Hope you all are doing well! I've been working on this chapter for a couple of weeks and couldn't find a good stopping place, which is why it's longer than some of the other chapters. I was hoping to have it up sooner, but I ended up rereading the VA books when I was searching for something, so I got a bit distracted. Enjoy the chapter and leave a review!

"So," McKenna said, pulling off the highway. She didn't say much the entire drive, and I was grateful for that. "What happened?"

"I gave him his badge back."

"And? I saw him staring after you as you left the school."

"And I don't know what else to say. I called him out on being a fucking asshole and liar, and then I left."

"Hmm."

"What?" I snapped.

"Apparently, he wanted to talk some more. He's following us."

I glanced in the rearview mirror and cursed upon seeing the grey SUV. I couldn't make out the driver from the distance, but the only person it could be was Dimitri. Nobody else has any reason to be out here. "Let me out. I don't want him back at the house."

"Rose, I'm not letting you out of the car when we're practically in the middle of nowhere."

I rolled my eyes. "What's going to happen? There's nobody else out here."

"That you know of," McKenna reminded. "It's not like he won't just continue to follow you to the house. He knows where the house is."

I sighed, looking in the mirror again. "Fine."

McKenna turned down the dirt road that led to the house, and the grey SUV followed. It only took a few minutes to get to the no trespassing gate, and McKenna hopped out to move the gate. She didn't wait to see Dimitri get out of the car to close it and just kept driving down the road, which had turned to gravel at this point. The tires rumbled against the loose stones, and there was a dust cloud kicking up behind the car. I kept my eyes on the rearview mirror, watching Dimitri's SUV following us, kicking up his own cloud of dust.

McKenna parked on the left side of the driveway, closest to the door leading into the garage. Dimitri's SUV pulled in next to us a few seconds later.

"McKenna, you can go inside. I'll handle this," I said.

She gave me a look, and I knew that she would be peeking out the window the whole time that I was talking to Dimitri to make sure everything was okay. She shut the car off, and I waited until she was inside the garage before getting out of the car. Dimitri was leaning against the hood of his SUV, and I stared at him silently.

"We need to talk."

"Do we now?" I tilted my head to the side. "It didn't really seem like you wanted to talk before."

"You didn't give me a chance, Rose. You slammed the badge on my desk and stormed out."

"What did you expect me to do, Dimitri? Or should I call you Agent Belikov?"

"Rose."

"Just stop. I've had it with your lies."

"It's my job!" Dimitri snapped. "If I told everyone that I was undercover, I would lose my job! I can't risk putting my job on the line to make sure you know everything."

I flinched.

"Do you not understand that your job is on the line here?"

It felt like weeks ago that Dimitri had had that conversation in his office with the mystery voice. But it was only a few days ago.

"All she wants to do is jump my bones," he said dryly.

"Then sleep with her, Belikov," the voice ordered. "Hathaway is a pretty girl; surely it can't be that hard."

"They made you sleep with me," I whispered.

Dimitri's face went ashen. "What are you talking about?"

"You know exactly what I'm talking about. The man you were talking to on the phone, in your office on Friday. He ordered you to sleep with me!"

"Rose, it's not—"

"Don't you dare tell me it's not what I think! You were ordered to sleep with me, and you did." My heart was pounding in my chest. I was starting to panic, and Dimitri avoided meeting my eyes. "Oh my god. Is that rape?"

His head snapped up. "No! It wasn't rape. You wanted it. You said you wanted it."

"But we were both under coercion. That isn't consent." Dimitri reached out, presumably to calm me, but I jerked back. "Don't touch me!"

"Rose, listen to me. It was not rape. I didn't sleep with you because somebody told me to. I slept with you because I wanted to. And because you said you wanted to. If you didn't want to, if you had said stop at any time, I would have," Dimitri swore, his face earnest. "I would never intentionally hurt you."

"But you have hurt me," I whispered. "I thought that I could trust you, and you were just using me for information."

"Your job is to find out what Rosemarie Hathaway knows about the kidnapping. You are to achieve your mission, no matter what you have to do."

He didn't say anything, and I continued. "What? Did you think that you could fuck me and then I would spill everything that I remember about the kidnapping?"

"No, that was never my intention. I wasn't using sex to manipulate you. If I was, wouldn't I have stayed to go for another round in the morning?"

I scoffed. "That doesn't mean anything. You would have been expected to sneak out."

Dimitri ignored my comment and arched an eyebrow. "I thought you didn't remember the kidnapping."

I crossed my arms. "I don't. At least not much, and if you think I'm telling you anything, you're sorely mistaken. You can go tell your boss that hiring you to get information from me failed."

"I wasn't hired to get information from you, Rose. I've been with the FBI for a while and when I heard your name floating around the office, I begged to be put on the case."

"Why?"

"You don't remember, do you?"

"Remember what?"

"Maybe we should go inside."

"No. I don't want you in there."

"Then come with me. There are some things that you need to see."

"Where are you going to take me?"

"My apartment. I have a few things for you there."

I narrowed my eyes. "No funny business."

"Pinky promise."

I agreed and walked around to the passenger side of the SUV. I sent McKenna a quick text with my location attached so she could keep an eye on it and me.

Dimitri did a three-point turn to pull back down the driveway since it was too long to back down the entire way. He jumped out to undo the chain wrapped around the gate and closed it back up after we were through.

"Why's the gate there?"

"To keep people out. My parents were secretive people. We used to have cameras in the trees to keep an eye on the gate to make sure that the people coming in were allowed. It used to be automatic; my dad would have to buzz people in and out, but I guess the mechanisms that ran it died a long time ago."

"Figures," Dimitri mutters.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Dimitri glanced at me and just shook his head.

I sighed, and we rode in silence until we were back on the highway and heading back into the city.

"Does the school know that you're an FBI agent?"

"No. They can't know, Rose," Dimitri said. "If that gets out, it wouldn't be good. Gallagher and Winchester showing up were bad enough."

"Why?" I tried to keep the bitterness out of my tone.

"For one, they're assholes. When they came in to question you, it was to fuck with me. They think they're better than all of the other agents even though it's their fault that your kidnapper fucking got away." Dimitri was fuming, and he took a few seconds to compose himself before continuing. "And two, having the FBI agents back in the school could tip off your kidnapper."

"You think they're at the school, that they're students."

"Possibly. Either a student or a teacher; they're the only ones that would be able to get access to the coach's office to get the drugs in the water and to fuck with you in every other way. I personally think it's a student, maybe a student aide."

Haley.

"Was Haley Pitman ever on your list of suspects?"

Dimitri glanced at me again. "Yes. Why?"

"I went to her house after I overheard the conversation in your office on Friday, and I found a box of pictures under her bed. Pictures of me. I ran out before she could explain, and I couldn't help but notice that she wasn't in class today."

Dimitri pulled into his parking lot and parked the car before turning to me. "And you think she might be the woman who kidnapped you?"

I bit my lip. "I'm not sure. She could be. I don't know her very well, and there's been a few different things that have been suspicious, but I just don't know."

He thought over this and opened his car door. "Let's go inside."

I nodded and opened the car door. He unlocked the apartment and ushered me inside before locking it again.

"Are you hungry?"

I nodded.

"I'm going to order a pizza; any special requests?"

"I love meat," I said. Realizing the innuendo, I added, "On my pizza."

Dimitri's lips lifted in a smile, and something quick flashed behind his eyes, and I blushed. Dimitri disappeared into his bedroom, his phone in hand, and when he came back, he was wearing a faded Henley and a pair of sweatpants. He was on the phone, rattling off his address, presumably for the pizza. He sat on the couch, and I sat at the opposite end, my legs curled up underneath me.

"So, what am I forgetting?" I asked as soon as Dimitri hung up and put the phone on the coffee table. "What don't I remember?"

"Have you forgotten a lot about before your parents died?"

I shrugged. "I suppose? I was only ten, so I don't recall everything about my childhood. And a traumatic experience like that doesn't make remembering any easier. A lot of what I do remember is about my parents and Lissa. But I must have blocked stuff out after my parents died if there's stuff that I should be remembering but aren't."

"Does the name Dimi mean anything to you?"

I shook my head. "I don't think so."

"They really did a number on you." Dimitri's voice was sad.

"What are you talking about? They?"

"Do you remember the first couple of weeks after the accident?"

I shook my head again. "Not much. I remember being in the hospital for a while. But I don't remember why. I assumed I was hurt."

Somebody knocked on the door, and Dimitri sighed and got up from the couch. He tipped the delivery girl for the pizza and set it on the coffee table before he disappeared into his room. I was halfway through a slice of pizza when he came back with a white shoebox.

He set the box on the couch between us before reaching for his own slice of pizza. "You were in an FBI-run hospital. You were taken there after the accident to make sure that you were okay and so that the people who were after your parents couldn't reach you."

"What the fuck?"

"Both of your parents were in the FBI," Dimitri said. "I don't know if you knew that, but your mother worked within the intelligence unit, and your father worked within the terrorism unit."

"What does that have to do with the accident?"

"It wasn't an accident. There wasn't a teenager texting that hit you. That was a lie that the FBI created when you came to the hospital, and you were still alive."

Dimitri opened the white shoebox and pulled out a picture of my parents, both wearing blue FBI jackets. My mom was grinning, her arm around my dad's waist. He was smiling, but his shoulders were tense. His arm was wrapped around my mom's waist and she was being held close to his side.

"When was this?"

"A few months before the car accident," Dimitri said. "Your dad knew something was going on, and he wasn't wrong."

"But my mom didn't?"

Dimitri shook his head. "It's unlikely. You're not supposed to talk about information with people in different sections of the FBI."

"But what does this have to do with you? And why do you have this box?"

"When I was younger, it was your father who helped my family. We came to America on visas from Russia, but we didn't know that my scum of a father was planning a terrorist attack. The FBI got a whiff of it and raided the house that we were renting. I was fifteen. My dad ran, but your dad took my mom and siblings in for questioning because they couldn't rule out any involvement on our part until they did. Your dad sat with us and talked with us outside the interrogation room, and I knew at the time that it was partially to lull us into a false sense of security, to see if we would say anything, particularly if Viktoria would say anything since she was youngest, being only 7. Your dad realized that we were telling the truth, that none of us knew what was going on, which was supported by the fact that my father was abusive, and the marks showed.

"I became enamored with the FBI after that, and I reached out to your dad about it. He helped us all get dual citizenship, and he helped me get involved with the FBI. By the time I was 17, I was an intern for the FBI because your dad had vouched for me. Our families became close, especially because you and Viktoria were so close in age. I would babysit for you and Viktoria on some occasions as favors to your parents," Dimitri said. He pulled out another photograph and handed it over. The stamp in the corner showed that the picture was taken on my ninth birthday. A young me was blowing out candles, and a young Dimitri was holding back my hair with one hand, a smile on his face. A girl a little younger than me was in the frame as well, and Dimitri pointed to her. "That's Viktoria. You two were so close growing up."

"What happened?" I whispered.

"Your dad made a lot of enemies, and somebody managed to track your parents down. That's how the accident happened. The person that did it ran as soon as the accident happened. I got to the hospital as soon as I heard."

"Was my dad still alive?"

Dimitri nodded. "He was. The doctors knew that he wasn't going to make it and that there wasn't anything they could do for him, so they didn't try. They gave him pain medication to make him feel comfortable, but he was still coherent for a little bit. When I got there, he made me promise to watch out for you. And I promised him that I would. So, when I saw your name floating around the office, I begged my superiors to put me on the case, and they let me on the case because of my promise to Abe."

"But why don't I remember any of this?"

"The trauma that you sustained most likely is the reason for your memory block. I didn't think that you would remember everything, but I didn't think that you'd forget so much." Dimitri sighed. "When I first saw you in the classroom, I thought you might have recognized me from the way you were staring at me, but I quickly realized you didn't."

"When I was in your classroom for detention, were you trying to get me to remember? Is that why you kept pushing me?"

Dimitri nodded. "I didn't realize that it was so bad at the time. I figured that you had forgotten because it was nearly a decade ago that I had last seen you, and time had passed. But the way you panicked when I mentioned your dad made me realize that your memory loss was much worse than I thought. I was hoping that there was just a wall blocking your memories, that's why I was pushing you to remember. But if there's a wall, it's thick, and it's not coming down any time soon."

"Or the kidnapping made it worse," I said. "Who knows what drugs I was on while I was being held captive, and that doesn't help."

"When you got to the hospital, you were out of it, but they couldn't find any trace of drugs in your system. But you had the track marks to prove that they were giving you something," he said.

"You were there?"

Dimitri nodded. "Your dad told me to watch out for you. They wouldn't let me actively search for you at the time because of a conflict of interest, but the second that I heard you were found, I got to the hospital as soon as I could. I sat by your bedside for a couple of days, just listening to you ramble. You kept asking for your mom and Lissa. You were talking about dark rooms and chains a lot, and you were worried about scars."

I glanced down at my wrists. There were marks there, but they had faded to be only slightly lighter than my normal skin tone, almost like a permanent tan line. An ache went through them, and I pressed my thumbs against them, hard.

"If it was a conflict of interest then, why isn't it one now?"

Dimitri's mouth stretched into a straight line. "I didn't give them a choice. Not after how everything got fucked up last time."

"What else is in the box?"

Dimitri handed the box over, and I sorted through the various pictures of my parents and of them with me. Dimitri was in a few pictures, but a bunch of them were of me and Viktoria. A couple had me, Lissa, and Viktoria, but not very many.

"Did I call you Dimi? Is that why you asked me if it meant anything to me?"

He nodded. "You weren't fond of the Russian nickname of my name, so you made your own."

"Dimka, right?"

He arched an eyebrow. "You remember that?"

"No. I may have Googled you," I admitted, sheepishly.

He laughed. "Of course, you did."

He was staring at me, almost fondly, and I blushed and looked back at the box. Before I could delve deeper into it, my phone started to buzz with a call from McKenna.

Dimitri glanced at the screen. "I'll give you some privacy."

He shut his bedroom door behind him, and I swiped to answer the call.

"Hey."

"Are you really still at his apartment?"

"Yes," I said. "There's been some interesting developments."

"Like?"

"He knew my parents, McKenna," I whispered. "He knew me before everything happened. There's a whole box of pictures and documents to back up his story too and there's just so much to go through."

"Are you coming home tonight?"

"I don't know." I glanced at the closed bedroom door. "There's so much to process, and I have so many questions, and Dimitri might know the answers."

"Be safe," she teased.

"Haha, fuck you."

We exchanged a few more words, and then we both hung up. I looked towards the bedroom door for a moment. "You can come out now," I said, raising my voice so that he could hear me. The door opened a few seconds later, and Dimitri reappeared.

"When we were at the hotel, and I saw the asshole agents in their car outside, did you go and talk to them? Is that why they haven't been hanging around?" I mused, remembering seeing their car but not sticking around to see Dimitri actually go outside.

"Yeah, I told them to back the fuck off," he said. "If they had kept hanging around, they would have blown my cover. At the time, that was possibly the worst thing that could happen because you didn't trust me."

"I still don't trust you," I reminded him. "At least not completely."

"I'm sorry that I couldn't tell you the truth. About knowing your family and about who I was and what I do," he said, sounding sincere.

As he was talking, I continued to flip through the box, finding more pictures, until I came across a black square. I pulled it out and froze. Dimitri saw was I was holding and cut off abruptly.

"Rose," he started.

"She was pregnant," I whispered. "And they killed her."

"They didn't know."

"That's not a fucking excuse." I glowered at him. "Don't defend them."

"I'm not defending them, Rose," he said, sitting back down on the couch, closer than he was before. "But they didn't kill her because she was pregnant; they did it to get back at your dad."

"And you know this how?"

Dimitri sighed. "Well, we don't know it for sure, but your dad made a lot of enemies in his line of work, and it was always assumed that some of his enemies caused the crash. A note claiming responsibility showed up at headquarters shortly after the accident that only reinforced the idea."

"I was a big sister, and they took that from me."

Dimitri didn't say anything, and his face was somber.

"In eight years, the FBI hasn't uncovered any leads? Nothing at all?"

He shook his head. "There are too many enemies for people to cover and examine them all, despite the note claiming responsibility. It was considered a cold case, and when you got kidnapped, it opened back up. Some thought that it might have been your father's enemies, but none of them have been active recently. All the events prior to your kidnapping made the focus shift to the school."

"Could it have been one of his enemies getting to a student and convincing them to do the dirty work?"

Dimitri shrugged. "Possibly. But we can't know for sure until we find out who it was that attacked and kidnapped you."

"How close are you?"

"Rose, I can't discuss it with you."

"Why not? I'm the victim."

"I haven't told my superiors that my cover was blown, and I don't want to be pulled. The last thing I want is to hide information from you, but if something leaks, it's too easy to track it back to me," he said.

"Can you tell me if you at least have suspects?"

"Yes, we have suspects. No, I'm not telling you who they are."

I crossed my arms. "Fine."

"But you can tell me a couple of things," he said. "You were at your old house when you were kidnapped, right?"

I nodded. "Yes. It was shortly after I was kicked off the squad."

"Who knows about the house?"

"Lissa, Adrian, and McKenna. Those are the only two that I can think of. I'm not sure if Lissa or Adrian remember much about the house or even know that I'm its owner now. My parents had an apartment closer to the city that we stayed in a lot, and Adrian and Lissa had only been over to the big house a handful of times. And McKenna followed me out there one day after cheer practice; that's how she found out about it," I explained. "But anybody else could have followed me out there."

"But you knew the person," he said. "She said that you asked them what they were doing here."

"According to McKenna. I don't remember, and, honestly, I could have been saying that to anybody."

"Chances are that it was somebody you know. Most crimes like this are done through familiar connections."

The box still sat in my lap, and I continued to go through it as we talked, looking over different pictures and items. At the very bottom of the box, there was an envelope, my name written on the front.

"What's this?"

"A letter from your father. He asked me to write it down for him while he was in the hospital before he passed," Dimitri said. "He asked me to wait until you were eighteen to give it to you, and with so much happening recently, I didn't have time until now."

I tore open the envelope, pulling out two thick pages of paper, covered in writing.

My dearest Rosemarie,

There is so much that I need to tell you but too many different places to start. I hope you know that I love you with my entire heart, and I would change all of this in a heartbeat if I could. I'm sorry that you've been dragged into this, Rose. You're my little girl, and I don't want any harm to come to you. But unfortunately, the world is twisted and doesn't work that way. I'm sorry that you were in the car when they came for us, and I hope that you don't remember anything from it. I pray that you don't remember the during or the after.

I had to pause there, halfway down the page, and suddenly I could hear the screech of metal on metal and the smell of the gasoline leaking around the car, and I could feel the blood from glass cutting into us as it shattered. As I sat remembering, I fell back into the memory, and suddenly, I was there, sitting in the backseat, terrified but unable to make a sound. My dad was screaming for someone to help his baby, for someone to help me. I was expecting the memory to end there; it always did, but this time, I was still sitting in the backseat of the car.

The back door opened, and I felt arms grab me. I was numb inside as it happened, but my memory self was kicking and screaming for my dad, for my mom, for anybody. I was pulled from the car seconds before it caught fire, and my memory self screamed.

"Rose!"

The voice came from my memory, and from next to me.

I jolted back to reality and stared at Dimitri. "You were there."

"What?"

"The night of the car accident, you were there."

Dimitri looked uncomfortable for half a second before saying, "Yes, at the hospital. I wrote the letter for your father."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it. You were there at the site of the accident," I said. "You pulled me out of the car. You pulled my dad out too, didn't you?"

Dimitri didn't try to deny it again and nodded. "It was because I pulled him out that he survived as long as he did. The car was on fire; it was going to explode any second. I was given orders to pull you, and that's it."

"Why?" I was outraged. Why would the FBI just leave my dad to burn to death?

"I don't know. It came from high up, and I never questioned it. I was hoping that you wouldn't remember because I was the only witness, and as far as the FBI is concerned, your dad pulled himself out of the car."

"You don't trust them."

It wasn't a question, but he still answered. "I don't trust some of them. I wasn't the only person that your dad took under his wings. Other agents in the office did the same. Some of them climbed the ladder faster than they should have, and it's suspicious, and I don't trust it."

"How many of them are still agents? How many did my dad take under his wing?" I answered my own question. "Gallagher."

Again, Dimitri didn't deny it.

"D-did he have something to do with the accident?"

Dimitri looked fully uncomfortable now. "I don't know. I have suspicions, but nothing concrete. The way that he handled your kidnapping was a big red flag to me because he didn't handle it the way others would have, and he was incompetent in rescuing you and capturing your kidnapper."

I slid the letter back into the envelope; I couldn't read anymore right now. I put it back in the box and put the box on the coffee table before stretching and yawning.

"Come on, it's late, and you've learned a lot tonight. Go get some sleep," Dimitri said, gesturing towards the bedroom. "We can continue this tomorrow."

I bit my lip, knowing it was a bad idea, but I couldn't resist the idea of a night with no nightmares. "Will you stay with me?"

"I'll be right here, Roza," he reassured. He gestured to the couch.

"No, I meant with me," I said. "The other night was one of the first without nightmares in a while, and I know I'll have nightmares tonight, but you help them, I think."

He arched an eyebrow. "You were also high the other night."

"Well, unless you have some weed around here, you're the next best option," I teased.

Dimitri's lips quirked. "Okay, I'll stay. Come on."

He gestured to the bedroom again, and I slipped into the bathroom. The toothbrush I used last time I was here was still sitting in the corner, and I ran through my nightly routine before slipping into the bedroom. Dimitri went into the bathroom when I came out, and I crawled under the covers, waiting for him. The sheets and comforter smelled like Dimitri, and it was an intoxicating scent. He slipped under the covers a few minutes later and while there was space between us now, I knew by the morning it would be gone. If Dimitri was still in bed when I woke up, that is.

As I was drifting off to sleep, I thought I felt Dimitri's lips brush against my forehead. "I'd do anything for you, Roza," he whispered as I fell asleep.