“So, you’re really going to… take care of someone for him?”
He doesn’t speak and for a second, I think that maybe he won’t. Then he says, “What I do for your father is not up fordiscussion,” he says in a low tone. “Especially not in the middle of a busy diner.”
I nod. I should leave this alone. I suppose if this were a few years back, I might’ve. Under the table, my hand automatically goes back to my stomach again.
“Do you know who it is?” I ask.
He tilts his head slightly, a little bit of amazement in his eyes that I’m still asking questions. “No,” he says.
“Then how do you know?—”
“Is there a reason you’ve decided to ask me about my job, Tati?”
He hasn’t raised his voice, but his tone is firm. I can almost feel the vibration of it in my chest. “I’m curious,” I say. “I mean… how do you do what you do and sleep at night?”
“Ah,” he says with a smirk that’s a little sharper. Somehow, the turn of his mouth looks sinister. “So, you want to know about my moral code. That’s funny.”
I set the fry that I was turning around in my fingers down as my stomach tightens. “I don’t see what’s so funny.”
He sits back in his seat. “It’s funny that you suddenly feel the need to connect with me. You know better than that, Tati. Our relationship is business only.”
A rush of anger flashes through me. “You think I’m hitting on you? Really? God, you are so fucking arrogant.”
“Am I? So, these last couple of weeks, you haven’t been pretending these little outings are dates or whatever you’ve decided they are?”
I stiffen. I hadn’t thought of them as dates. I hadn’t thought that far into it at all. He shakes his head and pushes his cup of coffee to one side.
“You don’t want to know anything more about me than you already do,” he says. “You don’t need to know, Tatiana. It’s better for you this way. Trust me.”
“Because of my father?”
“Because I am Bratva,” he hisses as he leans toward me, “and I am the worst kind there is. I’m a stone-cold, unrepentant killer. It’s the one thing that I’ve done for years and the only thing I do well. Do not get it in your head that I am anything more than that.”
And like a slamming of a door, the conversation is over. I look away from him as my eyes start to sting, down at my plate, still mostly full of food. Suddenly, I don’t have an appetite. “I’m ready to go home,” I tell him without looking at him.
He doesn’t say anything to that. I see him raise his hand to get the waitress’s attention out of the corner of my eye, but I don’t look at him otherwise. I’m too mortified to.
On the way out, he does his job and opens doors for me. And on the way back, we’re both silent once more.
I guess as hurtful as that was, I have my answer. He’s not fit to be a father to this child.
I’m really, truly on my own.
