Page 155 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

Aleksander tips his chin toward the street.

“Go.”

Kornelya tightens her grip on her purse and walks away fast, heels slipping once on the wet pavement before she catches herself and keeps moving.

Ivan starts to cry, and Anna drops to her knees on the wet sidewalk. He launches himself at her so hard they nearly go backward together.

“Mama!”

“I’m here.” Anna wraps both arms around him, one hand cradling the back of his head, the other clamped across his shoulders. “I’m here, baby. I’ve got you.”

Ivan buries his face in her coat. His folder falls to the sidewalk, papers coming loose, a sheet slipping toward the gutter.

I take one step forward and pick up the painting before the wind can drag it into the slush. I hold it by its dry edge, careful with a thing my son made before I have earned the right to touch him.

Ivan lifts his head.

He doesn’t know my face. He doesn’t know my hands. He doesn’t know the scar inside me where he has lived for eight years. He only sees another stranger.

His arms tighten around Anna’s neck. “Who is she?”

The question is fair. That makes it worse.

I smooth the bent corner of the drawing with my thumb, careful not to touch the wet edge. It’s a house. A peaked roof. Too many windows. Trees crowding one side. A square room drawn off the back, larger than the others.

“You dropped this.”

I hold it out to Anna, not to him.

Ivan looks at the drawing, then at me. His face is blotchy from crying, his lashes wet.

“It’s not done,” he says.

I have eight years of words. I choose two.

“It’s good,” I tell him softly.

The words I don’t say fill my throat all the way up.

Anna takes the painting from me before I can say anything else. There is nothing soft in her expression.

Good.

If she looked at me gently, I might hate her.

The school staff in the doorway fumbles for her phone. One of Aleksander’s people steps beside her, voice low but firm.

“The child is with his guardian. There was a falsified pickup authorization. Bring the other children away from this entrance, lock the door, and get your administrator.”

The staff member pales.

The porter looks at Anna. “Mrs. Morozov?”

“I’m leaving with my son,” Anna says. “Call the head of school. Tell them no one releases Ivan to anyone but me.”

The porter nods once and pulls the door wider. “Let’s go inside,” he calls over his shoulder. The door closes behind them, the lock catching with a heavy click.

My father made that necessary.