Howdy, folks! I've been writing pretty much since the last update, but this chapter (another 2fer, lucky you!) took forever because it took so much out of me...Dimitri is just sooo emotional, as y'all know. Always so yummy to live in his head for a while :)

Enjoy!

Reviews = love and warm hugs

J.F

Dimitri nearly retched into a bed of daffodils in the courtyard.

He doubled over and braced a hand against the stone retaining wall, arm trembling and stomach roiling pure bile. He couldn't breathe quite right, but at least he'd been too nervous to consume more than a mouthful of coffee at breakfast on the ship and his body had nothing to expel.

Impossible. This was impossible.

Anastasia was dead. It had only been the Dowager who'd made it onto that train out of Russia to the asylum of foreign borders. There was no way a pampered girl child born to privilege could survive Russia's merciless streets into adulthood with no one to care for her.

This couldn't be happening...Dimitri shook his head again and again, trying to force his denial to burrow deeper and take hold, to resist the devastating implications of a reality of this magnitude.

He and Vladimir had auditioned literally hundreds of girls, searching merely for the best actress of the bunch who looked the most authentic, and the genuine article had stumbled upon them at the home they'd made of the palace on her own?

No.

No no no no no no.

But Anya knew. He'd never breathed a word of the events of that day to a single living soul and she knew.

Even when they met and he'd considered her classless trash, Dimitri had thought she was too good to be true for their grand plan. That was the cruel cosmic joke he'd suspected all along, like a tiny shard of shrapnel in his mind. Anya - Anastasia - was true. And too good for him.

He straightened after a long moment and crossed his arms, still trying to get a normal breath around the burning knot in his chest. The princess he'd grieved for and the woman he loved were one and the same. The noxious amalgamation of joy and despair made Dimitri want to shed his very skin and flee.

"We-e-e-e did it!"

An exuberant Vladimir had just burst through the French doors to the courtyard at Dimitri's back, who grunted in surprised annoyance when the man actually picked him up from behind and swung him around once like a child.

"We are going to see her Imperial Highness tomorrow night!" The elation filling Vladimir's face was unmatched, even by the con they pulled off when Dimitri was thirteen that had set them up financially for the following year and a half. His dark eyes shone like they only did when money was in the bag. "We are going to get the ten million rubles!"

His mention of the reward money made Dimitri nauseated all over again. So what if it technically wasn't dirty anymore, now that he knew handing their royal pupil over to her family for just compensation was the next logical, rightful step. It seemed ages since that had mattered to him, and the thought of exchanging Anya for all that cash felt like someone had upended a city dumpster on his head.

Dimitri looked at the ground, half expecting to see rancid St. Petersburg trash piled around his feet. "Vlad, she is the princess."

Vladimir didn't hear him, lost in his own jubilation as he practically danced around the enormous trickling fountain. "Anya was extraordinary - I almost believed her!" Vladimir patted both of Dimitri's cheeks in his excitement and earned a ferocious scowl. "And Sophie - " Vladimir broke into a frenzied laugh. "Sophie bought every word! We are going to be very rich men, my friend, very, very rich..."

Anya appeared at the open doorway in Dimitri's peripheral vision just then, bouncing on her toes and squealing something about Sophie wanting to take them shopping before she was gone as quickly as she'd arrived. Dimitri was glad; his wounds were much too fresh to look her way.

Vladimir went on and on about the things he planned to buy and do once they'd sold Anya off. Dimitri had stopped hearing him, suffocating under a thick blanket of disgust for his mentor and himself. Either Vladimir was the finest actor Dimitri had ever seen or he really was this cold-blooded, fooling even Dimitri into believing he had some paternal affection for Anya. He'd just never seen Vladimir revel in their depravity with such...joy. He watched with new eyes as Vladimir paced the flagstones sporting that shit-eating grin, and for the briefest possible moment, before a wave of guilt at his own ingratitude had washed it away, Dimitri hated him. Hated him for being a distorted reflection of the person Dimitri had been, that he feared on some primordial level he still was.

The harried maid arrived after a few minutes to annouce the arrival of the car to take them into the city, and Dimitri followed Vladimir to the front of the house with lead in his shoes. Vladimir gave him an odd look when Dimitri wouldn't slide into the back seat next to Anya but didn't make a fuss. Dimitri would have made a scene had his friend insisted. To be close enough to feel her warmth against his side knowing what he knew would have been unbearable.

After the ladies went one direction and he and Vladimir another, Dimitri spent the rest of the day in a sort of trance, moving as if he were underwater. His feet dragged, his limbs felt heavy and useless. The crowds that moved around him were more vague shapes than people, their indecipherable words white noise in his ears as he dogged Vladimir's steps from store to store. His partner purchased more for the two of them on Sophie's credit than he probably should have, but Dimitri didn't have the strength to argue, not even when the handsy suit salesman wrestled him into a pink dinner jacket early on in the evening. Vladimir had never shared much about his days in the royal Russian court, but Dimitri knew he spoke perfect French. Dimitri was happy to let him take the lead as he struggled to keep his mind off Anya and failed every time.

They finished their shopping trip well before the women, as expected. While Sophie's car waited at the curb, Vladimir stood reading a newspaper in front of the last boutique they were to have visited and Dimitri paced in front of the glass doors for a solid hour.

He almost clutched his chest when Anya finally exited the building like an angel stepping out on clouds, worried that his heart had stopped. Her beauty a full-on assault on his senses, Dimitri wondered in awe how her comeliness seemed to refine itself with every wardrobe change. He shrank from her, overwhelmed in more ways than one, but Anya seemed to insist on clinging to his side.

Her closeness the rest of the night was tortuously bittersweet. She consumed his thoughts, causing Dimitri to rely on his con man's instinct alone to fake his way through dinner as he could barely keep up with the conversation. Wanting her to experience all Paris had to offer, he could feel his heart breaking anew as he watched her accept one dance partner after another at his insistence. Anya belonged here. She was light, and love, and kindness, and everything lovely, and Dimitri knew he didn't deserve to breathe the same air as she.

Still, the magic of Paris had taken its toll by the time they made it to the Eiffel Tower and he could no longer resist the fantasy of Anya belonging only to him. He slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her close, stomach clenching when her soft body melted against him and she rested her head against his shoulder.

Anya wanted him to kiss her at her hotel room door. It was all over her face. Dimitri had never known the kind of pain that came with resisting the screaming urge to honor her wishes, but he had to. He already loved her too much and in too many ways to survive their inevitable demise. If he kissed her, they'd be naked and writhing on the floor of her room in a matter of moments and he'd never be able to leave her again. Anya was entitled to the world, but Dimitri knew even she couldn't have them both.

He was resolved when he left her with a kiss to her fingertips. Despite knowing he'd see her the following day, it felt like the last goodbye.

His posh hotel room felt empty when he returned. Dimitri left the light off and flopped onto his back on the bed fully clothed, not even bothering to remove his jacket and uncomfortable shoes. When he closed his eyes, he heard Anya's tinkling laughter. When he opened them, he saw her earnest smile and that dimple in her cheek. Anastasia's dimple.

He sat up with a ragged sigh and rubbed his face with both hands. No point in trying to sleep tonight.

Paris' streets proved lively in the wee hours of the morning, with drunk and laughing people stumbling out of bars onto the banquette or forming small crowds around street musicians just hitting their stride. Dimitri couldn't witness the scene with the same wide-eyed wonder he saw in Anya today. Everything around him seemed frivolous and pointless. Nothing about this place impressed him, but he doubted he would be if the beggar limping down the alley up ahead had presented him with a tray of diamonds. He despised Paris with a jealous animosity, knowing it would rob him of his first and only love.

Dimitri walked with no sense of purpose or destination. He fisted his hands in his pockets and tucked his arms into his sides against the chill, listening to the steady beat of his shoes hitting the cobblestones, trying to hypnotize himself into doing what needed to be done in just a few hours.

Today was the last day Anya would be in his life.

The truth he'd been fending off since that afternoon cut Dimitri so deeply he actually stumbled, but he had to face it - if not for himself, then for her. Marie was Anya's only family. He would have given anything to see his own mother or even his father again, to have met his little brother or sister had they been born and helped guide them into adulthood under his wing. He couldn't rob Anya of one last shot at something real by subverting their operation so he could keep her to himself.

Dimitri turned down the next street into a dark void between street lights, the music fading into the distance behind him. He thought to start calling her by her given name but decided against it, even if it felt...disrespectful somehow. He didn't want Anya to be aware that anything had changed. She had always been Anastasia, for all she knew. Dimitri and Vladimir had done almost too good a job with that.

The more he considered it, the more obvious and painful his course of action became. He'd have to cut ties. Completely. It was the only way. Ironically, that had always been the plan, but now Dimitri knew it had to be done because he could not bear to be so near Anya and not have her, not be with her. He didn't fit into her life when she was a little girl running wild in the palace and he certainly didn't now. Better to be countries away, knowing she was safe and loved but never harboring the hope of catching a glimpse of her, just maybe, walking with her royal escort through the Parisian streets.

It was decided, then. Dimitri would hand her off to the Dowager, usher her into her new life, and make a swift exit. And as much as it pained him, since the last ten years of his life had revolved around obtaining it, he knew he couldn't take the Dowager's reward. Vladimir was likely to murder him, but that was a risk he was willing to take to preserve what remained of his soul.

He'd wandered so far it took an hour to get back to the hotel, the eastern sky flushing with the first pinks of dawn. He dashed through the lobby and rounded the blind corner to his hallway, only to be nearly mowed down by a small army of maids in gray uniforms, carrying little train cases while talking and laughing loud enough to wake the dead. This smacked of Sophie's extravagance, and sure enough they headed straight for Anya's room, gathering around her door in a giggling mass. Dimitri shook his head and unlocked his own door. Anya would be occupied all day from the size of that group.

He headed straight for the bed again and plopped down on the edge, letting his upper body fall back and bounce against the mattress. Today would be hell.

An abrupt knock on the door made him jerk upright, heart racing. He squinted into the searing sunlight flooding the room through the open window shades. Seemed it had been dark only a few minutes ago...

Yawning and rubbing his eyes, Dimitri shuffled to the doorway intending to send the hotel maid away and found a grinning Vladimir instead, holding up a bottle of champagne by its neck with one hand and a large garment bag by its hanger in the other. Before he could quell his reaction, Dimitri rolled his eyes and turned his back with a weary groan. He hadn't been ready to see his overzealous partner just yet. "It's way too early for champagne, Vlad."

Vladimir laughed shortly as he closed the door behind him, ignoring Dimitri's surly behavior. "Early? It is nearly four-o'-clock local time. We will have to be at the theater by five-thirty."

Frowning, Dimitri settled into the armchair by the window. He'd slept that long?

"I thought I would dress here," Vladimir said as he placed the champagne on a nightstand and hung his garment bag in the closet next to Dimitri's, "so we would have time to discuss your strategy for this evening."

Dimitri braced his elbows on his knees, feeling like he hardly had the strength to keep himself upright. He didn't want to talk about this. His heart still felt like it was bleeding. "Do we have to do this right now?"

Vladimir looked at him like he'd just asked if the sky was made of tissue paper. "What are you talking about? What other time would we have to - "

"I can't." Dimitri hung his head. "I don't want to talk about it. It'll happen however it happens."

After a long beat of silence, Vladimir's feet moved into Dimitri's view as he sat on the end of the bed next to him. "Are you alright?"

Dimitri was as far from alright as he could possibly be. "Does it matter?"

Vladimir huffed. "How can you ask...of course it matters, Dimitri. Do you think I do not care about how you feel?"

A resentful snicker broke free as Dimitri sat up to look at Vladimir. "Please...all you care about is the money. That's all you've ever cared about."

Vladimir sat back, eyes wide as if Dimitri had sucker punched him. "I see...so I have kept you alive all of these years, going hungry and cold just to keep food in your mouth and warm clothes on your back because I only care about money?" He scoffed and cocked his head at his wayward mentee. "All I have ever cared about was survival - yours and mine. This entire scheme was your idea - or has your hypocrisy caused you to forget?"

Dimitri grimaced and collapsed against the back of the chair, directing his sigh at the ornate ceiling. Vladimir was right, of course - he would have been satisfied with living forever on the small-scale cons they were pulling back in Russia. It had been Dimitri who'd always wanted more and more.

He was a hypocrite. Yet another black mark to add to an already lengthy list of reasons why he was an unfit mate for Anya.

Adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose, Vladimir's voice gentled when he spoke again. "I...know this is difficult for you due to your feelings for Anya, but - "

"You don't know anything."

Vladimir's heavy brows met. "What do you mean?"

Dimitri stared, weighing the consequences of telling him everything, forseeing Vladimir's shock and most of all, his pity. Ultimately, it was the simple idea of speaking the words aloud that made him decide against it. He was barely getting by with the truth burning through his mind like wildfire. Telling Vladimir who Anya really was would make it too real for him to handle right now, when he was already on unsteady ground.

"Never mind." Dimitri jerked his chin at the champagne bottle across the way. "You mind opening that?"

Still wearing a troubled look, Vladimir rolled onto his side and stretched his arm across the bed to retrieve it. The cork popped after he ripped the foil and worked it free and hit the wall with a soft thud, sending a brief, fizzy stream of liquid down the side. It left a puddle that soaked the carpet, but neither of them cared nor reached for the crystal glasses next to the lamp on the desk.

Vladimir handed the wet bottle to Dimitri without a word, who took several pulls of the lukewarm alcohol right from the source. He handed it back to Vladimir and he followed suit.

An artificial warmth flooded his veins and Dimitri rubbed his temples, a headache blooming right between his eyes that did nothing to take the edge off his heartache. If alcohol had no effect, he worried the unendurable sense of loss would actually kill him.

"Do you remember the job we did during that unusually hot summer? I believe you had just turned fifteen."

Dimitri raised his head, wondering where Vladimir was headed with that train of thought.

"Yes," Vladimir continued with a wistful grin, "you had just outgrown all of your clothes again and we needed money for new ones. The mark was a bank manager, I believe. He tried to have us both arrested because you fell in love with the redhead who worked there who turned out to be his youngest daughter." Vladimir chuckled.

Dimitri didn't find this particular trip down memory lane amusing at all. Now that he knew how excruciating real love could be, that Vladimir could even compare Anya to some nameless girl from their past he'd seen a handful of times was an insult.

"This isn't the same," he said with a baleful scowl. "You know it isn't."

Vladimir's face fell as he realized his misstep. "I was not trying to..." He trailed off into a sigh. "I know. I know this is different. Believe it or not, I love her, too." The smile returned, this time tinged with a profound sadness that Dimitri had never seen before. "She reminds me of my daughter."

If Dimitri hadn't just put down the champagne bottle after taking another swig, he would have dropped it. His eyes turned to saucers. "Your what?"

"Eva. That was her name, after my father's mother. She would have been some years older than you."

Not once in all the countless days they'd spent together did Vladimir mention he'd had a family.

"You never..." Dimitri stared in shock. "What do you mean, 'would have'? What happened to her?"

Vladimir spoke gingerly, as if each word were cutting into an old scar and he was trying to manage the pain. "I married into the royal court. It was purely an...arrangement between business associates; I did not love my wife and she did not love me." Vladimir looked up at Dimitri. "The ruby ring I sold had belonged to her family. It was the only thing I had left of my life from before." When Dimitri nodded his understanding, he continued. "My wife knew of Sophie; she was part of our understanding. But she gave me a little girl, my joy. After the Romanovs fell, a Bolshevik officer with a vendetta against me for a bad business deal took my wife and daughter and held them for ransom. I did not have enough money to pay it, so he had both of them shot."

Dimitri's heart twisted for his friend. "Vlad, I had no idea. I'm so sorry."

Vladimir shrugged. "He and the subordinates who had pulled the trigger were dead before the end of that year; I made sure of it. But I made a vow to myself that I would never be poor again."

Dimitri nodded once more, glad that justice had been served. He now understood Vladimir's fervor for riches. It was rooted in the fear of not being able to protect himself and the people he loved. Dimitri knew all about that. He could hardly stand in judgment.

After bowing his head in silence for a moment to honor the memory of Vladimir's family, Dimitri caught his partner's melancholy eyes. "Will you stay in Paris when this is over?" he asked, chest aching as he echoed Anya's question for him from the night before.

Vladimir wriggled into a more comfortable position on the bed. "I believe so. Sophie is here, after all. There is nothing left for me in Russia." He eyed Dimitri's somber countenance and his mouth twitched into a familiar smile. "I would not be upset if you decided to stay here as well."

Dimitri hoped Sophie would be willing to take Vladimir in. The man had no idea how poor he was about to be again, but Dimitri didn't have the heart to tell him on the heels of his revelation. He'd find out soon enough. "We'll see," was all he said in reply.

He dodged further questions about the future by suggesting they get ready. They both dressed in contemplative silence, Vladimir moving to a corner with the contents of his garment bag laid neatly across the bed, while Dimitri retreated to the bathroom and did his best to avoid the mirror.

After twenty minutes of fighting with his bowtie, he emerged exasperated with the flaps of the white silk fabric hanging uselessly around his neck. He gave a helpless shrug at Vladimir's amused expression. "I never could figure these stupid things out."

An impeccably dressed Vladimir chuckled as he approached him. "Allow me." He tied it perfectly with a deftness that his thick, calloused fingers would not suggest. As he did so, Dimitri could have sworn he caught the gleam of unshed tears behind his glasses.

He swallowed, the surge of emotion for the only father he had ever known closing his throat. "Don't go getting sentimental on me, old man," he said gruffly, just able to choke the words out.

Vladimir smirked and brushed at his eye with a fingertip. "Never." Finished, he stepped back and brushed imaginary lint off Dimitri's shoulders, grunting his approval before lifting Dimitri's arm to glance at his watch. "We should head to the theater now."

"Good idea." As Dimitri grabbed his top hat from the closet shelf and draped his coat over his arm, Anya and her primping posse came to mind. "I'll go tell Anya we're leaving. Hopefully that will inspire her to be on time tonight."

Vladimir agreed, and after Dimitri locked up and they parted ways, he walked the opposite direction to Anya's room.

He knocked, surprised when the door opened under the force of his knuckles alone. Those idiots, he thought with heat. Not one of the maids made sure the door was closed completely before they left? Anyone could just waltz inside.

Alarmed at the security risk, Dimitri kept knocking and calling Anya's name as he peeked around the door into what appeared to be an empty room. The sound of jazz music filled the air and he spotted a portable phonograph on the coffee table someone must have brought in. He stepped in further, feeling like he was trespassing. "Anya?" He held the door slightly ajar and raised his voice, trying to be heard above the music. "Anya, Vlad and I are - "

The sound of water sloshing made him turn his head and he froze, his body reacting before his thoughts could catch up. He could see Anya in the bathroom through the partially open door as she stepped out of the tub, her hair in a smooth bun at the top of her head and damp at the nape of her neck, water sluicing down her back and rear and shapely legs but leaving stray clumps of bubbles clinging to her skin.

She reached for the folded towel on the sink and Dimitri caught a glimpse of a breast, every single thought evaporating as his brain turned to mush. His lung function stalled and he gaped, incapable of movement or speech, the intensity of his sudden arousal akin to a near-fatal electric shock.

After haphazardly throwing the towel around herself, Anya turned and caught sight of Dimitri with a gasp.

It wasn't the blood-curdling scream he'd expected. He wasn't sure if he was breathing, but Anya's chest heaved as she stared back at him in a charged moment that stretched into an eternity. One hand clutched the towel in place at her chest and exaggerated the fullness there. Water droplets streamed down her legs from her hidden places, the steam intensifying the soft floral scent of her emanating from the bathroom. It made Dimitri woozy, but not more so than when a corner of the towel loosened and dropped away, revealing the milky flesh of her leg all the way up to the curve of her hip.

Anya didn't scramble to cover herself. She didn't move at all except to wet her lips as her blue eyes deepened, flicking to the open hotel room door before returning to his. A mischievous smirk appeared on her flushed face. "Are you in or out?"

Her bold words broke the spell and Dimitri flinched, snapping his head around to look at the floor. "I'm -I'm sorry...the door was open and I - "

He sensed Anya take a step toward him and panicked. "I just came to tell you that Vlad and I will meet you at the theater. I-I'll see you in a bit." He didn't wait for her response, finding himself back out in the hallway with the door closed behind him before he'd registered the movement.

Jesus Christ.