Of course he did.
I ran a finger along the edge of the file in front of me. “Mikhail’s contact—what exactly does he do?”
“He keeps people in line.”
Friends of Mikhail’s weren’t known for their soft touch. They were the kind of men you called when things needed to be dealt with quietly and permanently. And “keeping people in line” was just a polite way of saying they didn’t leave loose ends.
“Seems a little extreme, don’t you think?”
“She complicates things. Her involvement with the Callahans puts her in their circle, and that puts her in mine. She’s unpredictable, emotional, and desperate. You know what that means.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. Max was right. But still.
“So you use her sick mother against her?”
Max’s jaw tightened slightly. “I do what I have to do to keep my family safe.”
Family. Of course he’d play that card. And maybe he was right. Hell, I’d made the same kind of choices plenty of times before. Justifications came easy when you believed you were doing things for the right reasons.
But watching Max now, hearing the casual way he justified using Valentina’s weakest spot against her, made something twist uncomfortably in my chest.
“You think this is easy for me? You think I enjoy holding her life together while she tears it apart? She has one job,” Max continued. “One. To stay sober, keep her head down, and let me fix the mess her husband left behind. But instead, she fights me at every turn. If it were anyone else, I would’ve walked away a long time ago.”
“Any why haven’t you?”
“Because she’s family in a way.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. “And she doesn’t have anyone else.”
I nodded slowly. “Good luck with that,” I muttered, more to myself than to him.
Max didn’t respond, and I didn’t press. He had his plan, and I wasn’t in the business of changing his mind.
As I left the office, the thought lingered.
Valentina didn’t have anyone else.
That much was obvious. She burned through people the way she burned through everything else: fast and without thinking about the mess she left behind.
The Callahans, Max, and possibly her own family—she pushed them all to their limits, daring them to stick around long enough to regret it. But maybe that was the point. Maybe shewanted them to leave. Maybe she wanted to prove to herself she really was as alone as she thought.
Some people burned bright, and some people just burned.
CHAPTER 11
VALENTINA
The day my babysitter moved in, I seriously considered packing my bags and leaving him the apartment.
His name was Aleksander.
He told me to call him Sasha.
I told him to get out.
He didn’t. I was stuck with him. It was like he’d moved in with the sole purpose of reminding me how much Ididn’twant a roommate.
There were man things everywhere. Beard hairs scattered around my sink like tiny black confetti, boot scuffs all over the floors I’d just cleaned, and a ridiculous mountain of protein-powder containers stacked on top of my fridge. Who needed that much protein? How big did one person need to be?
And he had opinions—too many of them. About everything. My brand of coffee, even the rom-coms I left running in the background because the silence was too loud. Every morning was a passive-aggressive debate about something ridiculous, like whether almond milk belonged in coffee or if cereal qualified as an actual dinner. (It did, by the way, and his judgmental eyebrows could go straight to hell.)
