Between Desire and Denial: A Fake Dating Romance (Hardy Billionaires)

How do you save someone when you don’t even know how to save yourself? How do you rip someone away from an addiction when it’s preying on their mind, the very thing that gives them the logic to stop? How do you stop a teenager from seeking out a drug that makes the pain go away, especially when that drug is morphing their brain, lacing it with chemicals so that as it develops, the paths for addiction are fully formed, embedded, permanent?

My nerves were fried. My worries after the initial shock of the test were back with a bit of a vengeance as I thought about Jameson’s request, about what we’d talked about. I couldn’t comprehend everything that had just happened, how I’d made such a misstep, and how I’d sat on that bathroom floor with Dimitri looking down at me, not feeling anything but joy.

It could have been hormones. It could have been the shock. But everything seemed to fall into place. I understood now why my mother protected me, why she hadn’t told me a thing about this society. I understood that I’d do anything for the baby growing inside me and for my brother. It was what a family did, what a community did, what I knew I could do even if I hadn’t felt strong enough to do so before.

I now knew I had to get to the bottom of exactly what was happening in the Diamond Syndicate.

“I want to see him!” I screamed at my father as soon as I got to the waiting room.

Dimitri whispered to me, “Do you want me to handle this?”

I stopped and looked at the man I was pretty sure I was in love with, the man who didn’t scold me for acting out at a salon but who stood by me and took care of me when I needed it. “No. This is for me. I want every single second of this conversation with him. Father. To. Daughter.”

Dimitri was protective. Over-the-top protective. Possessive too. Yet he stepped back and murmured, “Yeah, I’m not stopping you from this. No one should. Be strong, Honeybee. I’ll be right behind you but he’s all yours.”

And then I turned to speed walk toward my father and shouted, “Tell me his room number now.”

“Calm down. Your stepmother is talking to the nurses now, and she’ll—”

“She won’t do a damn thing. She’s done being the middleman between him and his doctor.”

“Olive.” His voice was so consoling, like he’d been around the whole time. So soothing like he cared. “She’s been helping him from the beginning of this. She knows what to do.”

“She’s almost killed him. Or you did,” I threw out, and it wasn’t nice and it wasn’t caring. It was dramatic like they’d all accused me of being. “Where the hell were you?”

“Well, sweetheart, now I’ve had business. It’s probably best if you let us handle this. Why don’t you go back to work with Kee and—”

“Dad. Do not play dumb with me.” I cut him off. “You tell me what the business is. Was Knox with you?”

He frowned, and although people said he was one of the best, most charming men around, I knew all of his tells. He would fiddle with his hands more, go to grab a drink as if he was parched when really he was thinking up what to say. He tried to play dumb at first, “What are you talking about, Olive?”

“I know about the Diamond Syndicate.”

This time, he didn’t try to play with me at all. His face contorted in anger, and his eyes burned with an evil in them I’d only seen a few times, one being when he hit me the night I left home. “You think you can come here and take it from me?”

“I don’t want a damn thing from you,” I threw back, not exactly sure what he was talking about. “I want my brother safe, though, that’s for sure. He isn’t with you.”

“Olive Bee. Just like a bee.” He massaged his gray temples. “You’re buzzing in things you shouldn’t be.”

“Too much curiosity.” I smiled menacingly at him now. “Funny, though, because Mom loved it. She loved you too. God, she stupidly loved you through the cheating, the lying, even bringing you into the society like you deserved to be there. She must have been so scared, knowing she was leaving us with you.”

“Watch it, Olive.”

“No.” I felt the tears then, felt them spring to my eyes, but I wouldn’t let them run over. “I held her hand. I read her books, I sang her songs, Dad. Where were you?”

“I was–”

“You were with Georgette!” I shook with rage. “Were you two planning your freaking wedding while your kids cried over their dying mother in the next room? Were you planning this deal all along?”

“Hey, now. I lost a wife too,” he said like he was remorseful for a second.

“You did.” I sniffed and stood up straighter. “You lost her the moment you ruined her trust in you. You left her for Georgette because you weren’t strong enough to stand by her side.”

“I tried,” he growled before he paced away from me before turning back. “I didn’t want to see her waste away, Olive. It was difficult and—”

“I know it was difficult. I witnessed it. I saw how she lost so much weight that her high cheek bones hollowed out. I saw how her curls fell from her skull. How every breath she took became ragged. I went there every day after school, sat there doing schoolwork remotely when it got too bad and I didn’t want to risk going to school. I witnessed the fear in her eyes every day when she told me to go live my life after she was gone, like she knew being here with you would be too much. I saw though her love for you drain from her eyes and that might have been the most difficult.”

“Well …” My father didn’t even really argue his piece anymore. What could he even say? “I tried to provide for you. Now, I have a new family to provide for, and Knox and Georgette need me and the Diamond Syndicate. So, you need to leave.”

“You think I’m just going to leave?”

“Look, you’re blurring Knox’s focus. He needed a reminder, okay?”

“A reminder of what?” I whispered but suddenly I knew. I didn’t even need to ask.

My father had done something I’d never forgive him for. He sighed and his gaze darted behind me like he was considering his words as Dimitri stood there. Then he scratched his jaw. “The doctors say he’s doing fine. He’ll be okay, and we’re going to make sure no batch from the Irish is laced with anything anymore. I didn’t think he’d have this reaction, but we can’t back out of our deal with them, Olive. You understand right? The HEAT empire cannot—”

“Wait a second.” I stopped him, holding up a hand. “Please tell me you weren’t a part of your own son ODing, Dad.”

There was too much silence before he started to spew words that didn’t matter. “Look, it’s not what you think. Knox was just providing information for neighboring less-fortunate communities, and we wanted to know what the atmosphere was like at those schools. The boy needed purpose. And we needed him to experiment a little with the drugs. I … It was Earl’s idea. He thought—”

“You’re a monster,” I whispered, feeling a rage in me so ferocious I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to stand there with him for a second longer. I knew I had to though, knew I had to know everything. “You broke the whole code of the Diamond Syndicate. To keep our community clean. To protect it. To protect your family. You didn’t.”

“This is protecting it. There’s no way around the mob anymore. They have their hands in everything. We pick and choose our battles as a society, and we evolve to be better.”

I pushed past him, not willing to hear the excuses. There were none. Instead, I went to the nurse and asked for my brother’s room number. “Are you family?”

“His sister.”

“Right now we are asking that only—”

“This is a HEAT hospital correct?” Dimitri murmured behind me.

I jumped at his voice. I’d almost forgotten he stood back and told me I was strong enough to say what I had to my father. He didn’t interfere. He believed in me enough to know I could handle it on my own.

I leaned into his touch as he said, “I’m Dimitri Hardy. Check your security detail and let me scan my watch. I have access where needed within this building, as does my wife.”

The nurse moved the scanner out to him and Dimitri held his wrist over the device. It beeped green. She then glanced at my wrist.

Dimitri rolled his eyes. “Had a feeling they might ask.” He slid a small watch that looked almost like a Rolex but with a digital screen as the face of it onto my wrist. “Scan.”

I narrowed my eyes. How could he have known? But the device beeped green.

As we walked away, I murmured, “Your wife?”

He murmured back, “You might have been faking this relationship a while back, but I wasn’t. And you’re going to marry me one day soon, Honeybee. Might as well start using the wife pronoun now.”

“But you got me a watch when?”

He shrugged. “Got it synced up with my access when we moved in together.”

“Dimitri—”

He scoffed. “You weren’t ever really fake. I might have denied it for a while and only acted on my desire, but I think I knew you were mine the second I saw you cry at my best friend’s wedding, Olive.”

Georgette stood over my brother as I walked in. She was wringing her hands with worry and when she looked up and saw us, the worry turned to anger. She glanced behind us and said, “Why are they in here?” to my father who had trailed behind us.

“That’s his sister, Georgette,” my father said.

“This is a liability. All of it. I can’t protect you and myself if we get taken to court when this all comes back to us,” she seethed.

She wasn’t concerned for my brother at all, and that’s when I looked at Dimitri. He knew the look immediately, knew I was done with them, that I would forever be done with them. “You can all get out.”

“What?” She narrowed her eyes.

My future husband didn’t hesitate. “This hospital belongs to my family, you realize that?”

“So?” my stepmother threw out. “That’s my son—”

“Stepson,” I corrected her. “And you’re not here for him.”

My father thought he still had some control. “Now, Olive, that’s no way to talk to—”

“How can you be even the least bit concerned with how I’m speaking to her when Knox is on a ventilator, Dad? He could be brain-dead and—”

“That would be a blessing,” Georgette murmured.

My jaw dropped before I lunged for her. Dimitri caught me just in time. “Don’t give her the satisfaction right now, Honeybee.”

I took a deep breath. “Go. Please. Because once I’m done taking care of Knox, I will leave this hospital and I will do everything in my power to never be a part of the partnership you’re creating. Matter of fact, I’ll make sure I’m more of a liability than you will ever be able to silence.”

My father’s face curdled. “Fine. Be dramatic and stubborn. But it’s not something I’ll ever respect. It doesn’t suit you, Olive. You’ve always been a brat of a—’

“Watch your mouth,” I heard from behind me, and all I had to do was lean back to feel Dimitri’s chest as solid as a rock behind me.

“What did you say to me, boy?”

“I said, watch your mouth when you’re speaking to my girl, or I’ll break it apart so you don’t have to,” he said to my dad, his voice low.

“She’s my daughter. I’m her father.”

“She might be your daughter, but she’s the woman I’m going to marry. The mother of my future children. I wouldn’t ever talk to her that way, so I’ll be damned if another man—father or not—does.” He took a deep breath. “Matter of fact, I’m going to need you to apologize.”

“What?” my father whispered.

He cracked his knuckles and kept his eyes on my dad. “Apologize to your daughter before I make you apologize, Mr. Monroe. And try to mean it because after this, your lives as you know them are over. I hope you both realize that, but if you don’t apologize and leave right now, not even your daughter will be able to convince me that you shouldn’t endure excruciating amounts of discomfort in the future. I will make Dante’s inferno look like heaven. Do you understand?”

My father’s stare was full of anger, but he murmured an apology, and then Dimitri growled, “Now, get the fuck out of my hospital.”

He pressed a button on his watch, and security rushed to the room as my father and his wife were exiting. After they left, I held Knox’s hand. It felt stronger than my mother’s had at the end, but the pain of being there with him in that bed was the same.

I wanted to cry, to break down, to curse whatever higher being was out there that let this happen. But instead, I recited my mother’s favorite lines of a book to him. I told him he would be okay, and I fell asleep there for hours and hours.

Dimitri never left my side. He talked with the doctors, and we found that there were lethal doses of fentanyl in him that nearly killed him. He would be kept on a ventilator for longer than I liked, but his brain waves seemed stable, good.

Promising even, the doctor said.

What a word to use when you felt like your world was a storm crashing down on you.