Page 147 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

“He’ll be scared,” she says.

“Yes.”

“Of us.”

I don’t answer. There are comforts that are only lies with better manners.

She looks down into the tea. “I spent eight years thinking of him as a baby. Even after I knew he might be alive, I still kept seeing him that way. Small enough to hold. Small enough to know me somehow.”

Her voice stays level. I hate that. I respect it. Both things sit in me badly.

“He won’t know me,” she says.

“No.”

“He may hate me.”

“He may.”

Her eyes cut to mine. “You’re not supposed to agree with every terrible thing I say.”

“I won’t lie to you.”

That lands harder than reassurance would have. I see it in the way her shoulders settle by a fraction, as if truth is heavy but at least shaped correctly.

“I don’t want to become another person who takes something from him,” she says.

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you.”

Her mouth trembles once before she controls it.

There are things I can do. I can intercept a car. Remove a man from a room. Make David Kalinin regret reaching for what he considers a negotiating piece.

I cannot return eight years to her. I cannot make a child recognize a mother he was taught never existed.

“Tomorrow,” I say, “we stop your father from moving him. That is all we decide in advance.”

“And after?”

“After, you look at Ivan. You look at Anna. Then you decide what’s next.”

She turns her hand beneath mine where it rests on the counter. I close my fingers around hers.

“What if the best thing is that he stays with her?”

The question comes quietly. It’s not a request for permission. It’s a test of whether I understand the kind of pain she is trying to survive.

“Then we make that safe,” I say.

Her eyes close.

Yuri appears in the kitchen doorway with his phone in hand.

I straighten. “What?”