Page 131 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

“Useful quality.”

“Not when he goes quiet at me.”

My father watches me the way he used to watch auction rooms, waiting for the real bid to reveal itself beneath the theater. “And does he?”

“Go quiet at me?” I look away first because I need him to believe I cannot hold his gaze. “Constantly.”

It’s not even a lie. Aleksander goes quiet when he is angry, when he is thinking. He goes quiet when he wants me so badly that his restraint becomes its own kind of touch. My father doesn’t know any of that. He hears only what he wants to hear. Distance. Frustration. A wife outside the door.

“Because of you?” he asks.

I let my laugh come out short and bitter. “Not everything is about me.”

“No,” he says. “Not everything.”

A door opened carefully enough to look accidental.

“He hates you,” I say.

“Did he say that?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know?”

I let my eyes drop to my hand on the chair arm, as if the answer embarrasses me. “Because when someone says your name, the whole room goes quiet around him.” He waits for the reaction he paid for. “He doesn’t have to say it. Men like Aleksander don’t.”

His gaze sharpens with interest. He enjoys danger when he believes it still has manners.

“You told him.”

Not a question.

I let my eyes move to the window. “Of course I told him.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“What did Sokolov say when you showed him the photograph?”

Not my son first. Not my grief.

Aleksander.

What does Aleksander know? What does Aleksander feel? What will Aleksander do?

“He said very little.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have. Aleksander goes quiet when he’s angry.”

“He was angry?”

“Yes.”

“How angry?”