Page 186 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

“Is it alive?”

“No.”

Mikhail sighs behind me. “My gift is better.”

Anna takes the bag from him. “Your gift is under review.”

Ivan grins at him. “Are you coming to my party? I told Adam about you.”

Mikhail ruffles Ivan’s hair and gives me an I-told-you-so look. “I can’t stay today, little man. I’m going to see a potentially haunted house.”

“It’s haunted?”

“No,” Yuri says.

Mikhail smiles. “That’s what the ghosts want him to think.”

Anna gives him a look.

“Happy birthday.” Mikhail grins and hands Ivan a smaller envelope from inside his coat. “This part passed inspection.”

Ivan opens it and finds a gift certificate to the science museum tucked inside.

His face lights. “Really?”

“Really. Take Aleksander. He needs education.”

Aleksander laughs.

Yuri checks his watch. “We need to go. Happy birthday, kid.”

Mikhail steps backward down the porch stairs. “Survive the frosting.”

Anna’s house smells like cake, coffee, and crayons. The entry table is covered in paper plates. Shoes pile beneath the bench in several sizes. A jacket has been abandoned on the stair rail. Music comes from the backyard, cheerful and loud, making all adult conversation feel faintly pointless.

On the hallway wall, photographs follow Ivan through a life I missed.

A newborn in a striped hat. A toddler with oatmeal on his face. First day of school. Halloween vampire. Missing tooth. Anna kneeling beside him in front of a Christmas tree, both of them laughing at something outside the frame.

The photos still hurt.

They just no longer feel like evidence against me.

Anna sees me looking. She doesn’t apologize for having them.

I love her for that.

“I put the one from the planetarium up too,” she says, nodding toward the fridge as we pass the kitchen.

There, between the school lunch calendar and a spelling list, is a photo from last month. Ivan standing between Anna and me in front of a model of Saturn, looking irritated because Aleksander took too long to take the picture.

I remember that day. I remember Ivan handing me his jacket because he was too warm and forgetting to ask for it back until we reached the car. I remember carrying it like something sacred and ordinary.

The backyard is chaos.

Children run across the grass in paper crowns. Someone has overturned a bucket of sidewalk chalk. A little girl in purple leggings is explaining the rules of a game nobody else seems to understand. Two boys are arguing over whether aliens would prefer chocolate cake or vanilla.

Ivan returns to his friends, then immediately turns back.