Page 133 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

I let the reaction come because fighting it would be harder. My fingers press into the wool of my coat until the pain feels useful. “Ivan,” I repeat. My voice breaks exactly enough.

My father doesn’t react.

Of course he doesn’t.

“You have your first piece,” he says calmly.

My first piece. As if my son were a document divided into pages. As if motherhood were a locked room and my father had just slid one key across the floor.

I look up. “I want to see him.”

“No.”

The answer comes too quickly. That means he expected the question.

“I want to see my son.”

“And you will, when it is safe.”

“When it is safe,” I repeat.

“Yes.”

“Safe for whom?”

His expression barely changes. There it is. A small, ugly pause.

“You mean when I’ve earned it,” I say. “When I’ve been useful enough. When you’re certain giving me a glimpse buys you more than keeping me away from him.”

“I mean when you have shown me you understand the consequences of carelessness.”

I almost laugh. The sound would come out wrong, so I swallow it. “You stole him from me.”

“I kept him alive.”

“You let me grieve him.”

“I let you survive.”

For one second, I am back in the old chair. The old life. The old rules. The girl who learned too early that arguing with my father was like bleeding into clean water. The woman who had believed a grave because he gave her no other story. The mother who saw her son yesterday across a street and did not call his name because loving him meant leaving him whole.

My father leans back. “You want to see him. Eventually, perhaps you will. But not because you cry in my office and not because Sokolov decides to drag him out of his life for you.”

“My life,” I say. “He was taken from my life.”

“And placed into one that did not destroy him.”

The calm in his voice makes my stomach turn.

“You don’t get to call what you did mercy.”

“I call it practical. Children need stable homes, Tamara. Not grief. Not impulse. Not men like Mark Callahan making promises they cannot afford.”

“Do not say his name.”

His eyes hold mine. “Then give your Sokolov a child of his own and stop pretending the past can be repaired by tearing open a boy’s life.”

The room goes white at the edges. This is the next piece he wants. Not only my obedience. Not only my ears in Aleksander’s house. A child. Another tie. Another body he can turn into leverage.