I'm letting a man I've known for weeks pay for my life. I'm sleeping in his bed. I'm raising my daughter in his family's compound while the Russian mob circles outside and my ex-husband files for custody.
And somehow, impossibly, I feel safer than I have in years.
The credit card burns against my thigh through the fabric of my coat.
Your choice.
Maybe that's the difference. Maybe that's what separates Nico from Jack.
Jack took my choices away and called it love.
Nico gives me choices and calls it nothing at all.
I pull out my phone one more time.
Me: Fine. But I'm buying Lily ice cream first.
Nico: Good. She deserves ice cream.
She deserves ice cream.
I put the phone away before I do something stupid. Like tell him I might be falling for him. Like admit that his direct, blunt honesty is the most romantic thing anyone has ever given me.
"Are we almost there?" Lily asks.
"Almost, baby."
Through the tinted windows, Chicago slides past. Gray buildings, gray sky, gray slush on the sidewalks. But inside this armored SUV, with a gold card in my pocket and ice cream in my future, the world looks a little less colorless.
My mother's apartment building appears ahead.
Time to face a different kind of battle.
Nico
The surveillance footage plays on a loop across three monitors. Empty streets where Russians used to park their black SUVs. Clean sidewalks where their soldiers used to smoke and watch our gates.
Gone. All of them. Three days now.
"They stopped." Pietro leans back in his chair, fingers steepled beneath his chin. "Just like that."
I don't trust just like that. Nothing in our world happens without reason. "Word on the street?"
"That's the interesting part." Pietro swivels toward me, and I catch the calculation in his eyes. The same look our father used to get before making moves that changed everything. "They want an alliance."
My jaw tightens. "Everyone wants an alliance. Doesn't mean we give them one."
"I've been reconsidering."
What?
I push off the wall where I've been leaning and cross to the desk, planting my palms on the polished wood.
"Reconsidering what, exactly?"
Pietro doesn't flinch at my tone. He never does. "We've done a deep dive on the Baganovs. Liam's had people inside for weeks now. Financial records, supply chains, territory disputes." He slides a folder across the desk. "They're cleaner than any other Bratva we've encountered."
I flip through the pages. Bank statements. Shipping manifests. Personnel files with photographs and detailed backgrounds. Liam's work is thorough, as always.
