Page 160 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

Tamara leans forward. “At the school, when he called you Mama, I wanted to hate you.”

Anna’s breath catches.

“I did hate you,” Tamara says. “For half a second. Then I saw your hand on him, and I knew.”

Anna’s tears fall silently.

“You love him,” Tamara says.

“I do.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t steal him.”

“I know that too.”

Tamara’s voice nearly breaks on the last word, but she holds it steady.

“My father dragged him out of my life. I’m not dragging him out of yours to make the universe feel even.”

Anna covers her mouth as a sob escapes. Tamara reaches for her hand again. This time, Anna lets her hold it.

I look at them and understand, with an irritation that has no useful place to go, that there are limits to what men like me can do in a room like this.

I can secure the building. I can put men at every entrance, watch every car, move money, bury threats, close routes, and make David Kalinin regret touching this child’s life.

I cannot stand between two mothers and the wound he left them.

My phone vibrates in my pocket.

Yuri.

Tamara looks up. She reads my face too well now.

“Go,” she says.

Anna’s grip tightens once around her hand.

I don’t want to leave Tamara in this pain. I also know staying would make me another man deciding where she is safest.

So I nod.

“To answer the practical question,” I tell Anna, keeping my voice low, “you and Ivan stay here tonight. You can call your parents when you’re ready. We have protection on them. Tomorrow, you get your own lawyer, Tamara gets hers, and Ivan gets a child advocate whose only job is Ivan. No one makes permanent decisions tonight.”

Anna watches me over Tamara’s shoulder. “And if I say no?”

“Then you say no with your own lawyer beside you.”

That surprises her.

Good.

“I’ll be in the study.”

She nods, and I leave them there on the white sofa with the empty fireplace wall above them and a sleeping child down the hall bound to both of them now in ways no court will know how to name.

The study door closes behind me, the apartment going too quiet. Quiet enough for the old reflex to open its mouth.