Page 183 of Merciless Daddy

I could not speak.

“You have to let me be safe without standing next to me,” he said. “Just once.”

Tonio looked away. Pietro went still at the window.

Sal said nothing.

He did not need to. This was not his moment to manage.

My little brother reached for my hand.

“I’m going with Tonio,” he said. “To the Caruso ranch. We talked about it already as a contigenct plan. It has walls and guards and apparently too much food.”

“Never too much food,” Tonio said solemnly.

Kiryl almost smiled.

“And you,” he said to me, squeezing my fingers, “are going with Sal.”

“Where?”

Sal’s expression shifted. Not quite a smile. Something gentler.

“Somewhere warm,” he said. “You’ve suffered enough in other people’s winters.”

Idid not cry when Kiryl left. I waited until the SUV disappeared beyond the trees, because he deserved to look back once and see me standing upright.

Tonio, who was moving in a separate vehicle, had hugged me hard enough to crack something if I had been built less stubbornly.

“I’ll feed him,” he promised.

“You will not let him leave the property.”

“He is almost a man, he said. You should trust him to look after himself. Too much coddling will make him weak.”

“Tonio. I know you’re right but I . . . my father’s hardness ruined my other brothers. I don’t want Kiryl ruined, too.”

His grin faded. He kissed my forehead.

“I have him,” he said.

Kiryl had held me last.

“Try to enjoy wherever you go,” he whispered. “Think of it as a vacation.”

“Huh. A vacation. I don’t think I’ve ever had one.”

“No time like the present, sis.”

Then he got into the SUV.

Sal and I left forty minutes later. We headed to a small, private airfield. An aircraft waited for us, with no logos. There were no visible staff beyond the pilot and a woman who checked our documents without meeting my eyes. Sal became someone else in the paperwork. So did I.

Sal sat beside me in the dark cabin while the plane rose through cloud.

“So. Where are we going?” I asked.

“Sleep.”