Page 123 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

I stare at the door.

“He called her Mama,” I say.

“Yes.”

My throat burns. “He should.”

Aleksander is silent.

“He should,” I repeat, as if saying it again will make me less selfish. “She raised him. He was scared about a folder, and he called for her because she is the person who fixes things. That’s good.”

“Yes.”

The door opens again. Anna comes out first, then Ivan, holding a folder this time, triumphant. They cross toward the faculty lot, not the pickup line. He throws his backpack into the back seat with the careless confidence of a child who has done this every day.

Then he gets in.

The door closes.

Anna pauses before getting into the driver’s seat. She looks toward the school, checking something, maybe a friend, maybe habit. For a second, her face is turned in our direction.

She doesn’t see me. Of course she doesn’t see me.

She gets into the car. The engine starts. The car pulls out slowly, joins the line of traffic, and turns at the corner.

Gone.

The whole thing took less than ten minutes.

I have lived and died in less than ten minutes.

Aleksander pays the bill. One moment the cup is in front of me, untouched. The next, we are walking away from the café, my hand inside his arm because apparently I put it there, or he offered, or something happened between standing and moving that my mind didn’t keep.

No one stops us.

No one screams.

No one knows that the world has ended and continued anyway.

For several minutes in the car, I say nothing. The town passes in fragments. Brick storefronts. Bare trees. A church with a white steeple. It all looks ordinary enough to be cruel.

Aleksander says something to the driver in Russian. The car turns onto a smaller road.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“Somewhere empty.”

I should find out more. I don’t have the strength.

He takes me to a turnout near a frozen pond, half screened from the road by trees and winter brush. The air is colder here, damp with thawing earth and old leaves. The pond is gray at the edges, ice broken in places where dark water shows through. There’s no one around. No parents. No children. No Anna. No boy with dark hair and gray eyes.

I walk a few steps away from the car and stop.

Aleksander stays behind me. Close enough to catch me. Not close enough to make me feel held in place.

“He’s real,” I say. “Not a photograph. Not a story my father controls.”

My face is wet. I wipe it with my fingers, angry at the evidence.