Sweet Romance12 min read
Goodbye, Uncle Dimitri
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I always thought I knew the shape of my life, like a map drawn in ink.
"Dimitri," I said once when I was small and believeable, "stay with me."
He smiled and ruffled my hair. "I will, Anna."
He kept his promise for years.
When my father was dying, he put me in Dimitri Price's care. "Take her," he said, and left like he had left everything else—quiet and decisive.
I grew up with that kindness stitched into my days. He was eight years older than me. He was careful, polite, perfect in a way that made people trust him. I fell in love with him quietly, like a habit that did not seem wrong. I can still remember the exact shape of his hands when he helped me down the steps, the small ways he guarded me from cold weather and loud crowds.
"You don't have to worry about anything, Anna," he said often.
I put him on a small, high pedestal in my heart. I told myself we were not lovers because he was my guardian, because he was older, because life had rules. But love is not tidy. It pressed warm and stubborn against the ribs.
When I finally learned he planned to be with someone else—when I heard about the engagement to Victoria Church—I felt something snap.
At his celebration party, I walked up as his words were spilling into a new woman's ears.
"Victoria," I said aloud, voice steady, "before you say yes, know I cooked for him once."
The room froze. Glass held its breath. My voice sounded far away to me, but everyone in the crowd heard it.
Dimitri's face was a flat, calm mask. His left hand twitched, fingers rolling, and I knew that movement as anger. He didn't speak. He asked me to leave.
"Go home, Anna," he said low.
"I won't," I answered. "Not tonight."
He didn't lose his manners. He took my arm, not gently, and guided me out of the hotel. He paused at the door and said, very smoothly, to the guests, "She drank too much. I'm taking her home."
They all nodded like parrots who had been taught a phrase.
Outside, he shoved me into the car and slammed the door. The engine roared; the street slid past like a painting. When we reached his villa, I stepped to him on the steps and kissed him.
"Are you angry?" I asked.
His face became a dark lid. "Anna, enough."
I pulled my sleeves over my hands and tried to keep composure. "You won't see other women behind my back."
"You're overreacting."
I knew him. The silence that followed told me the answer.
In the bedroom he said in a low voice, "Rest. I'll take you out to dinner later."
He shut the door. The sound of it was final, like a verdict.
That night I did not sleep. I walked to the bank and looked at my own account. I had money—more than I thought. Enough to live. Enough to leave. The numbers on the screen felt like small, solid stones under my palm. I could put my life somewhere else.
I moved the next week.
"I signed up for the university nearby," I told my friend Ellis Olivier. "I'll stay in a dorm."
"You should live," Ellis said. "Come have fun before classes start."
We went to a bar. I felt both nervous and lightheaded. A handsome boy sat beside me and asked if I was alone.
"One person?" he said with a grin.
I almost walked away, dizzy, but then I tripped and clutched his arm. He steadied us both. Ellis introduced him as Pascal Scott.
"Just a friend," I told him when he helped me into the dim rest room.
Then Dimitri barged in with his voice like winter.
"What are you doing?"
"It was an accident," Pascal said politely.
"He is my guardian," I told Pascal quickly, smoothing my hair. "He's worried."
Dimitri's calm face tightened. He cleared the club. Later, in his car, he took my cigarette away and said, "Are you punishing me?"
"No," I said. Maybe I was. "You can't control my life."
He was stunned into silence, winded. "I have responsibilities—"
"I have my own life," I said, and when I stepped away from him at the elevator I felt a strange bright light inside me. I was free and empty all at once.
I rented a small place near campus. I signed up for the outdoor club because Ellis told me I needed fresh air. I didn't expect to meet Pascal again.
But Pascal was in my university too, and he was exactly as I had first seen him—warm and bright.
"Come to our next climb," he said. "I'll show you the ropes."
He showed me how to put on gear. He made me laugh. He wrapped a jacket around my shoulders when the wind sharpened on the ridge. After one climb we lay on the grass and watched the sky.
"Anna," he said softly, "do you ever think about how lucky we are to have days like this?"
I should have thought of Dimitri's measured face. Instead I felt my chest quicken like a child's first frightened laugh. I looked at Pascal and something opened.
Someone called my name. Dimitri stood across the slope, watching us. I turned and said, "Hello, Uncle."
"You're out with him?" he asked, his look steady.
"Club activity. He's my senior."
Dimitri's face moved like a drawn curtain. He left without words. Pascal squeezed my hand and smiled, but I knew the evening had shifted.
We stayed in touch. Pascal was careful and present. One night at a mountain resort, when my leg hurt from the climb, he tended my wound with gentle, nervous hands. He checked the dressing, sat too close and seemed unable to stop his smile.
"Why are you like this?" I asked him once. "So kind."
He lowered his eyes. "Because I like you."
He took me for drives. He joked about nothing. He was slow, not flashy. He was like a steady lamp.
He saved me later in a way I couldn't have imagined.
During the school's anniversary I was on the stage group. A heavy chandelier came loose. For a split second the world brightness narrowed to steel.
I felt the air compress and knew the chandelier would hit the floor where I had been standing.
Pascal shoved me hard and took the brunt of the blow. He hit the floor hard, and blood darkened his shirt near the shoulder.
"Pascal!" I screamed.
He sat up and smiled weakly. "I'm okay. You're more important."
The whole place rushed around us—students shouting, hands grabbing phones, someone calling 120. I could only see Pascal's face.
"You're an idiot," I told him between tears. "A big idiot."
He laughed and squeezed my hand with the good one.
After that, he came to the hospital and we made an unspoken contract to be there for each other. My feelings changed slowly, like a river wearing a stone.
Then Victoria Church sought me out in a café with a soft look. "Dimitri removed your pictures from his house," she said. "He's upset. He fired his secretary because of rumors she told. If it's not serious, he's having a birthday next week. Will you come?"
I did come. I wore a dress and walked into a house that had once been my home, and I felt hemmed in by an absence—the photos on the wall were gone, places where our memories had hung now blank.
Pascal was there. "My father works with him," Pascal said, shrugging. He held my hand as a waiter almost tripped and knocked me towards the pool. He caught me in his arms, steady and warm.
Dimitri watched us. His face was thin with something. Later he pulled me into the basement.
"You left," he said. "You don't love him, do you?"
"Uncle," I said, the word sharp at the edges now.
"I don't want to be your uncle," he said, voice rough. "I want to be with you."
He was intoxicated, and his hand was cut and sticky with blood. He had moved the photos into the cellar. "I can't burn them," he said. "I can't let go."
He said he loved me, and the words sounded raw and true. I could see how much he had built his life around me. I could almost forgive the years of quiet control if only we'd found this truth earlier.
But it was too late. I had learned to breathe without him, and my heart had changed. "I don't love you like that anymore," I said. "Time moved on."
He stumbled out of the cellar alone. I went upstairs and found Pascal waiting by the car. He gave me a smile that was half relief, half hope. The stars seemed to thin the air between us, and one night on a hill he asked me to be with him, and I said yes.
Time moved forward. I lived my life with Pascal. He was steady. He brought me strawberry cake and smiled as if it were a treasure.
And then the thing I always feared crawled back—Dimitri's control. He sealed the villa. He moved out. He visited sometimes in the deep hours. People complained that he was distant. Victoria said he still helped her career; she couldn't help saying, "He's a complicated man, but he tries."
I thought that would be the end. I thought people heal and move on and that was the fair finish. But a storywrap never goes how we expect.
It happened at a company gala a year later. Dimitri's firm held a big anniversary dinner at a glass building that glittered like a jewel. The room was full of clients, partners, reporters. I had been invited out of courtesy; Pascal stayed close by.
When I walked in, I felt a current of cold attention sweep past. Words fluttered like banners—"Dimitri Price, the perfectionist"—and everyone nodded. He stood at the head table, the center of the room, smiling with that practiced ease.
I knew him too well to expect him to be honest. But this night, I had decided on a truth of my own.
"Anna?" someone whispered behind me. It was Janet Colombo, a former assistant who had been dismissed. She looked nervous and steady. "Can I talk to you?"
"Now?" I asked. "Here?"
She nodded. "We need people to hear this."
My hand was clammy around my clutch. My throat was a dry fruit. But I heard my own voice say, "Let's do it."
We walked to the stage when the program paused. The lights dimmed, but not so much that a liar could hide. Dimitri stood there, the picture of composure. "Tonight we celebrate," he started, voice smooth as glass.
I stepped up onto the platform without planning, and the murmur in the room folded into a hush.
"Excuse me," I said. "Everyone, please." My voice shook but did not break. "I have something to say."
Dimitri's eyebrows rose like a curtain. He looked at me calmly. "Anna?"
"Yes." I looked at him and then at the crowd. "When I was a child, he took me in. He took care of me. He did at that time what a kind man should have done. But kindness can be used like a leash."
A few heads turned. Pascal squeezed my hand and nodded.
Janet stepped forward. "He fired me for telling the truth," she said. "He told me not to speak. He told me I was replaceable."
There was a ripple. Someone in the crowd shifted and began to whisper. I felt the hush lift into a hush of questions.
"Dimitri," I said, holding his look, "you told people we were family, but you also used that title like a shield. You told others not to challenge you. You destroyed photos and cut people out because they were inconvenient. You controlled who could stand next to me. You called my life convenient and mine."
He didn't answer. The audience watched him like they watched an animal in a small cage, waiting for its first move.
"You were cold," Janet said. "You were cruel to me in private. You..." Her voice broke. "He blacklisted me when I spoke up."
A journalist at the back clicked his recorder on. A woman raised her phone. Cameras tilted. The air tasted like metal.
Dimitri's face moved in a tiny storm. At first he was still, then a tightness pulled at his jaw. "This is untrue," he said. The words were clipped, practiced.
"Is it?" Janet asked. "Do you deny that you told me to remove Anna's pictures? Do you deny you told me I must erase people who made you uncomfortable?"
He swallowed. For the first time I saw the lines at the corner of his eyes sharpen into fear. "You are spreading lies," he said. "You were fired for misconduct."
"I have messages," Janet said, holding up a piece of paper. "I have emails. I have witnesses."
Another murmur went through the room like wind through thin branches. Someone took a photo. Someone whispered, "Power can hide for a time."
Dimitri's smile faltered. He stepped forward and spoke through a voice that tried to be iron: "Janet, these are private matters. Anna, why do you bring this to a celebration?"
"It is not a celebration if the truth sits unspoken," I replied. "We celebrate money and lines on a graph while people's lives get trimmed at the edges. Tonight I want the people here to know what you do in private. I want them to choose whether they will still praise you after they hear."
He shifted, and the room leaned in as if gravity had a sound. People had phones out; a cluster of reporters rose like small birds. The CEO beside him did not move. A partner swallowed.
Dimitri's face changed color—first pale, then hot, then dazed. He made a fist in the air and then let it fall. "This is outrageous," he said, trying the anger that had always hidden under his calm. "How dare you—"
"How dare you," Janet answered, voice steady now. "How dare you make someone feel small for loving you and then punish them for it. How dare you decide who gets to remember the past."
The crowd began to shift. A few people stood and murmured. "Is there evidence?" someone asked.
Janet handed printed emails and a photo of the cellar with the boxes of my pictures. A low, incredulous murmur spread like water. A reporter moved forward and asked a pointed question: "Dimitri, did you order the removal of Anna's photos? Did you fire an assistant for speaking up?"
He hesitated. For once, the calm was gone. His eyes darted. I had never seen him so plainly scrambled.
"No," he said. "I—"
"I did not," he tried, and the word came out thin.
Phones recorded. A senior client looked across the table and frowned. "We invest in leadership," she said quietly, loud enough. "We need integrity."
"Are we to stand with a man who pushes people aside?" someone asked.
Dimitri's shoulders collapsed. His mouth moved like a man learning a new language. First incredulous, then denial, then outrage, then the small collapse of someone watching his life slip away. "This is slander," he said. "You don't understand—"
"But we do," said Pascal in a voice that was steadier than it had any right to be. "We've seen how he can be. This isn't new."
That sound—Pascal's declaration—was a small, clean crack. People around us clicked their phones, sending the live video into the world. The room watched as Dimitri's careful empire of manners lost its polish.
"Forgive me," he whispered once, and it sounded like a child.
For the first time there were faces that did not know him looking at him with disappointment. Former partners who had smiled now exchanged glances. A woman touched her friend's arm and said, "We can't be part of this."
A man who had been a sponsor stood up and said, "We must reconsider our partnership." His voice was not loud. It was simply firm.
Dimitri's face gave way to something raw. I watched his expression go from practiced calm to pale anger, to defense, to denial, to a small, panic-stricken pleading. He reached out to me. "Anna, please," he said, voice breaking. "This is not what it seems."
"This is exactly what it is," I said. "I loved you, and you loved control. Tonight we choose."
People around him frowned. A young woman in a sparkling dress leaned close to her friend and whispered about the photos, about the cellar, about the emails. The reporters kept recording. A man took a picture of Dimitri's empty smile and uploaded it. He became the subject of gossip at that moment—the very thing he had always avoided.
He tried to gather himself. "This is slander," he said again, but no one rushed to his defense. He was stranded by honesty. The partners who had once praised his perfection now looked like judges at a contest he had failed.
Someone applauded slowly, and then others joined. It was not the applause of praise. It was the applause of release, of acknowledgment that the veneer had cracked.
Dimitri's hand went to his face and his voice dissolved into gasps. He looked around for an ally and found none. He tried to stand tall, but his shoulders curled inward. He walked away from the head table as the room made space.
The punishment was not violent. It was public. It was sustained. It stretched like a cold wind over him. People who had admired him kept their distance. Colleagues whispered and shifted budgets. A contract was quietly pulled. The crowd watched him go, and no one followed.
He left the event small and alone. Phones buzzed with the live feed. By morning, the story was everywhere. He called me later in the night, his voice ragged.
"Anna, why did you—"
"Because people deserve the truth," I said.
"Don't you feel pity?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "For both of us. You could have said the truth before. You didn't."
He apologized and apologized, and I listened. He had fallen from the top because he had tried to shape people into the forms he preferred. He had made himself the arbiter of memory and now the world disagreed.
Later, Victoria called me. "He has not been easy," she said. "But I appreciate what you did. He needed a mirror."
People changed their tone with him. Some were sympathetic. Some were not. He became smaller in public talk. He was no longer untouchable.
What happened to him was a punishment by exposure. He lost standing, and worse for him—he lost the image of control. He tried to rebuild, but the foundation had shifted.
Pascal squeezed my hand on the way home that night. "You did what you thought was right," he said.
"I did what was true," I answered. "I can't let someone hide what they do."
After that, life smoothed. People around us rearranged. Pascal and I continued to have quiet dinners and bad jokes. We climbed hills and argued about small things and made up. He kissed me the morning after we decided we'd be together, and it felt like a home.
Dimitri retreated. He sold the villa eventually, or at least kept it empty. Sometimes I would pass by and see a light at night and imagine him there with old photos. Once I stopped and said hello. He looked older. "Don't you miss me?" he asked.
"I miss the man who let me be," I said. "Not the man who tried to shape me."
He looked at me without the tilt of ease that had been his trademark. "I am sorry, Anna," he said.
"I know," I said.
We were both changed people. I learned to forgive without forgetting. I learned to hold my life and let it breathe. I learned that love could be fierce and kind at once. I learned that someone who tries to own you will be owned by their need.
In the end, the island of pictures in his cellar became the symbol of what he'd lost. People whispered that he had intended to destroy them but could not. That was not important. What was important was that the truth had come out.
Pascal opened the car door for me. "I found a new restaurant," he said with a grin.
"Let's go," I said.
We drove away. Through the villa's large glass I saw Dimitri's shadow at the window for a moment, then it was gone.
This story is not the simple, tidy ending you might expect. It's the messy, honest shape of a life that learned to walk on its own.
The End
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