Demyan
It’s one thing to have a mob boss for a father. It’s an entirely different thing to have Anton Avdonin for a father.
“Are you ever going to marry that girl?” Anton asked, nodding in Gia’s direction.
Gia laughed with Demyan’s mother. About what, he didn’t know. She looked happy and carefree.
“You’re twenty-five. She’s twenty-six. You’re almost done with school, she already is and working. Not to mention you’re living together. Shit, you might as well be married, son. Just get it done with already.”
Demyan cocked a brow over the top of his beer bottle. “Get it done with?”
“Well, what the fuck else do you want me to say? It’s not like you’re making any damn effort to do it on your own.”
Lifting a single shoulder in response, Demyan tipped the bottle up and swallowed a mouthful of the amber colored, bitter liquid.
“You’ve been in love with her forever. I wish you would make it official.”
Demyan rolled his eyes. “It’s not any less official just because we don’t have rings and a signed marriage license. We’re happy like this. She’s really independent. I don’t know if she will ever want to get married.”
“Have you even proposed?” Anton asked pointedly. “How would you know if you don’t?”
“You assume I haven’t.”
“If you asked Ivan for his daughter’s hand like a good man, I would be the first person he called after.”
Goddamn it. Sometimes it sucked to have his father be such close friends with Gia’s father. Between the two of them, nothing flew under their mutual radars. It had been like this since Gia and Demyan were teenagers.
“You don’t understand. I’m not going to ask Ivan for something Gia doesn’t want yet, Papa.”
Anton’s brow crinkled. “Oh.”
“Yeah. I’d marry her in a heartbeat. Like first thing tomorrow morning at the courthouse if she would let me.”
“Why won’t she?”
Demyan didn’t know.
“Is it the Bratva thing again?” Anton asked.
“No, I don’t think so. We don’t talk about that at all.”
“Nothing?”
“Nope,” Demyan said simply. “It’s easier this way.”
“So, fact is, that could be precisely why, but you don’t know because you won’t ask.”
Demyan hated when his father made sense. “I love her, Papa.”
“I know you do.”
“Exactly. And if being together like we are is what makes her happy, I don’t need more. I won’t push her for more, either. She doesn’t like that I’m Vor, so I don’t make a point of shoving it in her face. It’s only a small piece of us, but not all. I’m going to keep my focus on the better parts.”
“Fair enough,” Anton said, but his smile didn’t ring true. “And when were you planning on telling me, anyway? Or at least, your mother.”
“Tell you what?”
“That Gia’s pregnant.”
Demyan choked on his second swig of beer. Coughing, he wouldn’t meet Anton’s intense gaze. It was really fucking difficult to have a father so incredibly observant. “Why would you think she’s pregnant?”
“Are you denying it, then?”
Shit.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Demyan didn’t lie to his father. He never had.
“You always told me never to answer a question with a question, Papa.”
Deflecting was a plan. A shitty one, maybe, but one.
Anton kept looking at Demyan in that way of his that made his son’s nerves grow. “She likes her red wine. Always has. She refused it three times today.”
“So?” Demyan placed his beer on the side of the barbeque. “She has to work tomorrow. The last thing she needs is to be teaching twenty kindergarteners with a hangover.”
“Point taken,” his father agreed, smirking. “Except, she turned green at the sight of the raw meat earlier and said it smelled awful. The meat was across the damn room. Demyan, since when have you known Gia to hate meat?”
Since she found out she was pregnant eight weeks ago.
Demyan tried to stay quiet. He did. And failed like a fucker. “Please don’t make me tell you just because you have to know everything about everyone or you go insane. Seriously, you should see a fucking therapist about that shit or something. Not everything is your business, Papa.”
“I’m the boss. Everything is my business if I want it to be.”
“This isn’t business; it’s my life.”
“And I’m your father, which makes you my life.”
True enough, Demyan thought. The same way Anton always knew all, the man also just seemed to know everything about his son. For the most part, Demyan was grateful to have the close-knit relationship he did with his father. It was a solid foundation for his sometimes unpredictable and fast-paced life.
“You’ve never had to lie or hide things from me because I’ve always given you the space to be open and honest without fear of judgement,” Anton said softly. “Why start now?”
“I’m not hiding it, Papa.”
“Is there a reason why you two are keeping it quiet? It’s not like your mother and I would be angry. Ivan and Eva already have three grandchildren; Gia’s not a teenager and neither are you. You’re both well-off, you work hard, and you’re more than capable of caring for a child. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Demyan rushed to say, irritation rising.
“Is she considering terminating—”
“Christ, no!” The fifteen or so guests to the afternoon barbeque turned to stare at Demyan’s exclamation. He spun his back to the people and glowered at his father. “Thanks.”
“You’re good at drawing attention if nothing else,” Anton said, tipping up his bourbon to sip. “Showing emotions is the only flaw in your character. It always was.”
“I don’t need the reminder.”
“Somehow, you need to learn how to curb the instinct to react, Demyan. You’ve got everything else going for you—leadership, intelligence, charisma, and you’re cunning as fuck. You can draw fear just as easily as you lull someone into a false sense of comfort. None of those things are worth shit if you can’t control your surface emotions. This is the one thing I can’t teach you. It has to be learned from the habit of beating back the impulse, son.”
“I know,” Demyan said quietly. “I’m working on it.”
“Work harder. There are a lot of eyes on you in the Bratva right now. You’re twenty-five-years-old and just starting to seriously dip your feet into the business. Many of them believe I should have made you forgo college because they think it useless. Time wasted there could have been better spent learning the streets. I wanted you to have choices. Don’t make me regret letting you find your own way, Demyan.”
Demyan nodded tightly. “I’ll get a handle on it, Papa.”
“Do that, and fast. If nothing else, manipulate how you want others to see you. Outbursts are perfectly fine when done correctly and used to motivate something, be it fear or whatever else. Random nonsense like that is nothing more than a sign of weakness someone will use against you. Especially if your outbursts focus on one thing—or rather, someone—in particular.”
Without directly saying it, his father meant Gia. Demyan got the point.
“Do not bring unneeded and unwanted attention on those you care for because of your inability to remain calm,” Anton said. “The harder the exterior, the less likely someone will be to try and make it crack.”
“All right. I get it.”
Anton sighed, eyeing his son from the side. “She is, yeah? Pregnant, I mean.”
“Yes. Fourteen weeks yesterday. We were waiting until the first trimester passed and after that, a good time to sit everyone down. But, you and your fucking freaky perceptiveness had to go and ruin that. So again, thanks. Are you happy, now?”
Anton grinned stupidly. “Very. Huh. Vine will be pleased. Our first grandbaby.”
Demyan stared at the sky, exasperated. This was how most of their conversations went. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Oh, I know. Your mother never fails to remind me.”
“Seriously, go talk to a therapist about that shit,” Demyan muttered.
“No. They wouldn’t understand.”
They probably wouldn’t. His father was the kind of crazy even a therapist couldn’t fix.
