Page 132 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

I look back at him. “Angry enough that Igor had to remind him they still need you.”

The words do exactly what I need them to do. My father doesn’t relax. He is too careful for that. But his shoulders ease.

“And did you ask him to help you?” he asks.

I let the silence stretch long enough to look like shame. “Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“That he would.”

My father’s eyes narrow. I lean into the truth before he can decide it is too clean. “Then he told me what everyone keeps telling me. A child is not a table you drag from one room to another because you decide it belongs somewhere else.”

“He refused you.”

“He refused to be stupid,” I snap.

Good. He hears what I need him to hear. A wife wounded by her husband’s limits, not a woman protected by them.

“Does he know where to look?”

“Aleksander does not tell me what he does.” I glance down at my hands, then back up. “He tells me what he decides I can survive.”

My father likes that. I see it before he hides it. He likes the idea of Aleksander managing my knowledge. Even in Sokolov’s hands, I remain contained. Men like my father don’t fear women who are loved. They fear women who are informed.

“Perhaps he is wiser than I gave him credit for,” he says.

“Perhaps.”

“And Yuri?”

“What about him?”

“Has he been asking questions?”

“Yuri asks questions by breathing. I don’t keep inventory.”

“About old names.”

I give him a flat look. “If you want me to be useful, you need to stop speaking in riddles and then look disappointed when I don’t solve them quickly enough.”

That almost amuses him again. Annoyed daughter. Wounded mother. New wife outside the inner room. Useful, but not yet dangerous.

Let him see exactly that.

“I need something from you,” I say.

His face sharpens in the way that tells me he has been waiting for this. Need is his preferred language. “What?”

I force myself to breathe once before answering. “His name.”

He makes me wait long enough to remind me that even this, even a name, exists only because he has decided to release it. “Ivan,” he says finally.

The name passes from his mouth into the room.

Ivan.

Theft dressed as generosity.