My heart cracks wide open. My mother, who has been silent and suffering for as long as I can remember, has finally done something for herself. And she called me.
"I'll come. I'll be right there."
"Please, just you. I don’t want anyone you know to see me like this." Her voice drops to a whisper, urgent and trembling. “Comebefore your father tracks me down. I thought maybe I could stay with you? I have nowhere else to go.”
The desperation in her voice guts me. My mother has never asked anyone for anything, least of all me. The fact that she's asking now tells me she's reached a breaking point I always feared would come but never knew how to prepare for.
She needs me. After everything, after the silence and the distance and the months of wondering whether she even noticed I was gone, my mother needs me.
"I'll be there in twenty minutes."
Luna is already shaking her head before I hang up. "No. Ilona, no. Think about this for a second."
"My mother left my father." The words taste like hope, fragile and sharp-edged and dangerous. "She's alone and terrified and she needs help. I’m all she has. How can I ignore that?"
"I'm not asking you to ignore it." Luna rises from the couch and plants herself between me and the door, her small frame vibrating with protective fury that makes her look six feet tall despite barely reaching my chin. "I'm asking you to be smart about it. Take Jasper and Shayne. Let Them wait in the parking lot. Your mother won't even know he's there."
I hesitate, the refusal already forming on my tongue, but the look on Luna's face stops me. She's not going to budge on this one, and the truth is having both men in the parking lot is a compromise I can live with. My mother said come alone. She didn't say anything about the parking lot. And I would feel better with Jasper there.
"You’re right. Jasper and Shayne can wait in the car outside the restaurant, if that’s okay with him. Better safe than sorry."
Luna nods, the tension in her shoulders easing by a fraction. "Done. I'll brief them."
"One more thing." I reach for her hand and squeeze. "Can she stay here? My mother. If she really has left him, she has nowhere to go. Just for a while, until we figure things out."
Luna's expression softens, the protective fury melting into the warmth that lives at the core of everything she is. "This house has sheltered you twice now. Your mother is welcome here for as long as she needs. No questions asked."
The relief that floods through me loosens something that has been wound tight in my chest since the phone call. "Thank you."
"Stop thanking me and start being careful." Luna searches my face for a long moment, and what she finds there makes her jaw tighten with worry she's trying not to show, but failing.
“It will all be okay. I’m starting to understand that sometimes the children have to help the parent.”
As someone whose own past makes her understand all too well, Luna only nods.
My legs feel unsteady as I push myself off the couch, the cushions releasing me with a soft exhale of fabric, and I press one hand against the armrest to steady myself before straightening.
"Turn on location sharing, too." She pulls out her phone, her fingers moving with urgent precision. "Let me see where you are. If anything feels wrong, if your gut so much as whispers that something's off, you call me. You text me. You send me a blankmessage and Jasper, Voss, and Shayne will be through the door in a blink."
I take her phone and enable the sharing, watching the small blue dot appear on her screen that represents everything I am and everything I'm carrying. "Thank you."
Luna pulls me into a hug that lasts three heartbeats longer than it should, her face pressed against my shoulder, her fingers gripping the back of my blouse with a fierceness that tells me she's terrified and trying not to show it.
"Be careful." Her voice is muffled against my collar. "Please, Ilona. Be careful."
I press a kiss to her temple, breathe in the lavender and paint and loyalty that define the best friend I've ever had, and walk out the door into the October evening.
I spot two black sedans idling at the curb outside Luna’s house.
Luca's guards.
I should feel something about his protection trailing, but the anger that burned so hot an hour ago has banked into something colder and quieter. There’s a numbness that frosts the ends of my nerve endings and keeps the pain at a manageable distance.
For now.
Whatever. Let them follow. I don't care about his men or his surveillance or his pathological need to control everything within his reach. My mother is waiting for me, and for the first time in months, I'm making a choice that belongs entirely to me.
The drive takes fifteen minutes through evening traffic that crawls along State Street in a river of brake lights and exhaustfumes. My hands rest on my belly, fingers spread wide over the place where my daughter grows. With every red light, my brain goes into overdrive considering if this move is brave or reckless. The line between the two has never felt thinner. My reflection ghosts across the car window, pale and determined, superimposed over a city that has never felt less like home.
