Divorcing Her Mafia Family

Bonfire or Funeral Pyre?

Miklos exited the warehouse where his “guests” had been detained and noted two of his security agents pacing back and forth nervously, near his car. Now what?

“Sir, we didn’t want to interrupt your business matters, but we have a report from the compound of a fire.”

He stared at them incredulously, “if there is a fire why has someone not put it out?”

“It appears Mrs. Laskaris has forbidden anyone to touch her bonfire.”

“She’s having a bonfire?” He made a face as she moved towards the driver’s seat of his car. His security team would flank his car the drive home. “Big deal. It’s a bonfire.”

“The flames are higher than the house sir,” the other man spoke up. “She and two of her girlfriends are quite drunk, dancing around the fire, spitting alcohol on the fire and have thrown gasoline on it as well. We are worried the authorities might make it a priority to investigate.”

“f**k!” he screamed in frustration. Dimitra was going to be the death of him if she continued behaving so recklessly. “Go, let’s go!” he slipped into his car and waited for the first car to pull away before following it with the other two cars following behind him.

He had enough on his mind carrying out investigations for Vasili about an informant providing intel to the feds on their operations and now his little wife was ready to invite the fire brigade, which was always accompanied by the police, to their home. He punched the steering wheel in annoyance.

His phone rang and he noted his father-in-law’s number. He answered through a push of a button on his steering wheel, “Vasili.”

“Did you find out what we were looking for?”

“It took a bit of convincing but yes. One of our dock workers was approached by the feds to get them access to of our containers coming into our shipyard. Nothing legal about doing such a search of course. I have ordered the dock worker and the federal agent to be dealt with immediately.”

“Good, good.” He was quiet for a moment. “How are things with Dimitra? I was surprised to learn today you hadn’t laid eyes on her in years. I thought when she was staying at the house, you were there as well.”

“Her visits were always at inopportune times.” He didn’t elaborate on the fact he had purposefully vacated the house. It had always made him sick to have been married to the girl he called his sister. After today, his brotherly affection was long gone. He wanted his little wife. He was going to have her. He had regrets now of all he had missed. He was going to make up time.

“Inopportune times or you couldn’t be bothered to fulfil your duties as her husband?”

“She was too young, Vasili. I am seven years older than her. She is twenty-five now, nearly twenty-six. It feels less scandalous.”

“You have left her on her own too long, Miklos. She’s wild now like a wild horse and you’ll have to tame her. She has no respect for the head of her household. You must show her who is the man of the house.”

Miklos held his tongue. The man’s toxic masculinity was something he had never respected. Vasili was good to his people and ran a damn good enterprise. He was brutal and businesslike, and while Miklos respected the man’s business acumen, his treatment of his wife and mistresses had always embarrassed Miklos. He had treated the women like possessions and not people.

The man continued speaking as if he hadn’t expected Miklos to answer, “a baby will remind her of her role and her responsibility to our family. A child from you both will ensure both of our names continue to run our business. Do not make me regret putting you in charge by letting a little girl trample our plans. Be a man Miklos.”

“I am a man with purpose Vasili, and we all know I always get the outcome I want. I will bend our little mare to my will, have no fear,” he drove the car through the night streets in the direction of his home as he considered rather than force like his father-in-law would suggest, he was going to seduce his bride, plant his seed and bind her to him forever. She would love him again the way she had crushed on him as a child. Perhaps in time he would love her the same way, too instead of with brotherly affection.

“Good, it is settled. No more talk of this divorce she mentioned to her mother. I expect a grandchild in the year. Preferably a boy.”

“The gender of our child is not a fact I can confirm unless you want us to forgo the old-fashioned method, and have it performed medically in a dish in a lab?” his words were dry and cold.

“My daughter deserves more than a medical procedure.” Vasili spoke bluntly. “You are married. Do what married people do.”

He couldn’t believe the man was telling him to f**k his daughter. He rubbed his forehead against the headache building. A brightness in the sky in the distance caught his eye and he cursed violently. “Vasili, I need to go deal with my wife. It seems she is setting my house on fire.”

Vasili’s chuckle fueled Miklos’ rage as he hung up on the man. From five minutes away he could see the lights in the distance of the dancing flames. What the hell was she burning? This was not a bonfire. It was a pyre. Dread filled his chest as he considered all the things, she could be doing to his home right now in the name of righteousness. The display at church in the morning had proven she was out for blood. Some might be spilled if any of his house was damaged in the blaze, and it wouldn’t be his.

His cars were passed through the compound gates, and he made his way up the driveway and almost slammed his brakes at the vision in front of him.

In the center of the driveway, where a small garden had once sat, a massive fire was burning. Dimitra and another brunette and a blonde were dressed in bikinis and not much more each carrying bottles of liquor in their hands, dancing to the music rocking his car. As he parked the car outside his garage, he could hear the thumping bass of the song reverberating through his chest.

Slipping from the driver’s seat he could feel the tension of his security team who had all clustered together at the edge of the driveway as if unsure how to diffuse the situation. Three women and eight men, yet the women were ruling the yard. He noticed something scurry past them and then heard the excited bark of a dog. She had a dog at the house? His pristine house would not have animal fur in it. f**k no!

He strode furiously in her direction and then stopped when she grabbed the bottle of liquor in her hand took a mouthful and then spit it over a stick she had pulled from the flame, shooting fire in his direction.

“Look Miklos, I’m a dragon!” she roared with laughter as she repeated the action.

“Put this fire out now!” he ordered his men with a bellow.

The man started to scamper, and she shrieked.

“Touch my bonfire and I’ll personally shoot each and every one of you.” She pulled a gun from behind her back and shot a bullet into the air. “And if you think I don’t have enough ammunition,” she kicked her leg open, “I have three guns.”

Miklos’ mouth dropped open as he noted she had a gun strapped to her ankle and to her thigh. Vasili needed a kick in the balls for teaching his daughter to be an enforcer for their business. “Put the gun away, Dimitra.”

“Tell your men to f**k off,” she waved it in his direction.

Miklos had seen women holding guns. Usually, they were frantic, panicked, and desperate. Dimitra was none of those things. As much alcohol as he suspected she had consumed by the bottles littering the ground, she was poised, in control and very much in command of her faculties. He had himself taught her target practice when she’d been a young teenager. He knew she could hit a moving target with far more accuracy than most of the men on his security team. He held up a hand and waved them back.

Time to change direction. “My little wife,” he called out from where he stood several feet away. “I am concerned your fire will bring the authorities to our home.”

“They would need a warrant to get past the gates. I have my fire well under control. I even have a burn permit.” She grinned dangerously in his direction. “I may have obtained it illicitly, but I still have it.”

“How did you obtain it?”

“I went into the data base for the city and took it.”

His head of security approached him from behind, “one of the girls mentioned something about hacking the city’s resources with her laptop.”

This was not the first time since she’d been home, he’d heard of her hacking. Hadn’t she been learning how to run computers at the university library? He was sure his agent in Boston had reported she was always behind the library desk running the computer there. Did she hack from the library? How good was she?

“Dimitra, perhaps we can simply tone down the height of the fire?” He tried to reason with her. “I would truly prefer not to have to deal with the authorities the first night you are home.”

“This isn’t the first night I am home. That was last night. You were f*****g Eve in your bed on my first night home. It made me sad.” She blinked rapidly at him, pouting before cackling like a maniac and taking another swig of her bottle.

He groaned and took a breath. He looked to his security agent, “Ajax, make sure she doesn’t set the house on fire. I need a shower. I will come back in a few minutes to try to reason with her again, but I have blood under my nails, and I want out of these clothes. Please supervise until I return.”

“Of course, sir.” The man nodded at him.

The three women went still as he moved towards the house, and he felt a terrible feeling of foreboding at their sudden lack of movement. He turned to face them from the steps of the front door, and they were all standing there watching him with curiosity. He narrowed his eyes on Dimitra. She was fighting a smirk. Her two friends, especially the blonde, appeared nervous, terrified even. He watched as the woman scooped the little dog up into her arms before Dimitra shrugged and reached out to scratch the mutt on the ear. She started dancing again to the music as if she had never stopped and he entered the house.

He looked around and noted the flowers. They had arrived and she hadn’t even called to say thank you. Miklos gave a cursory look around the main floor and noted nothing out of the ordinary other than the flowers. His mother had gone overboard, as he had suspected she would. The moment he had told her he wanted to woo Dimitra, his romantic fool of a mother had been all in. He wondered where his housekeeper was and then considered, she was probably hiding in her cottage at the edge of the compound away from the noise and the drama of Dimitra.

He decided the tightness in his chest was simply from the fire outside and the strangeness of having Dimitra around when he was home. He made his way into his bedroom and didn’t bother to turn the lights on. It was pitch black in the room, but he knew the path to his bathroom and could do it blindfolded. He kicked the door shut and flipped the lights in the bathroom on.

It took several minutes of scrubbing to get clean, using a nail brush on his hands. He could have been concerned his DNA was on the body of the man in the warehouse, but the body was now in a chemical bath of whatever concoction his chemist had devised. All he knew was it had bubbled furiously when they dropped him in it. His chemist was a strange man, but he got results.

He moved from the shower to the adjoining walk-in closet and grabbed a t-shirt and shorts. Perhaps he would have a beer and watch the bonfire from a safe distance. As he walked through the other door to his bedroom, he found himself tripping over something on the floor. He ran his foot along the softness and grimaced. It felt like a plush rug, but his room had no carpeting. Only beautiful hardwood floors he had paid a fortune for. There was no reason to cover it. Dread filled his chest as he ran his barefoot further into the room. He stepped backwards then away from what felt like a rug. His hand almost trembling, he searched the wall for the light switch.

As soon as he turned the light on, the desire to plunge the room back into darkness overtook him. He stood in shock. No wonder Mrs. Kyriakos had not been home. She had not wanted to witness the murder of Dimitra. He scanned the room in disbelief

The rug was nearly the size of the room, a bright white with, were they sprinkles? She had put a child’s rug in his room. His gaze flicked to the wall where his television had hung and in it’s place the biggest print of pink and yellow daisies adorned the wall. He walked backwards away from it in horror. Where was his television? His legs struck the edge of his bed and his knees buckled and he sat down as he cupped his face and looked around at the pinkness everywhere. Sitting he pushed his hands against the mattress and immediately knew the mattress on his bed had been replaced.

He closed his eyes, “no,” he gasped as physical pain gripped his lungs as he considered the very real possibility of what she had done. He reached down and lifted the edge of the hot pink duvet from the bed, praying desperately she had not done what he was suspecting. The beautiful wood of his bed was replaced by hard steel of a metal frame.

The sounds of shouts of laughter and music from outside caught his ear and his breath heaved in his chest. Had she? No. She wouldn’t have. Her words from the morning “we might just need to burn the bed” spun in his mind, circling in a vortex of panic.

He raced down through the house, nearly jumping most of the stairs as he got outside.

“Dimitra!”

She turned with a smug smirk at him, “did you like my surprise? Surprise!”

“Where is my bed?”

“Gone!” she blinked. “There were so many notches in the bedposts I was worried for your safety it might break. I did you a favor really.” She held up a piece of wood and deliberately tossed it into the flames. “The last piece.”

“No!” he raced towards it, but she was back to dancing with her friends as if everything she was doing was normal. He couldn’t reach the piece she had tossed but as he looked into the fire, he noted the shape of the leg of one of his side tables in the fire. She had burned his bedroom set. Set it on fire like a maniac. “What the f**k is wrong with you?” He bellowed furiously in her direction, stomping to grab her arm, and spinning her around.

The tiny dog did not like his tone and immediately raced to bite his feet and he jumped backwards away from it. “What the f**k!”

“Jinx, good girl! Bite the fucker.” The other brunette encouraged the dog.

“I will shoot the dog,” he warned furiously.

“You will not,” Dimitra corrected him with a smirk. “You kill people not dogs. You used to like dogs.”

He gave a pointed glance to the two women and then noted neither of them seemed remotely concerned at what Dimitra had uttered. Had she revealed their family’s secrets to strangers? He ran his fingers into his hair. Suddenly it seemed more pressing than his burning bed.

“Why?”

“Why what?” Dimitra asked as she lowered the volume of the music with her phone and lowering to scoop the dog. “Why did I burn the bed you whored yourself in? Because you disrespected me Miklos, in the house bought to be our marital home. Why do my friends support me unconditionally and hate you so much? Because they love me more than you love yourself and that,” she grunted, “is a whole f*****g lot. Or are you asking why I’m doing all of this? Well, I want a divorce and you refused. As a result of refusing, you get me. All of my f*****g crazy. You get it all. You don’t want a divorce, then get ready for the ride of your life. Welcome to Dimitra’s world, Miklos. I’m going to make you wish you’d never arrived in it.”

Before he could say another word, she pressed a button on her phone and music blared again. He knew the song because he ran clubs and when Britney Spears started her autotuned beginning of Womanizer he wondered whether he’d fallen in the shower earlier and was now in a horrid nightmare. The three women were scream-singing the lyrics to the song as they continued drinking and laughing, the tiny dog barking as back-up to their off-key band and he was stupefied by the entire scene in front of him.

Looking around at his men who were as perplexed as he was by the unfolding of the events, he took a deep breath and refocused his energy. Did she believe a little fire and burned furniture would make him run for the hills?

He watched as she gyrated her hips and waved her arms in the air. It seems his little wife liked to dance. He would have to take her dancing. Her rounded breasts were jiggling and bouncing in the tiny bikini top and the heat from the blaze was causing sweat to bead her skin, making her dewy. Glassy-eyed and laughing loudly she was a glorious vision of wickedness, and he couldn’t wait to possess her. He didn’t want to tame the beast of her. He wanted her wild and bucking while he rode her hard. As he stood there, barefoot in the driveway, watching her carry on in drunken glee, he was already formulating his own plan. He turned on his heel and re-entered the house.

His security agent followed him inside. “Sir, about the fire. We had a call from our guys the fire station has been notified of the blaze.”

“It will die down soon. She accomplished what she wanted to accomplish. She wanted my attention. She has it.” He pulled a beer from the fridge and twisted the cap off and drank deeply, almost emptying the bottle in one go.

“If they come to the gate?”

“Send Mrs. Laskaris down to deal with it. She seems more than capable, wouldn’t you agree? Let the men get back to doing what they are supposed to be doing around the compound. She can handle things on her own.”

“What if the fire gets out of control?” Ajax was stunned his boss was walking away.

“Then let the house burn,” he shrugged. “We will rebuild. Isn’t this what it’s all about? Rebuilding? Starting new?” He took another swig of his beer and headed for the back garden as his security agent walked away mumbling under his breath he was as crazy as his wife. He sat down, kicking his feet up onto a lounger and closed his eyes and waited for Dimitra to finish her party and prepare for bed. Then, he would retaliate. He chuckled softly as he considered what her reaction would be to his plan of attack. Silly woman. Did she not know Dimitra’s World was simply a suburb of Miklos’ Universe? He was going to show her who was boss, and it wasn’t her.