Sergei's expression freezes. "What surprise party?"
"The one you've been calling Andrei about every night after you think I'm asleep." She grins, unrepentant. "The one with the cake and the fireworks and the?—"
"Mila."
"What? You said I can't keep secrets. I'm just proving it."
I should be annoyed. Should care that whatever plans Sergei's been making are now ruined. But instead I'm laughing—real laughing, the kind that loosens something that's been locked since I walked into that courtroom this morning.
"You're a menace," I tell her.
"I know." She steals a bite of my mint chip. "But I'm your menace. That's what families are. Menaces that belong to each other."
"Who taught you that?"
"Nobody. I figured it out." She shrugs. "We're weird, right? Our family. Papa used to hurt people for money. You shot a guy at a party. Grandma's in prison. But we're still... us. Still together. Still getting ice cream on a Tuesday when you should be at work and Papa should be whatever Papa does. That's what menaces do. They stick."
Sergei catches my eye across the table. His expression is soft in a way that used to scare me, back when I thought soft meant weak.
Now I know better.
Soft is a choice. Soft is the hardest thing you can be when you've learned to survive through sharp.
"We stick," I agree.
"Forever?"
"Forever, sweetheart."
"Good." She finishes my ice cream—I let her, watching her scrape the cup with the dedication of a forensic examiner. "Now can we go home? I have homework and Papa promised to help me with fractions, and if I don't do them tonight, I'll forget and Mrs. Patterson will give me the face."
"The face?"
"The disappointed face. It's the worst. Worse than yelling." She shudders dramatically. "Come on. I'll race you to the car."
She's gone before I can respond, sprinting toward the door with the energy of someone who hasn't spent twelve months learning what it costs to win.
"She's something else," I murmur.
"She's ours." Sergei stands, offering his hand. "Come on. We have fractions to conquer and a surprise party to re-plan."
"You're really not mad she spoiled it?"
"Mad?" He pulls me up, into his chest, arms wrapping around me in the middle of this sticky-floored ice cream shop. "She saw through an operation I've been running for three weeks. I'mproud. Terrified, but proud."
"Our daughter the spy."
"Our daughter the survivor." He kisses my forehead. "Like her mother."
That night,after fractions and dinner and the elaborate bedtime ritual Mila's developed to delay sleep by maximum minutes, I stand at the window of our penthouse and watch Manhattan pretend to be peaceful.
Lights glitter. Traffic flows. Somewhere out there, my mother's being processed into a prison that will be her home for the next two decades.
Sergei finds me the way he always does—silent approach, warm hands settling on my waist, chin resting on top of my head. We've developed a language of bodies over the past year. Words for the things too heavy to speak.
"It hit yet?" he asks.
"Some of it." I lean back into him. "Not all."
