So I accept the call.
Dad’s face fills the screen stern, tired, and wearing the look of a man juggling twenty things at once. He softens a little when he sees me.
“There’s my lil one. How is Russia treating you?”
Before I can answer, someone off-screen speaks to him. Dad glances upward, distracted, then says casually, “Hold on. A guest just arrived.” His eyes flicker. His expression freezes. “It’s… your husband.”
My heart jumps into my throat. Tyra grabs my arm.
“Why the hell?”
It takes two seconds to piece it together. Two seconds for cold dread to hit: My husband is angry. Gustav is there. At my father’s house. No doubt with a gun… or hatchet.
I hear the metallic click through the phone even before the camera tilts and shows me the tip of a weapon aimed at my father.
“Gustav!” I scream, my crisis instincts kick on. I just have to get through to the man that blocked me. He isn’t like any man I’ve known...
Come on, Peighton, think.
The answer slams down, almost like divine intervention.
I yell:
“Gustav! Turn the phone so I can watch you kill my dad!”
Tyra’s mouth drops open. Dad stares at me like I sprouted horns.
Gustav steps closer.
“What is wrong with you, boy?” Dad growls. “You threaten a fellow boss in his home? You have no honor. You—”
“Honor?” I laugh before Gustav can respond, sharp and wild, leaning into the phone like a lunatic because that is what Gustav understands. “Dad, you handed me over without a fight. Gustav protected me. He killed a rival for me. That is true honor.”
Dad blanches. “So the rumors are true. He broke our code…”
Gustav snarls, “Shut up.”
His hand is steady, but the tension around his eyes is wrong. Conflicted. He’s mad at me. Punishment isn’t supposed to feel like obedience. Killing my father because I ask him to would break one of those unwritten rules in Gustav’s head. His moral compass may be deranged, but it is precise.
It’s my only chance, though. The only way to save my father.
“Do it,” I urge. “I want you to.”
Gustav’s jaw clenches. He lowers the gun.
Good. I reached him. Sorta. Crazy talks to crazy. A dark reverse psychology.
Dad sputters, “Are you out of your mind, boy? You—”
“Dad! No retaliation against my husband,” I snap. “If you want grandchildren someday, you will behave.”
Dad freezes. Gustav looks stunned for a second, as if the concept of future children sliced straight through whatever dark fog he lives in.
I can’t let him think too long.
“Tyra,” I whisper, “knock on my door.”
She hesitates, then knocks loudly out of the frame.
