never be cold.”

I giggle as he jumps across the room.

“And here! Here I’ll put your new desk so you can do your schoolwork.”

“And write,” I add.

Dimi nods, the impossible realities of my dream forgotten as he loses himself in his own. “A proper wooden desk. Stacks of paper with lines. And pens. Lots of pens. I’ll buy you a large, comfortable chair so you don’t hurt your back sitting cramped over your homework in your lap.” His eyes dart across to another wall. “And bookcases!”

I laugh and clap my hands as he dances around with all the enthusiasm of a child, painting our dreams over this dirty hovel with his hands. His voice gets louder and louder. I’m sure our neighbours have woken up too. He is unrestrained and wild. He is fire and passion. And I love him for it.

He runs to our old vinyl record player, the one we scavenged from a dump site. We couldn’t believe anyone would throw away something so precious. We only have one record, “Stormy Weather”