Page 68 of The Beauty Who Loved Him

The limo had long since pulled away from the curb, but Vaslav didn’t care to see what streets the driver took them down as long as Igor trailed behind.

“Ask your driver where my man is,” Vaslav said.

Dimitry cocked a brow at the request and reached over to press a button on the middle console of his own bucket seat. A dark screen slid to the side with a buzz next to Vaslav’s head, and he turned just enough to see the man positioned on the other side, manning the limo.

“Is there an SUV behind us?” Dimitry asked.

“A black one.”

His uncle looked at him, then. “Satisfied?”

Vaslav shrugged. “Barely.”

A tight smile answered that response. “I didn’t expect anything less.” Dimitry hit the button again, and the screen closed as fast as it had opened. “If you talk at a moderate level, he can’t make out what you’re saying.”

Vaslav wished he cared about what his uncle’s driver heard. No doubt, the man was paid handsomely to hear nothing at all.

“What did Bogdan have to say?” Dimitry asked as the limo took a turn too fast for Vaslav’s comfort.

“Jesus, where’d he learn to drive?”

Dimitry never missed a beat. “Vaslav, if we’re going to talk about the bodies in the canal, then I’m going to at least need an interesting conversation beforehand.”

“You only know about my fucking head doctor—”

“It’s a harmless curiosity, Bogdan is a friend, and if not for me, he wouldn’t have looked twice at your case. And give the man a little respect, he’s not a head doctor. He’s a—”

“I know what he is,” Vaslav snapped back.

Dimitry rolled his eyes, the only show of his irritation before he focused his attention on the scenery passing them by beyond his tinted window. “It’s not good, is it?”

Good God.

Vaslav did not have time for this. “Ten or so good years with a cocktail of medication, clinical monitoring, and other required things that I just can’t produce at the moment.”

“Good years, what does that mean?”

To Vaslav?

“What’s left that’s worth to live,” he muttered.

He was allowed the right to say it. It was his life, after all. Even the end of it.

“What is it, the dementia?”

Unsurprising that Dimitry went there first. That’s what had eventually wasted away his own father while Natalia pissed away the family fortune.

Vaslav sighed, scowling at the man across the limo because Dimitry couldn’t just drop it. It didn’t help that he understood the only reason his uncle pressed was because the man cared. Oh, he might not welcome public attachment or communication to his nephew in any way, but throughout his life, Dimitry had been there when no one asked him to be.

Especially Vaslav.

“It doesn’t matter what it is,” Vaslav settled on saying. “It’s there.”

And it would eventually kill him. One way or another.

“Right, well, that’s unfortunate, no?”

Vaslav’s scowl deepened further. “I’m dealing with it.”