Dimitri's POV

I wasn't sure what to expect when I opened the front door, but it certainly hadn't been this.

The entire living room was covered in rose's petals. There were at least 8 dozen bouquets scattered about the various surfaces around the house, and just as many candles, all of which were a sickly sweet scent. They had long since burned out, but the smell still lingered in the air.

"What the hell is all this?" Tasha wondered out loud, looking around the room in a state of shock.

I had no idea what to make of all this until I noticed the single rose and note lying on Rose's bedside table.

My Darling Rose,

You can't imagine how much I've been missing you. While everyone else was off enjoying their holiday, all I could think about was being cheated out of my first Christmas with you. The holidays are a terrible time to be away from the one you love, but don't fret my pet; we'll make it up it next year.

All my love

Nathan

That son of a bitch!

"Dimka, what is it?" Tasha asked walking in the bedroom.

My hand gripped the paper so tightly that it tore a little when she grabbed it out of my hands.

"How the hell did he get in here? I thought Alberta had eyes on this place?" she asked looking the room for some sort of explanation.

Her question was enough to break me out of my frozen state and I didn't waste any more time before moving into action. Pulling several bags out of the closet I began stuffing them full of Rose's things.

"What are you doing now?" Tasha asked exasperated.

I don't know why she bothered; I hadn't answered a single question out loud since we walked in.

"Dimka, stop!" she yelled, pulling my arm to a halt. I looked up at her worried expression and knew she needed some sort of answer.

"I'm packing the rest of Rose's things. I don't know when or how Nathan Whitmore got in here, but he did and now there's no way I'm letting Rose stay here."

I watched her face carefully trying to gauge her reaction, and the minute she realized what I was saying she lost it.

"You want her to move in with us?!" She screeched, clearly outraged by the idea. "Dimka that's insane. I'm not living with that woman. She's got a target on her back!"

"That woman is my girlfriend Tasha! And she needs me right now. God, how can you be so callous?" I shouted, completely appalled by her utter lack of sympathy.

"I'm not callous; I just know how to distance my work life from my personal life. Something you seem incapable of doing! I told you getting involved with her was a bad idea and you wouldn't listen. But this Dimitri…this is where I draw the line. This is my life too, and I don't want that woman in my house. "

I wanted to scream at her, I wanted to yell. I even wanted to throw shit at the wall. But before I got a chance to do any of that, Ivan stepped in. I hadn't even noticed him walk into the bedroom.

"Dimitri finish packing Rose's bags while I take her home. Tasha, you live in my house, which means you live by my rules. If you don't like it, feel free to move out. We may all live together, but it's my name on the lease, and there's no way we're leaving Rose anywhere that Nathan can find her, and that's final."

It was rare that Ivan took on that sort of tone with anyone, so when he did you always knew he meant business. Tasha knew better than to argue with after that, but that didn't mean she wasn't still furious. With one last irritated glance at us both, she huffed out, past a trembling Rose and out the front door.

Roses POV

After the world's longest shower, I pulled on one of Dimitri's old t shirts and headed downstairs. We were barely in the door 10 minutes when he got a call from Alberta and went down to the station to fill her in. I hated to see him leave, but I needed the time to pull myself together.

I found Ivan sitting on the couch reading over some sales reports and he smiled when he heard me approach. He patted the seat beside him and reached behind the sofa to drape a blanket over me.

"How you holding up kid?"

"Honestly, I don't know." I admitted. "I'm still trying to wrap my head around it."

"I wanted to ask you something, and if you're not comfortable telling me I understand. But how did you know he'd been there? You never even went inside."

I knew Ivan was curious, and Dimitri had been wondering the same thing.

My therapist kept insisting that I talk about my time in captivity, that the only way I would ever really recover was if I faced what had happened. Of course that's a lot easier to say when you're not the person who was held in captivity for weeks.

"It was the smell." I told Ivan, looking up to meet his curious gaze. "When Nathan held me captive, he was obsessed with "romancing" me. He would cover the bed in rose petals and light these god awful smelling candles. When we got to the front door, I smelled it, and I just knew." I felt Ivan reach over to touch my hand and I tried not to flinch away from the contact.

"I'm so sorry Rose. I can't even imagine what that was like for you."

It was true, what had happened to me was terrible. But I also knew it could have been worse. Victor had abducted 6 other girls before me, and each one had met a harsher fate. I may have been beaten and tortured, but I hadn't been raped or killed; so at least that was something.

We didn't talk about much after that; I think he could tell I needed to be alone with my thoughts and by the time Dimitri returned a few hours later, I was feeling a little more like myself. After a little forced conversation on all our parts, we managed to get through a nice dinner together and when we settled in to watch a movie, neither of the guys even complained when I picked a romantic comedy.

We were about halfway through the movie when Tasha came stumbling in, and much to my surprise she wasn't alone.

Attached to her face was easily one of the most grimy looking guys I had ever seen, and they were practically half naked as they made their way up to her bedroom. When the door slammed closed behind them, we all just looked at each other. No one seemed to know what to say and just as Ivan was about to try and say something, a loud moan resonated from the bedroom.

Wow.

After a few more moments of shocked silence and Tasha's overly dramatic sex sounds I couldn't take anymore.

"Well this isn't awkward at all…." I announced, turning the volume up a little more on the television.

Beside me Ivan started laughing loudly but Dimitri was unusually quiet.

"Well I suppose if this movie doesn't start to get interesting soon, we can always switch to Tasha's amateur porn." Ivan suggested with a smirk.

Gross.

It was bad enough I had to hear it; I didn't want to visualize the mental images that went along with it.

"Okay, that's just wrong!" I told him, shoving him playfully on the arm.

Dimitri was still seething about something, but now hardly seemed like the time to press him about him. I knew it had something to do with Tasha, and a small part of me wondered if he was secretly jealous.

He always said the two of them were just friends, but he'd been fine all through dinner, and then she showed up here banging some random guy's brains out and all of a sudden his mood soured. I didn't want to believe it, but the insecure side of me kept making its self-known.

Mercifully, the sex-a-thon ended not to long after that, although we did have to suffer through an incredibly drawn out and disgusting goodbye as she saw him out the door.

When it was over she turned around to face us.

"What?" she asked innocently, as if she hadn't just put on the most over the top sexual performance, most likely for Dimitri's sake.

As a woman I was well aware of what she was doing. I'd heard her vehemently protest to me moving in here and I knew damn well how she felt about Dimitri. She was trying to make him jealous and so help me, I think it was working. My heart sank a little at the omission.

"What the hell was that?" Dimitri asked, no longer feeling the need to bit his tongue.

Oh God, here it comes.

"It's called sex Dimitri, you should try it sometime…"

Ouch. That was low.

"I'm not talking about the sex Tasha; I'm talking about the random stranger you brought into the house? Did you even know that guy?

Yep…he's definitely jealous.

"Why do you even care?" She shot back, her eyes sparkling at the reaction she seemed to be getting out of him.

This was exactly what she had been hoping for and I knew it.

"I care because Rose is here! You can't be parading a bunch of strangers through the house while she's living with us, it's not safe! What if one of them is connected to Nathan!" He shouted, standing up from his spot on the couch to glare at her.

Okay…so maybe he's not jealous after all.

Tasha seemed to have reached the same conclusion as I did, because her eyes suddenly hardened at his harsh tone.

"What, so I'm not supposed to have a sex life anymore because someone's out to get your girlfriend? That sounds like a personal problem Dimitri…"

What a bitch!

Okay, so I know that they have been friends with this chick since they were ten and all, but Yeva may have been on to something when she called her a she-devil. The woman was a grade a bitch, with zero sympathy and a terrible personality.

What exactly was it that made them like her in the first place?

"That's enough!" Ivan interrupted before Dimitri could proceed to bite her head off.

Both parties stopped their shouting match to look at Ivan and found the same thing I did when they looked at him; he was pissed.

"Tasha, we've been over this. Rose is staying here for awhile, and that means a couple of things are going to need to change. It may not be fair, but that's the way it's going to be. If you want a meaningless hookup, do like I do and get it somewhere else. As for you Dimitri, biting Tasha's head off isn't going to help you two solve this case any faster. You want to catch Nathan, then the two of you need to work together. Now if the two of you are quite finished….I think Rose and I would like to finish this here crappy movie okay?"

Neither of them argued after that, but I could tell this argument wasn't really over. Tasha stalked back up to her room, while Dimitri settled back down on the couch beside me.

Something told me this was going to be a hella-awkward couple of weeks….