Page 121 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

A message comes through on his phone. He glances at it, then turns the screen over.

“What?” I ask.

“Routine normal.”

“From Yuri?”

“Yes.”

“Is my father’s car there?”

“No known Kalinin vehicle in the school area.”

“Known,” I repeat.

“Yes.”

He doesn’t soften it.

The first wave of children comes out at three-ten.

I know immediately that my son is not among them, which is absurd because I don’t know what he looks like when he moves. I know only photographs. But my body rejects each child before my mind can catalog them. Too tall. Too small. Hair too light. Wrong walk. Wrong face.

A little boy in a red hat runs to a woman near the gate, and she bends without thinking, arms open before he reaches her. A girl drags a cello case behind her like a body. Two boys shove each other, laughing, until a teacher says something that makes both of them immediately innocent.

I watch all of it with a hunger so sharp, it becomes shame.

Aleksander says nothing.

Then the school doors open again, and Anna Morozov steps out. I know her from the photograph. Navy coat. Dark hair pulled back. Smaller than I expected, though maybe that is distance. She turns to say something to another woman behind her, smiling briefly, tiredly, like a person who has had a long day with other people’s children and still has one child left who belongs to her.

Then a boy comes through the door beside her.

The world narrows until there is only him.

Dark hair, longer at the front, falling into his eyes. Narrow shoulders inside a navy parka. Backpack half zipped, one strap sliding toward his elbow. A folder tucked under his arm, already bent at the corner. He is talking as he walks, animated, head tipped back slightly toward Anna because whatever he is saying matters enough that his whole body has joined the argument.

He looks like Mark. The angle of his jaw. The slope of his brow. The way his hair refuses order. The long, restless limbs. It is Mark Callahan before my father took him from me.

My breath leaves me.

Aleksander doesn’t move, but I feel his attention sharpen beside me.

The boy turns his head.

And there I am too. My body recognizes itself even when my mind is collapsing. The mouth. The set of concentration between his brows. The expression he makes when Anna stops to fix the sliding backpack strap and he looks briefly offended by the interruption.

Mine.

My son.

My living son.

My hand goes to the edge of the table. The metal is cold beneath my fingers.

“That’s him,” I whisper.

“Yes,” Aleksander says.