Page 172 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

Anna brushes her knuckles once along his sleeve. “You don’t have to be fine, baby.”

He keeps his eyes on the drawing. “Can we go home now?”

Every adult at the table understands the question too quickly.

Anna inhales slowly. “Not today.”

His pencil stops moving.

“Tomorrow? I have a playdate at Adam’s house tomorrow.”

“We don’t know yet.”

Ivan looks up then, too fast. “Why?”

Anna takes too long to answer, and Ivan notices. I see the instinct in her—the need to make it smaller, softer, survivable. I understand it so completely that it hurts.

“Because the woman at school should not have been there,” Anna says carefully. “And until we know who sent her and who else knows where we live, we’re staying somewhere safe.”

Ivan glances around the dining room like he is trying to decide whether this apartment counts as safe or just strange.

“With them?”

The word is for Anna. It still finds me.

“For now,” Anna says. “I’m staying with you. The whole time.”

He checks Aleksander near the edge of the room, then the hallway where the men are no longer visible because Aleksander moved them after Ivan asked.

“Are the men still here?”

“Yes,” Anna says.

Ivan’s shoulders rise. But Aleksander answers before fear can make itself larger. “They’re farther from the door now.”

Ivan looks at him. Aleksander doesn’t move closer. “You won’t have to see them unless you want to.”

“I don’t.”

“Then you won’t.”

Ivan studies him for a moment, trying to decide whether adults in black suits can be believed when they say reasonable things.

Then his gaze shifts back to his mother.

“Do I have to talk to her?”

Her.

Not cruel. Not even rude.

Just accurate.

I wrap my hand around the back of the chair until the wood edge presses into my palm.

“No,” I say. “You don’t have to talk to me.”

He blinks, as if that was not the answer he expected.