Page 57 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

I confirm the conservator appointment for next Tuesday at two and add the estimate to the folder beside my laptop. The woman on the phone had been kind in the careful way experts are kind around damage. On the wall, she’d said, most people might not see the repair.

Some things survive damage. They just stop looking untouched.

The urge to call my father again still burns under my skin, but I know exactly what he’ll do. He’ll let me bleed against the silence. So I close the laptop.

I need to do something small. Something tangible.

Breakfast.

Not complicated or ambitious. Eggs and toast. I can handle eggs and toast.

Probably.

The kitchen still feels designed for someone more competent than me, all gleaming counters and professional-grade appliances. But I find eggs, bread, butter. Simple things. The toast comes out darker than intended, but not technically charcoal. The eggs are less cooperative—too runny around the edges, too soft in the center, which feels unnecessarily personal. I lower the heat, stir more carefully, and manage to produce something that resembles breakfast if nobody examines it under direct light.

Progress.

I’m plating everything with extreme concentration when I hear footsteps behind me and turn.

Aleksander pauses at the kitchen entrance. Dark trousers. White shirt. Sleeves rolled to the forearms. Hair still damp from a shower. He looks too composed for this early in the morning, which feels unfair on several levels.

He takes in the counter. The plates. The coffee. The small stack of restoration notes I forgot to move. Then me.

“You cooked again.”

“Attempted breakfast,” I correct. “The outcome remains legally ambiguous.”

He looks at the plate. “Eggs?”

“In theory.”

He sits without hesitation. His attention drops briefly to the restoration notes. “You called more conservators.”

“I damaged the painting. I’m trying to fix it.”

He is quiet for a moment, looking at me in that way he has, like he’s seeing five thoughts underneath the one I admitted to. “What did they say?”

“That it can be repaired. But not erased.”

“That’s usually how restoration works.”

The words are calm. Almost gentle.

I push one of the plates toward him. “Before you say anything, you should know the eggs are probably terrible.”

“I survived dinner the other day.”

He lifts a forkful to his mouth. I watch far too closely. His face doesn’t change as he chews. Not even a flicker. That alone tells me everything.

“They’re bad,” I say.

“Yes.”

I pause with my fork halfway to my mouth. Frankly, I expected him to lie.

His mouth curves. “But you made them.”

We eat in a silence that should feel awkward but doesn’t. When he reaches for his coffee, his attention catches briefly on the little heart at the inside of my wrist.