I check the rearview mirror. Hannah sits still in the back seat, wide eyes fixed on the passing streetlights. Silent. I’ve watched her for four years through a pane of glass—always chattering, always animated, always making Lauren laugh with whatever was happening in that busy little mind of hers. Evenplaying alone with her dolls, she narrated entire worlds to herself.
Now she won’t even make a sound.
Because of me.
I tighten my grip on the wheel. She was terrified back there, and no matter how necessary it was, I’m the one who brought that fear into her life. Into both their lives.
Blyad!
Aslanov will pay for this. Every fucking piece of it.
“You’re supposed to be dead.” Lauren’s voice is still barely audible. I’m not sure she’s even speaking to me.
I nod.
Silence stretches between us, heavy with everything neither of us knows how to say yet.
“We need to get you off the grid,” I tell her. “Both of you.”
She turns to look at me slowly, something shifting in her expression. When she speaks, she keeps her voice low—conscious of Hannah listening—but the restraint only makes the emotion in it more raw. “You can’t do this. You can’t just appear out of nowhere after four years and tell us what to do. Hannah and I have built a life, just the two of us. A real one. A safe one."
Just the two of us.
The words land like a fist to the sternum.
I look in the rearview mirror again. Hannah has gone pale, her eyes moving between her mother and the stranger driving the car. She has no idea who I am. Doesn’t know that the man she’s been told is dead has been fifty feet away for most of her life, watching her take her first steps through a window.
She has Lauren’s jaw. Lauren’s brunette hair. But her eyes—those are mine. Deep blue and watchful, filled right now with a fear that I caused.
“Aslanov will find you if you stay,” I say, keeping my voice low. “He’s going to use you to get to me. Once he’s dealt with,you can come back to Atlanta, go back to the life you’ve built. I promise. But right now, I need you to trust me enough to get you somewhere safe.”
“Mommy?” Hannah’s small voice cuts through the tension.
Lauren turns immediately, reaching back to rest a hand on Hannah’s knee. “We’re going somewhere safe, baby. It’s okay.”
Hannah stares at her mother for a long moment, then her eyes drift back to me. Uncertain. Frightened. Her bottom lip trembles before she manages to still it.
She’s brave. Even at four years old, she’s trying not to cry. She gets that from her mother.
“How long will we be driving?” Lauren asks, turning back to me. “She’s four. She should be in bed.”
“Not long,” I tell her. It’s true. The safehouse isn’t far.
Lauren exhales slowly and reclines into the seat. I recognize the crash—adrenaline wearing off, the body forcing itself toward something resembling calm. She’s still processing. She has always been like this: all fire in the moment, then quiet when reality settles in.
Tomorrow, when Hannah is safe and the shock has faded, she’ll have a thousand questions I won’t know how to answer.
“I know I'm asking a lot,” I say. “But I need you to trust me.”
She lets out a short, humorless breath. “Trust you.” She shakes her head, staring straight ahead. “After four years of thinking you were dead. After grieving you. After—” She stops herself, jaw tightening. She glances back at Hannah. When she continues, her voice is quieter, but no less weighted. “After raising our daughter to believe her father was gone.”
Blyad.
There it is. The full weight of it.
I have no answer for that. Not yet. So, I push forward.
“We’ll need to pull Hannah from preschool temporarily. You’ll need to take leave from work.”
