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The apartment settles. It’s just us. The candles. The unfinished meat on my plate.

I take the silence as a door and slide out of my chair. Under the table the world becomes wood and shadow and the expensive drape of cloth.

I crawl.

My knees whisper on the rug.

Between my Daddy’s knees I find him already thickening from the talk, from the suspicion, from me on the floor where he likes me.

I open his trousers, take his cock out.

I do not tease for long. I want the point made with my mouth. The truth that I chose this side, that the confession came with a price I am willing to pay on my knees.

Dmitri lets me work. Then his hand finds my hair. Not as rough as the parking lot. But not gentle either.

“You suck only my cock,” Dmitri growls. “Only your Daddy’s cock goes near your mouth.”

I nod as I gag and splutter on his throbbing meat. I suck him until his thigh goes tight under my palm and his breath changes above the table like a man who has stopped thinking about business.

Dmitri cums in my mouth with a low sound. I take it all. I swallow. I stay there until he tells me, without words, that I can sit up.

When I do, my lips are wet and my heart is going too fast. Dmitri looks down at me as if the first step has been noted.

Not forgiven.

But noted.

Zane is still tomorrow. The file is still in my phone. But the secret is out of my body and in the room, and I have paid for the telling the only way this house seems to understand.

I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.

I sit.

The dinner looks the same as it did minutes ago, even if nothing else does.

14

DMITRI

03:00

The clock on the nightstand does not blink or hesitate. It simply is.

I have been awake long enough to watch the last minute turn and the one before that. Sleep never stays when there is unfinished business in the city and that’s without mentioning the boy in my bed who was never supposed to become more than an asset.

But we’re beyond that now.

Elias sleeps on his side, facing the tall glass. The sheet has slipped to his waist. One shoulder is bare. His hair is a dark mess on his pillow. His mouth is slightly open.

In this light he looks younger.

Softer.

The hustler who lied about his name, the boy who followed me from a diner window, the one who climaxed on leather and called me Daddy. Those version of him are all briefly gone and replaced by this sleeping, innocent beauty.

I watch Elias breathe. The thought arrives whether I want it or not. If I send him at Tito Lucci tonight and the night turns ugly, will I still think like a Pakhan?

Or will I think like a man who has done what he should never do. I caught feelings.