“Don’t be. I needed to hear it. Even if I didn’t hear it at the time.”
She kisses me, a chaste thing. “Pho, please.”
“On it.”
I watch as she makes it up the stairs, then text who I need to text. The pho shop that delivers. Igor. A handful of captains.
When the soup shows up, it is tested before I will allow Molly to eat. It’s not poisoned, which means either Fedor isn’t watching our orders, or he wants us to feel comfortable, or he couldn’t get to the soup in time.
Molly comes down the stairs looking far more relaxed. She sees the soup and all the components scattered on the dining table. “Perfect.”
“Sit with me.”
She smiles, and we dine on the spread, talking about nothing for a while. It’s nice and cozy, and I don’t tell her it could be the last meal we ever have together.
She’s halfway through when she yawns hard. “Oh, I think the babies are telling me it’s bedtime.”
I tuck her in and kiss her forehead as I pull up the quilt. “Dream well, my love.” I turn out the light.
But she grabs my hand before I can turn to leave. “Where are you going?”
“Business. Nothing to worry about. The usual.” I shrug, playing off the lie.
“The usual? So, urgent, too much, and probably expensive?”
I chuckle. “Yeah.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“What?”
She squeezes my hand. “You killed people today. You don’t have to bear the weight of that alone. You don’t have to run away fromme. Let me be here for you.” She yawns again, but her grip is strong.
My wife breaks my heart regularly. This is one of those times.
I kiss the back of her hand. “My love, I’m not running away because of any of that. I will deal with those thoughts later. But for now, paperwork. It waits for no one.”
“Oh. Okay. If you change your mind, you know where I am.” With that, she releases my hand and snuggles into the blankets.
It’s tempting to stay with her. It’s the only thing I ever want to do.
But tonight is not about what I want to do. It is about what I must do.
With one more kiss to her forehead, I close the bedroom door quietly and signal the guards in the hallway. “Inside that room is the only treasure that matters. You will guard this door with your lives. That is not hyperbole. It is fact. She will survive this night, come what may. Am I understood?”
They exchange a slightly confused look. “Boss, that’s the job. Something up?”
“Yes. Me.” I march down the hall and gather a selection of my men in one of my soundproofed rooms in the lower level of the mansion. Igor has made the arrangements—the long table, maps, burner phones, the works. There are fourteen of them, plus Igor, plus Dmitri and Sasha, who have been with me long enough to have earned the places they stand in.
These are men who have been with me through years of this life, who have stood at perimeters and driven cars and handled the thousand unglamorous necessities of keeping this operationfunctional. They are men who have, in many cases, been with me longer than anything else in my life has lasted.
I once heard another pakhan refer to men like them as “career goons.” I wanted to smack him across the face for the lack of respect, but he was older than me and showing me the ropes. Today, I would smack him.
They are here because they choose to be here with me, and I choose them. That’s the difference I have always known between my men and Fedor’s, and I have never felt it more clearly than I feel it tonight. They are the closest thing I will ever have to brothers.
Tonight, they are brothers-in-arms.
“Fedor Vinogradov tried to take my wife this morning,” I say. I do not raise my voice. I do not need to—the room is quiet with the attention of people who are already with me, who were with me before I said a word. “He did this after attacking her and Vet. After he murdered Vladimir and left his body in my courtyard. He did this because he believes I can be broken. That we can be broken.” I look at the faces around the table, one by one.
